Lizards that just don't quit ............

I finally got around to seeing Cloverfield last night. I wanted to see it last Monday but the whole day-off fizzled following a death in the congregation and a series of phone calls and other obligations. My fiancee doesn't like films like this. My future stepson would have loved it but wouldn't have slept afterwards so it was strictly a solo affair. Once I'm married to his mother I'll take him to films like this when he's being a little sod. I'll put him to bed afterwards, shut off the light and close the door. Periodically I'll walk by the door and make this sound.



Any of you who were watching B-movies in the fifties and sixties will have to explain to me how on earth the original Godzilla movies inspired anything more than a chuckle. One is taught to treat past generations with a measure of patience. You did endure the War after all - the Blitz, Mock Apple Pie, Glenn Miller - and, yes, you may now be incontinent, dribbling and forever accusing the orderlies of stealing your teeth. But how lame is the idea of people screaming and covering their eyes at what is clearly an out-of-work circus midget stumping around a baptistry in a rubber suit kicking over a three foot model of a bridge. And the Atomic Breath? Yet another even smaller midget with a paintbrush colouring in the squares of film.

Which is a long way of saying hats off to anybody who can resurrect the Godzilla/Gojira tradition and have the film end up being really quite scary.

The film begins with the theft of an idea from the Blair Witch Project about a bit of video data being found by accident. In this case the data is contained in a castoff video camera found in "what was" Central Park in New York City. Special effects abound throughout the movie - money was spent in copious amounts but the point of view is that of a rather stupid boy named Hudd who's been given a cam-corder and told to record the evening's festivities - a surprise party for his best friend's brother who's leaving the next day to take up a junior management job in Japan.

The entire movie is filmed in Not-Too-Steady-Cam, then, with quite thrilling results. The first twenty minutes are difficult to endure. Pouty young women, vacuuous youths trading gossip and scandal. We knew we'd come to see a scary movie. Oh for God's sake send the Creature in! Don't force us to endure the late-teen, early-twenty crowd with their up-talk and their petty scandals. Stock characters do abound - a stupid boy who manages to be charmingly naive, a protagonist caught between two choices, a grumpy sister, the female Object of Desire, the mysterious stranger-girl. You're trying to figure out all the connections and you're not quite bored yet when the first earthquake hits and reports of explosions come in over the television. The giant lizard starts wreaking havoc in the city.

The original Godzilla movies didn't arise, like the monster, from a submarine trench. They reflect the anxiety felt by most in the early years of the Nuclear age. It was, as I remember, the testing of the Hydrogen Bomb which was alleged to have released the creature into the world. In the long run, though, the movies were a lot more fun than they were therapeutic. Cloverfield has woven within its plot all sorts of markers of post-911 anxiety as well. One scene of people cowering inside a convenience store as the monster passes is very nearly an exact replica of the famous bit of footage from September 11th in New York. There is, however, no real therapeutic task to the film and it ends up being a good ride.

All of the stock preamble at this point both begins to make sense and to (mercifully) disappear when the monster begins its rampage. This is a good film which eats its own schlock and demonstrates what another age might have been so scared about in its day. Go see the film if it's still around. Don't wait for the video!

The Coming

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.

On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The Sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

~R.S. Thomas (1972)

Via Elizaphanian via Madpriest. Thanks.

God's Country

A long and eloquently written piece in this month's edition of The Atlantic on Christianity and Islam in Nigeria called God's Country by Eliza Griswold.

Calling all Scottish Episcopal Bloggers

At least those within reasonably quick driving distance of a small town just to the south of Edinburgh. Our local folkies - a group called Herken which is drawn from St James Episcopal Church and the Penicuik Folk Club - have put together an evening of hymns and folk music with a special emphasis on "...a strain of Christian music that borrows, without saying so, from traditional songs and tunes." It's this Sunday evening at 6:30 pm.

The website for Herken give you a link to the current project which is called Of Earth and Altar. Take a peek at their other stuff as well. Follow the link at the bottom of that page to call up a .pdf file with the evening's offerings of songs and readings. Bring yourself. Bring a carload!

Regarding the statement somewhere that

"The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, stops work at 6pm so he can watch The Simpsons."

I thought Rowan Williams had already been featured in an episode of The Simpsons. Did I dream that?

Didn't Homer look puzzled and claim to know Rowan from somewhere and then ask whether he'd brought the Hobbits along?

Second childhood is clearly at hand. Fantasy and reality are blurring at the edges and it's all Brian Reid's fault

Blogger Rebounds

Derek the Anglican has been quiet for a while. It happens. Somebody whose blog you check in on every once in a while suddenly appears to drop off his perch and you suppose that it's Lent and they've taken a vow, they have a life, work, family etc.

Well it appears our Derek got bitten by a Brown Recluse Spider, took ill and ended up in the ICU. He's back on his perch but sheee...it!

That's not the sort of thing that's suppose to happen to a medievalist! Steve Irwin, okay. He poked 'em and prodded 'em. I'm beginning to wonder which other recently silenced voices have been trapped in quicksand, trampled by elephants, or hunted down by pygmies with blowpipes.

Then again, maybe it's just Lent.

Canadian Sermon Types

Pastor Neil Young (what else! Yes that's his name!) who is the minister at Erindale United Church in Mississauga Ontario came up with these various styles of sermon common in the Greatest Nation on Earth. These classifications might help my Scottish congregation understand their expat priest a little better. Thanks to the blog Out of Ur for these:

The Maple Syrup: Boils source material down to about 1/50th its starting volume.

The Mountie: When it's most dressed-up, it doesn't arrest anybody.

The Igloo: Goes 'round and 'round until a final capstone is dropped in.

The Curling: Kind of incomprehensible, but everybody seems to have a good time.

The Lacrosse: Fast, hard-hitting, and it's hard to see the points as they're made.

The Hockey Fight: Staggers unsteadily, swinging wildly, but lands a punch or two.

The Canadian: Overly apologetic.

The Snowmobile: Loud and a bit obnoxious, but takes you places you otherwise wouldn't go.

The Beaver: Dams everything in sight.

The Maple Leaf: Has 11 points; always ends up falling to the ground.

Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl........

