You don't mess with Canadian Knitting Bloggers!

I made reference a week or so ago to one of the Canadian Blog Award winners for Best Activities Blog - a knitting blogger who, in 2007, had actually scooped the Best Blog award in any category. Well it seems that another knitting blogger has been making the news: this time for having faced down an aggressive Ottawa police officer involved in what appeared to her to be a rather 'over-the-top' takedown of a young woman on Bank Street in Ottawa.

Every vigilant she started snapping some photographs of the cluster of five large police officers who had just rendered the young woman unconscious:

I snapped another picture. The cops noticed this time. One of them strode directly over to me.

“You can’t take pictures of this,” he said. His tone was aggressive.

I slid my camera back into its case.

“Okay,” I replied.

“Erase it,” he ordered me.

“What?”

“I said ‘Erase it’!” he said, “I work undercover and I don’t want my picture anywhere.”

I really didn’t want to erase my picture. Not unless I had to. Besides, if he’s so concerned about keeping his undercover identity secret, he shouldn’t walk around in a police uniform.

“Do I have to?” I asked.

“I told you, I don’t want my picture anywhere.”

“Is it the law?” I asked.

“I asked you nicely,” he said, but he didn’t say it very nicely. It sounded threatening to me.

“Is it the law?” I repeated.

“I asked you nicely,” he said menacingly as he stared down at me, “Are you refusing?”

I looked at him. Maybe if we were in a dark alley with no witnesses, I would have deleted it. But here? In broad daylight, surrounded by witnesses, with a tiny, bleeding, unconscious, handcuffed woman lying on the street? He was probably in enough trouble already.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m refusing.”

“Real nice,” he said in disgust, “Thanks a lot.”

And he turned around and started to walk back to the knot of officers and the unconscious handcuffed woman.

The story hasn't been picked up that widely - it was in the Ottawa Citizen - but it's worth noting courage and reasonable non-compliance when it is demonstrated. Read the entire blog post. BD has some followup.

Oh, and Officer Post?

Merry Christmas from Scotland/ Joyeux Noël d'Ecosse!!

Christmas Service - Cornbank St James School

Yesterday morning Stewart said to me "Could you drive me to school?".

Couldn't the boy see I was busy - trying to find the coffee somewhere in the back of the cupboard where my wife had hidden it - it's never where I think it's supposed to be!

Last time I had checked outside it hadn't seemed a particularly dreich day so I said something firm, yet loving, along the lines of: "No - you stupid, lazy boy, walk to school like you always do".

Now equipped with a hot cup of coffee I walked into the living room and caught a glimpse of the sort of day that my step-son had just trudged off into muttering something under his breath. My goodness, but wasn't it an awful day. I spent the rest of the morning feeling like a miserable offender.

Anyway - water under the bridge. The boy proved to be solid drip-dry citizen and waved off my abject apologies when he got home that afternoon.

We did have a problem though. There were 300 small children from one of the Primary Schools where I am chaplain who were due to trudge from Cornbank St James Primary to the Church for their Christmas service the next morning (today - Friday). And the weather was not cooperating. The head teacher and I had played email tag about whether the service would take place at the Church or at the School - it would depend on the weather. This was a departure for us. I've always gone there for assemblies and class visits and a visit to the Church hadn't taken place in anybody's memory for a very long time. We had a lot invested in this.

A lot of preparation had gone into this morning's service. We have one active teacher at Cornbank and one retired teacher in our congregation and the active teacher had spent quite a bit of time planning the service. We'd laid out a zillion chairs late last night and predicted how many little backsides we could accomodate in the pews. We'd enlisted the organist and appointed a "fire marshall" for the event. There'd been a crisis with the heating during the week and a heating engineer had to be wept with, whined at and otherwise cajoled to get the boiler working again properly before the service. It would have been awful if the children could not have safely walked in groups the third of a mile to the Church and the service hadn't been able to go ahead as planned.

While the weather was terrible during the day, I did walk out last night and see some stars. This morning the horizon was a nice pink colour. We were fine. The service was great - good readers, carols sung in full voice and the P5 recorder group acquitted themselves admirably in their rendition of We Three Kings. Within an hour following the service and the children's trudge back up to the school (with the police blocking the road so that they could get back safely) the weather closed in and it's presently blowing a hooley out there.

I never take responsibility for the weather even though the heathen joke with me about it all the time. "The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous", I always say.

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. Nonetheless......

Thank you Jesus.

I suspect that Fr Richard Major has never understated a single thing in his life. His as-yet-unfinished book The Epic of God