I'm one of her devoted subjects (that's me in black and white to the right of the picture) but that doesn't stop me from laughing out loud at this. Thank you Jonathan! Sensitive monarchists might best avoid it.

Why we don't do weddings during Lent

Following her wedding, an old-fashioned girl crawled into bed for the first time beside her new husband. She snuggled up to him and was surprised at his lack of response. In fact, he rolled over and began to fall asleep.

"So why aren't we going to make love on our wedding night", she asked finally.

"Because it's Lent" came the reply.

"That's nonsense!" she exclaimed. "I've never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. It's been lent to whom and for how long?"

A Lenten Exercise for Progressive Clergy

Sushipizza!

A little something from Andrew Brown's blog which will warm the heart of your Norwegian-speaking Italian/Japanese girlfriend and make up for the fact that you forgot Valentine's Day.

Multiculturalism made an appearance on the menu in this morning's Thought for the Day on Radio Scotland - querying the need for every linguistic and religious grouping ultimately to form its own nation (thinking of Kosovo). Diversity in the Church - or the lack of it - a perennial issue on most church blogs these days (think splintering churches in Western Canada).

I'm hoping, however, that there are happier alternatives to cultural and ecclesiastical homogeneity than Sushipizza!

see also: Jellied Salads

This article from this morning's Telegraph touched all my Victor Meldrew buttons. We are turning into very silly people!

....the general rise in our prosperity has led to a corresponding decline in common sense. We have become over-responsive to outside threats, more paranoid about the way our inventions are killing us, and we are eager to buy safety for our children and ourselves at any cost.

The United Steelworkers of Montreal deserve some international exposure. So, um, we'll start with the south of Scotland. Everyone from Hawick to Bonnyrigg - listen up! They've got a couple of disks out and a few of their songs can be heard in the traditional manner but, to my knowledge, this is their first posh video. Enjoy!

If you're going to jump a fence in order to chase rabbits in the field next door you'd better make sure you can clear it.

Good advice for Labrador Retrievers. Good advice all 'round, in fact.

Clio didn't manage the jump without catching the wire - poor wee dog is now at the Vet's getting her wounds tidied up. It's not very pretty.

Update:

Got a call from the vet saying that Clio was proving a terrible patient, flopping around after waking up from the anesthetic rather than merely sleeping it off and could I please come and pick her up since she'd probably sleep better at the Rectory. Well - she hasn't and has been staggering around walking into walls. A bit better as of late with the odd whimper. Tomorrow the stitches will no doubt start to itch and I'll have to put one of those cone things around her neck. The other dogs will laugh at her.

Bread for the eater and seed for the sower.....

Having heard a tale of woe for decades about the state of farming in Canada (and by extension, the rest of North America) it's good to hear that the farmers are happy.

Good on them. They deserve it.

Something weepy for Lent and beautiful for Valentine's Day

Lenten videos were leaping out at me last year. I've had no luck finding anything new this year. From last year's list.

Toys for Lent I

Some of us are 'hands on' types and some of us aren't. If your family's observance of Lent is missing a little je ne sais quoi you can always make a Salt Dough Crown of Thorns with your children and fill it with little spikes that the children can remove one by one each time they do something good. In so doing apparently, they will even make Jesus feel better.

"For each Lenten sacrifice a family member makes, he or she pulls a toothpick out of the crown. This activity makes a great visual reminder of Christ’s suffering: Parents can explain to their children that sin brings additional pain to Jesus’ suffering and good works can comfort Him and show our love for Him. "

If what you say doesn't make sense at least you'll be able to prove that at the end of the day you came up with something which was practical.

Scottish Episcopal Lenten Blog

Some of the Scottish Episcopal Bloggers have gotten together and put together a Lenten Blog called Beauty from Chaos. Take a look when you've got time. Kimberly Bohan, Rector of Dunoon, is the organizing force behind this blog which goes online today.

40

Found this during Lent last year. Thought I'd repost it. The comics are by a cartoonist named Simon Smith. Music by Joseph Arthur.

One doesn't need to completely jettison one's sense of humour during Lent. The famous Lenten episode of Father Ted entitled 'Cigarettes, Alcohol and Rollerblading' is now available here in three parts. The Scottish Episcopal Bloggers are all busy at work, you see, and I thought I'd try to be a useful little Canadian limpet and provide a service as well.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

The Martyrs of Japan (February 5th, 1597)

Padre Mickey down in Panama has a very good article (I can't rememher whether written by him or by somebody else) on the Martyrs of Japan. Their feast day is today. Other material here. Still more here.

65 years ago this week

A longish article worth reading about the sinking of the Dorchester in WWII and the four chaplains who were aboard. Thanks to T19 for the reference.

Can't help myself

A mother goes to church with her little girl.
The priest intones 'remember man thou art but dust...'

The little girl says 'Mummy, what's butt dust?'

Candlemas was yesterday. Today is the Feast of St Blaise when one is supposed to bless throats but there being scant precedent for the Service of the Blessing of Throats at St James' Penicuik we went ahead and modified our monthly Family Service along the lines of the Feast of the Presentation. Guitars, cellos, violins, a drum set, a djembe and a piano (me on the tambourine during a couple of the livelier ones). Candles were blessed. Things proceeded decently and in good order.

In the course of talking to the children about the various occasions where we still use candles in the course of our daily lives I spoke about their use as emergency equipment.

Years ago I was the Rector of Christ Church, Chibougamau and the Priest in Charge of St Barnabas' Waswanipi in the Diocese of Moosonee (northern Quebec). I lived in Chibougamau. My second point was 140 kilometres away. In order to say Mass in two places (twice a month, anyway) this made for a 280 kilometre round trip and it had to be undertaken rain or shine.

That particular corner of the world is a real snow belt - it gets as much snow as Winnipeg and it falls at inconvenient times. Add to this the occasional winter trip to our See City of Schumacher in Ontario (best approached via the back roads through Amos and Cochrane) and that makes one hell of a lot of winter driving in conditions which most people cannot imagine.

So it pays to be equipped. You can be stuck all night on one of these lonely roads without a soul coming along to help you. You keep a down-filled sleeping bag, extra matches, a jerry can of diesel, snow shoes, and a spray can of ether to spray into the air filter to give the engine a bit of a jump when you're starting it on a cold day. And candles.

A trick which I was taught by an old fellow who once ferried Lancaster Bombers over Greenland during the Second World War: You carry about a twenty ordinary builders' bricks and a box of emergency candles. If you have to ditch your bomber over Greenland or Franz Josef Land or if you wind up in a snowbank in the middle of northern Quebec you build a couple of small ovens out of the bricks and place a lit emergency candle in the midst of them. By isolating yourself in the truck or in the airplane's fusilage you can turn these little brick ovens into two small radiators which will prove adequate to keep you alive indefinitely.

Postnote:

Sam Thomas - our Regional Dean in those days - came to the Rectory in Chibougamau and noticed all the equipment lying in the back of my Toyota Landcruiser. After coming in and helping himself to a cup of tea Sam says to me:

Rob - couldn't help noticing that you've got an axe, ropes and a can of ether in your truck. It's no mystery to me why you can never get a date!

Fame and Fortune in Small Communities

Soon to be step-son was sitting in the back of the car the other day as I was driving him and his mother back to their house in West Linton. Children are always a good source of village gossip in West Linton. They share amongst themselves the things that their parents might not talk about in the Precinct so it's always 'all ears open' when the boy begins to speak. As I remember S was moaning that his life was dull and ordinary (as was, by extension, the lives of the adults connected to him).

As an example of what life could have looked like if he were luckier he gave us the example of one of the little girls in Primary 5.

"Her family's famous" he said
"They are?" I asked. "I didn't know that"
"Yes, of course they are. Her grandfather does the voice of the Gaelic* Pig on the television"

*Scottish Gaelic - not the other one

Rev'd Ruth - my colleague in Portobello reports:

“At a wedding ceremony that I was performing, I raised my hand to give the final blessing. The bride misunderstood my gesture and surprised me with a high-five. Not wanting to exclude the groom, I offered him a high-five, too. I was finally able to get my blessing in, amid the laughter of the guests.”

Gambia I

There's the Gambia for tourists and then there's Africa. The beach in front of our hotel regularly found itself traversed by a herd of local cattle. My daughter Hannah hasn't travelled much. We haven't actually spent an awful lot of time together over the last few years and since she was coming out to Scotland for Christmas the opportunity was there to take her somewhere hot and 'different'. Thomas Cook had some package deals for the Gambia so we booked some tickets. The country was wonderful - the hotel proved just a wee bit sealed off from the country. Relief came in the form of my colleague Kenny Macaulay from St Augustine's Church in Dumbarton in Glasgow Diocese who was coming down a couple of days later with his wife Linda. Kenny's been to the Gambia off and on now for a number of years - had his own wheels and knew his way around. So we got to see the country in the last four days of our trip.


We made a trip to Senegal. Bumped into a few fellow travelers from Scotland in the form of the Ospreys who were spending the winters in the mangrove swamps there. There's a Thought for the Day on BBC Scotland about this. The ferry ride across the mouth of the River Gambia was long and the return trip especially arduous and very hot. Shade was at a premium and Hannah managed to find herself a cool corner on the deck.

More pictures and stories later as I edit them and post them online

Good Clean Fun for Kids. The Zombie Walk

Something from the Edmonton journal in October - Canadians know how to have fun with their kids - October, yeah, which just before I kinda went offline sometime in November what with missing passports and all. I am now legal. No - not languishing in an immigration holding cell at the pleasure of the Home Secretary. Not dead - kinda Undead and looking forward to a busy Christmas and then off to the Gambia with my daughter for a week's holiday before returning and sending my passport off in the mail again for a Certificate of Approval to Marry. It's endless!

Back after a long journey, Raspberry Rabbit's new Canadian passport goes straight back into the mail for another adventure.........

The saga of the missing passport and the application for Further Leave to Remain in the UK continues.

It took a month - to the day - for the newly issued passport to travel by recorded delivery from the Canadian High Commission in London to my doorstep in Scotland. We've had a mail strike you see. Things have been stored in warehouses. The envelope arrived today (the 9th). I couldn't believe it. I'd already replaced the driver's license which was also in the envelope and ordered a new birth certificate from British Columbia. I was ready to apply for another passport. I looked at it several times, thumbed its pages, admired the fat and aging person depicted on the front page and wondered how I'd ever been young. Problem was - the passport was supposed to have been in Durham (thence to Croydon) last week in the company of an application to stay in this country a while longer.

I'd sent the application in on time but without the passport. I had found (surprisingly) a photocopy of the front page and the Residence Permit. I included that. I'd gotten a fax from London saying that the passport had indeed been issued. I included that. On Wednesday I did get a note from the immigration folks saying that they'd received the application and would I please not phone them to enquire about its progress. "We'll call you if anything is missing". The note had a reference number on it. I decided to risk a phone call anyway. The nice man named Dave at the enquiry line today said I could send it off to Croydon quoting the reference number and that it would be appended to my application. Which is what I did - special delivery - entrusting this document once again to the Royal Mail. Trusting that Dave hasn't led me astray. Every hopeful or maybe just desperate.

My parents are under strict instructions to stay well in the absence of my travel documents. I've a holiday booked with the daughter after Christmas which will require a passport. I'd even like to be admitted back into the UK at the end of the holiday. All is not yet completely sorted but it's looking better than it did a few weeks ago and your prayers and best wishes have been appreciated. One day I'll understand why things had to be this way.

It's that time again. The Annual Clergy Conference for stipendiary clergy in the Diocese of Edinburgh. This is not a holiday! No way, Jose! I suspect my parishioners may be nurturing visions of clergy sitting in groups telling jokes, drinking in the pub, griping about their lack of preferment, being nasty to the Dean and conspiring against the Bishop. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a priest I would not lie to you. Fact is - we simply get a good group rate at the Atholl Palace in Pitlochry. It just works out that way. It's just a place where we get together and work hard. We'd rather be at the Holiday Inn.

Things you can actually buy!

Andrew Brown makes reference to a geek gift he's looking forward to getting for Christmas. It's a t-shirt which actually measures the strength of the Wi-Fi signal where ever you happen to be walking at the time. I think the three AAA batteries sewn into the shirt might dangle uncomfortably and keep the garment from hanging properly. But if you're wearing one of these you're not exactly a slave to fashion, are you?

I don't know if anyone else has been adversely affected by the strikes at the Royal Mail but my new Canadian passport is hanging around formlessly in the void being played with by Schroedinger's Cat - probably languishing in a mail bag somewhere in the Edinburgh sorting office. It was sent on the 10th of October. My permission to remain in the UK runs out shortly and I need to bear said passport along with my person to the Immigration Office in Glasgow and apply for Further Leave to Remain. Something I can't do without my passport. Removal Orders and Deportation are really not my thing.

Needless to say I'm a tad anxious and desirous of your prayers for the successful arrival of this little blue booklet. All may pray - of whatever theological persuasion - making a joyful noise from the same songsheet!

Raspberry's Passport needs to be found.

V. Lord in your mercy,

R. Hear our prayer

The Rector's Warden from one of my congregations has just sent me this photograph saying that it reminded him of me. I don't see it. But then again as one of the world's truly execrable poets has said:

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursel's as others see us!

I'm guessing the photographer was getting the message that the Winnie the Pooh costume he'd chosen for this particular shoot was less convincing wet and up close than it had been at a distance on the shore.

At my first couple of weddings here in the UK I was rather surprised by strange combinations of feathers sticking out of the heads of the female guests in attendance. They weren't hats, exactly. I've since found out that these things are called 'Fascinators'. They're all the rage in the UK, Oz and Middle Earth for weddings and posh sporting events.

Do we have them in Canada? I don't remember seeing them. Perhaps in Toronto. Nowhere we'd admit living, anyway.

They're little creations of feathers and sometimes a second element attached to a comb or morphed into the sort of 'mini hat' which Queen Victoria might have yearned for. Who knows - maybe there's a recipe:

Take one songbird, chop coarsely, apply sparingly to head

For those of you who are in the Territorial Army there's this little number in Army/Olive which can double up as sniper's headgear.

This is all occasioned, of course, by Rev'd Ruth's reflections on a recent wedding at St Mark's Portobello where she said that she wanted a Fascinator and wondering what sort of design would be appropriate. Oi! Ruthie! Set the challenge and we shall meet it.

The basic question is - do you want it to go with your cassock and surplice (in which case a black and white number could be found) or with your hair (God has richly blessed you with a rare hue of rich colour not always found upon the heads of clergy) in which case something purple might be more appropriate.

Clergy Conference will soon be upon us. I shall arrive with a selection and you can try them on and model them for us in the pub. Pictures shall be taken and offered to Scottish Episcopal Bloggers at a modest price.

Human Tetris

Tetris is one of the only computer games I've ever liked. I liked 'Pong' too but it's best played on a Commodore 64. The Japanese have come up with a version that can be played without a computer. Admittedly this is an odd thing for the Japanese to be doing but the results are pretty inspiring.



Thanks to Gareth Saunders for this clip

Time is running out!

Fr Knisely over at Entangled States is constantly coming up with interesting stuff. . The latest installment - quotes the following paragraph:

"'The Universe is about to flip from having three dimensions of space and one of time to having four dimensions of space. That's the conclusion of a group of Spanish astrophysicists who have calculated that observers inside such a Universe would see it expanding and accelerating away from them just before the flip. "

Going back to the original article doesn't help. I've as much chance of reading this as I have of flying to the moon. I suspect, though, that this could be serious. The astronomer in my congregation has noticed that the universe is expanding away from us. I hear he's not alone. That's why we get the 'red shift' in certain stars, right? So we must be 'just before the flip', non?

Is it even worth purchasing the 2008 Parsons Pocket Book? Should I get more furniture instead to fill the extra space?

Nick - you gotta help me!

The Times has the following report on the New Zealand reaction to the loss at rugby to the French:

Newspapers printed match reports in white type on a black background, reflecting the sombre mood. The foreign minister, Winston Peters, called the result a tragedy and suggested it could even drive distraught men to "beat up" their wives and children.

And we're talking about Kiwis here - they're supposed to be milder mannered than even the Canadians. Who'd a thunk it?

Without a false note

I was tremendously taken with the adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel 'Atonement' which I saw in Glasgow the other night. Even taking into consideration the denouement at the end of the film, the story remains a simple one. I read the novel a year or so ago and I am usually hesitant to see a film where I've enjoyed the book and cultivated a set of visual images to go with it. In this case the film adapts the novel well - I even found myself thinking I had seen certain parts of the film before.

The movie opens with words being typed on an old Corona and it is the power of uttered and written words which is at the centre of the film: Words spoken or written which can never be taken back.

We never simply record events. We inject ourselves into the story we are relating. The desire of a budding young writer - Briony Tallis - to have the world conform to her hopes and, ultimately, to her anger and jealousy forms the core of the plot. A community of men and women reel from the effect of a young girl's testimony and attempt, over time, to reestablish what has been broken by her words.

The film has been well crafted. I cannot think of a single regrettable image or badly crafted scene - not one false note. This was a very satisfying film.

Liberal Defence critic Denis Coderre was in Afghanistan yesterday talking to Canadian troops there. Would somebody please tell the honourable member that just because he's in the Opposition in Ottawa doesn't mean he has to grow a beard and look like the Taliban in Kandahar.

Yes you can be too careful!

A report commissioned by the Church of England advises us to leave our clerical collars at home because they make us a target for violent criminals. The whole question of the advisability of wearing clericals on the street has been discussed elsewhere. This is different - now we're into the realm of health and safety where we know that......

You can't be too careful

Let's deal with how the report begins. It begins with the pictures of murdered clergy.

It then goes on to state in one of the introductory paragraphs that a 2001 study found that "70% of clergy suffer from some sort of violence". That's a lot! Me, I've got the same package of plasters that I had back in Chibougamau in the late 80's. I'm not even sure that the adhesive works any more. Maybe I've been lucky. The author then states his own findings from 2006 that "48% of them (clergy) had suffered at least one violent incident in the preceding 12 months". Fine.

First you want to know what 'violence' in this context means. I'm just off the phone with somebody with whom I raised my voice. Was I being violent? I was being aggressive. What is violence anyway - being shouted at - given sideways glances? The definition given in the article ends up being pretty wide indeed

4.4 Often in a parish are one or two people who can use violence as described in footnote 2 above [which I can't find]. These can be people who have a grudge against the church, the vicar themselves [sic] or God. The vicar becomes the target of the abuse which can often take the form of anonymous letter writing to the bishop, attempts to discredit the vicar and accusations of improper behaviour. These are often long term problems that are seldom dealt with in a satisfactory manner according to those clergy who suffer from this sort of violence.

Ah. We're back in Britain again.

First - show pictures of four clergy murdered between 1996 and 2007. Truly horrifying stories, all of them.

Second - give statistics for a generalized form of violence which includes disgruntled Altar Guild presidents writing the Bishop under the name of Outraged of Penicuik and saying that the Rector is an utter shit who should never have been sent to the congregation in the first place. I'm sorry - that's not violence. That's the reality of ministry in some places (tho mercifully not Penicuik).

Thirdly - propose a series of over-the-top safeguards.

My favourite? From the appendix at the end:

All front doors should reach the European Standard ENV 1627

(This means that the door should withstand assault with crowbars for five minutes, withstand pressure on the lock of 600 kg and withstand pressure on the corners of 300 kg)

All I have to say is that on the day my Altar Guild starts to assault the front door for five minutes with crowbars I'm gonna start checking the Church Times in earnest for available positions.

------

On a more sober note. I had somebody decide to kill me once - back in the early nineties.

His marriage had broken apart, he was seriously manic depressive and we had found alternate accomodation for his wife and daughter when he had beaten them rather badly.

His plan was to lure me to the 17th floor apartment/hotel room he was living in and pitch me off the balcony. He was waaay manic when I arrived after his phone call. He was a round but still very well-built fellow and when I arrived he was sweating profusely and wearing nothing but a small pair of bikini briefs and kept telling me that it was too hot in the room and he wanted to talk to me on the balcony. "Not here" he snapped in a staccato voice, "on the balcony. On - the - balcony!"

I was clever enough not to advance into the room. I backed out slowly on a pretext and got the hell out of there.

I must admit that I had ignored any number of little warning bells in my head as I was driving over to his place. I shoulda known better. The next day he was threatening over the telephone to throw himself off the same balcony and I managed to do a two-telephone trick and have the Montreal cops sneak up and haul him down. On his way to the hospital he told the police about his plans to throw me off the day before.

I'm not sure that risk can ever be completely avoided or should be avoided, for that matter. The cultivation of good common sense pays great dividends, however. My one risky encounter with an unwell parishioner was cleary my own bloody fault.

My friend John Beach, that most excellent of Episcopal priests serving (with his lady wife Denise) as Rector of Emmanuel Church in Geneva, Switzerland (part of the American Convocation of Churches in Europe) has written a letter to his friends about a man named Hiram Bingham. John's letter is reprinted here with permission.

-------------

Dear ones,

Denise and I were at a conference in Nice last weekend and were struck by the beauty and soothing climate. After the conference, we attended the Chagall museum and were moved by the paintings of this French Jewish painter. It was in this museum, that I came upon the story of Hiram Bingham (for his biography you can look at his Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Bingham_IV).

Be certain to read about Hiram Bingham the IV, for there is a long line of impressive Hiram Binghams.

Anxious to limit immigration to the United States and to maintain good relations with the Vichy government, the State Department actively discouraged diplomats from helping refugees. Bingham disobeyed his directives and issued between 2-3,000 visas over the course of the next year. Many of these were hidden in the American Episcopal church in Nice before they could be given transport.

When his superiors discovered what he had been doing, he was immediately fired. His family, however, was very influential, so he was given another post in Buenos Aires (then considered a hardship post) during which time he was instrumental in locating Nazi war criminals after the war. The state department become so fed up with his insubordination that he was fired from this position and moved to Salem, Connecticut where he disappeared into obscurity (I am told that Salem, Connecticut is an excellent place to disappear into obscurity). He arrived in the U.S. at age 44, and was never able to get a job for the rest of his life.

He tried several attempts to start small businesses, all of which failed. He died in Salem in 1988.

No one in Salem (not even his own children) were aware of his heroism until they were contacted by the Holocaust museum 5 years ago who wanted to commemorate Bingham. His own children were astonished when, over the course of 2001-2002 several memorials and a postage stamp were issued in his name.

Among the many people given visa, was Marc Chagall who was able to spend the war years in the U.S. Upon his return to Nice, he painted a series of oils paintings depicting the Exodus. I spent an hour looking at one in particular the Chagall museum on Monday. It shows the sinister forces in dark grey tones representing the Egyptian army chasing the Jews towards the Red Sea. One of can make out one person in the grey mass who is a bit separated from the rest, who has a yellow foot (the only bit of color on that part of the canvas). There is an ancient Midrash which states that the son of Pharaoh continued to think of Moses has a brother, so that his heart would not allow him to join in the genocide. The yellow foot was meant to represent the son of Pharaoh. It was also meant to represent Hiram Bingham. Chagall wrote in a letter found in Bingham’s attic where his confused children sought for documents for the holocaust museum. In it he stated that even in the hearts of those who are the beneficiaries of cruelty and injustice, a shred of human decency emerges and we can see that the darkness is not completely dark.

He referred to Bingham as a “bureaucrat par excellence”.

I spent a good while meditating on that yellow foot.

Love
John

Sunday 30 September
Pentecost 18

Amos 6:1a, 4-7
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

I once encountered a Grizzly Bear in the southern Yukon Territory. I was all on my own – rather in the middle of nowhere. There had been other occasions when I’d been part of a group hunting moose that we’d seen signs of grizzly bears – their droppings and the places where one had dug under fallen trees. We’d felt quite confident and not a little emboldened by the presence of the rifles hanging on slings at our shoulder. I’d once seen a couple of grizzly bears fishing for salmon in the river. That time my mates and I were in a pickup truck and we pulled to the side of the road and watched the bears through binoculars from the safety of the truck.

The occasion of this solo encounter with a grizzly bear was merely a hike, however, and I was unarmed.

I am pleased to say that I was less than a hundred yards away from it and that I was completely unafraid. I could see the bear and it kept moving its head back and forth and sniffing the air so it was aware of me. Yes – your preacher this morning stands unafraid in the presence of grizzly bears. That's the kinda guy he is. Did I tell you, though, that there was a chasm nearly a hundred feet deep between myself and the bear?

I meant to put that in the sermon. I should have. I suppose that might moderate slightly any thoughts of my being particularly heroic.

Yes, I’m afraid I’m as prudent as anyone else. The only reason I was able to stand there looking at this bear with my good eyes and he was able to sniff the air, grunt twice and smell me with his very good nose without any fear or incurring of risk on my part was the presence of a deep chasm separating the bear and myself – sixty feet of it vertical rock leading down to a small river. One of those chasms. Not worth the bear’s efforts for the dubious reward of a skinny sixteen year old.

In Jesus’ parable the rich man is being tormented in Hades while poor Lazarus has finally been rewarded for his years of suffering by being at the side of Abraham in paradise – in the ‘bosom of Abraham’ as the song goes. The rich man asks whether Abraham could ask Lazarus to dip his finger in the cool water and come over to him to cool his tongue. Abraham tells him that this is not possible. The rich man has received his reward in the course of his earthly life. Besides, he says, a chasm has now been established between us and nobody can cross over.

There is not a little irony in this story. Not only that a rich man ends up in Hades and a poor man in paradise. This is meant to be a ‘tale’, by the way, not a comprehensive geography of what the afterlife will look like. No – the irony is that the chasm always existed between the rich man and Lazarus. As Lazarus was being stepped over, as Lazarus was being looked through, when the rich man assumed that the scraps from his table were going into the bin or being fed to the dog and was unaware that there was a human being unofficially attached to his household. There had always been a chasm. The invisible chasm became, eventually, visible.

Our parents may well have wanted to insulate us from the rough life. They may have taken a look at the catchment area for the local school before they bought their house. They had the best of intentions. They wanted us safe. There were always friends your parents like and friends they don’t. I’m aware that the town where I live contains four or five towns – that people sometimes keep to themselves and that our churches – most of them anyway – are drawn from certain pockets and not others. John Street in Penicuik is a bit of a chasm. We don’t always know our neighbours.

When we gather around the altar on a Sunday morning are we aware of the spiritual presence with and beside us of men and women in countries we will never visit who speak a language we will never learn but are doing the same thing on a Sunday morning as us? Our children are less likely to be able to navigate the family globe than we were. Gap years are often spent on Australian beaches. Travel is involved, I suppose.

The chasm is comfortable. It keeps the Grizzly bear at a distance. I just finished hacking back the hedge which surrounds the Rectory in Penicuik. It’s a job one avoids and my ladder and I sank rather dramatically into the Rose and Hawthorn at one point. They’re meant to be a little impassable. They guard our privacy. You can hear the neighbours or the dog walkers but you’re guaranteed of a certain distance and certain degree of solitude.

What should the rich man have done? What is being criticised here? Is Hades the final destination of every wealthy person who does not – St Francis-like – stride from the comfort of his mansion to embrace and care for lepers? Is it as simple as that? Is it just another way of saying that rich men fit into the Kingdom the way camels fit through the eyes of needles? Maybe - maybe not.

What is being criticised here is the absence of vision. The rich man, after all, is just a character in a story – the real men and women who are the object of Christ’s concern and pointed words are the men and women listening to the story – either there with him when he told it or in Church this morning or listening to this sermon on their radios while they’re making their coffee. You are the object of Christ’s concern. Your community contains a multiplicity of souls – and you know very few of them. The shirt you’re wearing this morning was possibly made by a young person in another country earning a miserable wage who has not had the benefits of a comprehensive education and you did not know that. Your best attempts to provide suitable playmates for your children may be increasing their loneliness and not diminishing it. You are one of the rich man’s five brothers who has not had a visit from Lazarus. You are Scrooge before Marley’s ghost comes to visit him. You don’t think you have anything in common with a whole lot of other people and the economic ice floe your living on – the social ice floe you’re living on – is growing smaller and smaller. That’s more like it. It’s not riches per se which is the problem – it’s ignorance and the ultimate loneliness which it engenders.

Before there can be any change or repentance there needs to be vision. The scales can fall from your eyes because some aspect of the story of another person’s life has finally pieced your hedge or crossed the chasm and reached your heart and mind. But that sort of thing sounds like an accident – like one of those things that might happen to some people if they’re lucky enough. Jesus does not appear to be asking you to play the lottery.

No – there is a clearer message here. You are part of a world which contains people not of your clan or language or colour or religion. They are citizens in the towns and the cities in which you live. They dig minerals out of the ground for you and they sew your shirts. Pretty well every government service we depend on was once an act of charity. We used to be better at benevolence than we are now. The working conditions we enjoy were struggled for by other generations at enormous cost to their safety and their liberty. We used to be better at advocacy than we are now. It’s out of style. But there is still an enormous army of volunteers at work in the world. They build schools in Mozambique, they provide medical services where there are none. That sort of vision which sees the fortunes of other people as being necessarily linked to our own lives is still alive. It’s just a rather slim portion of society that sees things that way.

Take a moment to look around you. What doesn’t seem right? What can be done about it? What are you going to do about it!

Some blogs from Burma

from a variety of sources including a Christian pastor.

These may well not be updated often or recently since the government is cracking down on internet access as well.

In most cases these are people who are normally in and out of Burma - students, foreign workers and one pastor - who are now receiving reports via phone calls, emails or text messages.

One reads these things, obviously, understanding that they are fragments and come from anonymous sources. Important, nonetheless.

Burma (Myanmar) Blog

Ko-Htike's Prosaic Collection

Ka Daung Nyin Thar

Yangon Thu

Mizzima News

The Irrawaddy

A Saturday Visit to Reverend Ruth

St Mark's Church in Portobello put on a music festival on Saturday afternoon. It worked out well for us. Mrs Rabbit-to-be had worked two shifts in a row and was finishing at about 8 in the morning. She came over and crashed chez moi until about 1:30 and, after coffee and a fag was chipper enough to go out and enjoy a sunny day and so we decided to show face at the Music Festival at St Mark's. I gather that one member of the congregation was well placed with a number of local music groups and was able to coax them into coming along.

Ruth's church is one of those churches where the pews have been ripped out (or 'removed' as I think the politer term has it) and it actually doesn't look that bad. The place didn't have that gutted look that some depewed churches have. I was favourably impressed. It's a funky little church to begin with - very square and built to resemble a temple.

We arrived just as a small band of men with tartan trousers, accordians and lowland pipes were finishing. They were succeeded by a string quartet and then by a collection of younger people in various combinations.

There were stalls. There was tea and fairy cakes. I picked up some DVDs. It was well worth the visit.

At one point somebody was speaking into a microphone introducing the next piece of music and the crowd kept on talking. Now I don't know whether Ruth's church was one of those listed in the SEC Red Book as 'requiring a strong hand' but she belted out the word 'quiet' in the sort of manner that reminds you that she has successfully raised sons and is well able to enforce order.

Well done Ruth - your patch looks like it's thriving.

A friend of mine made me this cool graphic. The original idea was to ferry over a few audio bits-and-pieces that get done for a local Edinburgh radio station - 45 second 'drivetime bumff'. I thought I might tell a few stories later on. That's its tail, by the way, hanging between its legs.

Psalm 150 - FAMU Gospel Choir

More ideas for youth group meetings

A Sermon for Pentecost 18

Amos 8:4-7
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

Have you ever been in an office when a manager was due to be fired? These things rarely happen out of the blue – there’s usually been some build-up to it – meetings held off site – surreptitious conversations on the telephone and then the day itself.

It’s the thing not being talked about and it’s the thing that everybody is talking about. The air is electric.

One mouthy individual looking like he knows something which he may well not says something like ‘Well, it’s about time!’ This guy’s been carrying on like he was responsible to nobody. Morale here on the floor has taken a nosedive – how can the rest of us be expected to take our jobs seriously with him around.”

Somebody else might well try and soften the hurt – looking for some third party who has passed the buck on to this unfortunate individual.

And think about the man’s family – there are children at home. There’s a grandchild on the way!

A braver soul might even hint to the mouthy individual that his own slate is not completely clean – what about this, what about that. Pot – kettle, don’t you think?

Senior managers arrive and walk straight into the large board room without saying hello to anybody. A little while later the principal character arrives – alone perhaps – accompanied maybe by a friend or a Union official or a personal advocate of some sort. He too greets nobody although there may be a silent handshake. Somebody’s hand might brush his shoulder in a non-verbal sign of solidarity.

You’re not at the meeting. The curtains in the board room are drawn. There is just the smallest rise in the volume of voices for a moment or two in the course of the half hour meeting. A point being made forcefully – offense or defense we know not.

The reading from Luke’s Gospel is a curious one. The parable is numbered among the "hard sayings" of Jesus.  I know plenty of clergy who would avoid preaching on it. They’d preach on the Old Testament reading for the day, they’d preach on the Epistle. They’d preach on the Collect – they’d preach on the text of the Mothers Union announcements on the back of the pew leaflet. They’d preach on the washing instructions for the new choir robes rather than attempt to make sense of the fact that Jesus seems to praise the example of a dishonest manager who gets himself out of trouble by committing further dishonesty. There’s something here that just doesn’t add up -

except there’s something that does.

Let’s return to the boardroom where our unfortunate manager is meeting with the Senior Management Team and the company auditor. There he is at the end of the table. He’s feeling a bit like a caged animal – like a circus bear tethered by a rope. After listening to a list of reproaches and accusations he is given the floor. Now he is making his case. He has argued, perhaps, that his misdemeanours were not that serious. Something has been misunderstood. He has put forward the name of various people on staff who could speak in his defence about this or that transaction – who were there at the time, who saw the missing receipts and recorded them.

At one moment he has been surprisingly aggressive. At another, he has asked for understanding. He has put forward the proposition that although he is a faulted individual he has done a lot of good for the company. He invokes his wife, his family, the fact that he is in his mid fifties and might never find another job. All of these attempts to save himself meet with sympathy from some around the table – with manifest disgust from others.

There will be at least one person at the table, though, who will look at him with some degree of admiration.

This is no longer the fellow in the nice suit cracking jokes – this is now the man locked in mortal combat trying to retain a large part of his life. This is what we’re all like when life gets serious. We defend ourselves. We look for a way out. We’ve obviously taken the seriousness of our situation to heart. There is no illusion here. We are fighting for our survival.

When it’s all over and the man is fired or when it’s all over and the man has retained his position by the skin of his teeth we will not look back at the various jumps and backflips which he attempted around the board table. We won’t talk about them. We will forget them. The impulse to defend ourselves is so basic - so universal - when the ‘real issues’ of food on our table are being discussed that desperate measures are completely understandable. Everybody understands that. For a brief moment we had a taste of the human condition as something akin to a bit of lichen clinging to a rock. All the politesse of mature human discourse placed to the side – for that half hour it was a matter of ‘hang on boys we might just make it’.

The single admirer the man had at the table - not one of those who were beset by the sentiment of pity or sympathy nor one of those expressing righteous indignation that that the man carried on so in his own defense - the single admirer the man had around the board room table might have put it this way: that those who look upon such a grasping as beneath their dignity have never been there themselves. The man put up a spirited and admirable defense.

There is an old definition of the word virtue - one which held sway before the Church got hold of the word - one where a virtuous action was one most excellently proper to any particular thing or person. The virtue of a knife is to cut, of a shovel to dig into the gravel sharply and effectively, of a lever to pry, of a mother to come angrily to her childrens' defense. One might praise the virtue of a growing blade of grass. In spite of out best efforts to lay a tarmac or even concrete driveway it has somehow managed to make a crack. There it is now cheekily waving its green leaf at us on a sunny day. A fine piece of horseflesh - see how fast it runs. A perfect predator - see how it monopolises the food-source. An able defendant - see how he defended himself with fury and panache.

The reading from Luke’s Gospel consists of a series of sayings. Several are lumped together. The ones which praise honesty in all things follow the story of the dishonest manager – they’ve been grouped together with it but they are not part of the same story. Luke is doing what he told us he was doing at the beginning of his Gospel. He is travelling around collecting the stories of people who were there – their recollections and impressions and we have here a collection of sayings about wealth and honesty which includes this enigmatic story – this parable – which is supposed to leave the hearers shaking their heads because they no longer know what they thought they knew. How can Jesus be overlooking the obvious duplicity of the dishonest steward? What can Jesus mean? What is he telling us both within and beyond this story?

Are there similar parables spoken by Jesus? Could they help us understand this one? Well sir, there are three that come to mind immediately:

There is the parable of the king who makes war against a neighbouring ruler until he hears that his neighbour is marching towards his borders with a much larger army equipped with the latest in swords and spears.. Which king, asks Jesus, will not immediately send out emissaries and negotiators to make peace before his border is crossed?

There is the parable of a man ambling across a field who discovers a treasure buried therein and immediately goes and sells all he has in order to purchase that field.

There is the story of a woman who feels she has been denied justice who goes to the judge's house and bangs on the door with a large rock until eventually the judge gets out of bed and goes downstairs and rewrites the judgement standing there in his doorway in his housecoat and slippers just to be rid of the old harridan.

These are all stories with a curious moral twist in them – that’s what parables do sometimes – they tell us the truth but first they ‘deep six’ our conventional and tidy view of morality: The man has not told the original owner of the field that he is signing over a hidden treasure when he signs his missives. The woman is getting a revision of a judgement because she is a pain in the neck – not because she is obviously in the right in her original request. The king made a foolish decision to go to war in the first place. What a failure he is as a military strategist! And the peace he now seeks? Is it not necessitated by the possible loss of everything in his kingdom? Or the possibility that his head will be exhibited on a spike in a foreign capital?

The characters in this story are opportunists. We don’t much like them - not opportunists. We don’t invite them to supper. The characters in some of the stories are desperate people. They have a bead of sweat on their brow.

We would put a certain stock in people gaining what is theirs by right. Something which we receive by charity or by importuning ourselves – something that we receive by sharp practises – well that hasn’t really been earned has it? It offends Protestant sensibilities. Give us what is ours by right. We will be happy with that.

Now remember, if you will – that Jesus is talking about the Kingdom - some state around and within us which God ushers in and invites us to enter and to be members of.

Ask yourselves what the greatest impediment is to one who gives gifts. I give one of you a gift. One fellow on the Gospel side of the church pops up and says ‘that one is not worthy’. He doesn’t deserve such a gift. Who is he to be receiving something like that?' I give an envelope to one of you on the Epistle side of the church and you say 'no thanks. I don’t take charity. Who are you to be giving me what I haven’t earned? '

I suggested that we are most comfortable when we can say that we have received what is ours by right – something which we have earned. Is it not precisely that sensibility which tells us that something which has not been earned is not ours to have which this parable is designed to prod at?

We have had years of Christian formation, hymns and camp songs about grace and mercy. We are told that we receive our life, our grace, salvation and our future as failed and guilty human beings. We hear it. We say it. We sing about it. But still it sticks in our craw. We’re not sure about it.

Jesus is neither praising nor is he passing judgement on the unethical accounting practises of the unrighteous steward. He does, however, point once again , as he does in so many of his parables, to an ordinary person facing dire the direst of consequences and notes the degree to which he is able to muster up the energy not to simply go and meet his Doom. Virtue in the first sense of the word: See how that knife cuts! What a virtuous and useful tool. See how that housewife sweeps her house from one end to the next until she finds the lost coin. What a magnificent animal. See how that blade of grass breaks through the tarmac. What a sturdy plant! See how the unrighteous steward calls in his master's creditors and forges for himself an exit plan. Would that the Sons of Light had the same ability to recognise the necessities surrounding them and the response required of them.

Have you heard one of those testimonies where a man or woman tells his story publicly - how at a particular time and place they found themselves at rock bottom - at the very nadir of their life's experience? You might have heard such a testimony in a 12 step group. Or heard such a story at an evangelical crusade. You will remember that such an individual then committed themselves in a simple act of faith to Something or more particularly Someone beyond themselves. Like Saul of Tarsus blinded by a vision they accepted the ministrations of Ananias. Like the woman taken in adultery they avoided the full weight of the law. What they had in front of them were not a series of options but the further possibility of Life itself with its concomitant meaning, sense and future.

And you? You might feel a little jaded about these stories because you've heard so many like them. You're not sure you understand.

Are you looking for something which you have not earned? Are you trying to get a gracious future on the basis on somebody else’s effort? Are you looking for peace that you have not forged yourselves? Well, join the club. There is no part of your life in Christ which you have earned. In the economy of the Kingdom there is nothing which you can have by right – based on your own virtue, your own honesty, your diligence or the regularity of your habits. We come to the Cross, each one of us, as a refugee.

What is tragic is that some of us do not know this – we believe ourselves to have all our ducks in a row. We are perhaps the target of these words of Jesus. Because we need to be reminded that the sinners’ prayer is always a cheeky and importuning plea for love, for help, for comfort and for life which is uttered against the backdrop of our failure as individuals and as a species.

Will you take this yoke? Will you accept this gift? Are you desperate enough yet? Have you run out of all other options?

When I started to dance again I felt ridiculous.

We covered miles of ground.
Walls and earthworks we fortified -
lonely nights spent guarding lines.

This crooked street for commerce
That one for death.
Each had seemed a gentle place at first.

I have looked at my Release a dozen times
and mouthed the Business English written there
I worry that my limbs are leaden weights.

The syncopated measure a mere wave.
That singer's words only invitation
and nothing adequately brutal.

Something for the Young People!



That's the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain doing their cover of Nirvana's hit - Smells Like Teen Spirit. Many thanks to our brother (update: sister!) in Christ Ali Chesworth working the ripe fields in the West end of Glasgow for the reference to this.

I shall not sleep tonight.

Victor Wooten (playing Norwegian Wood)

For those of us who've ever fiddled around with a bass guitar thinking that it might be an easy way to end up being in a band - sitting around on a Monday morning playing along with the stereo or going up and down the neck of the instrument in some approximation of 12-bar-blues - here's reason to simply despair and return to preaching the Gospel.


Thanks to BLS for the reference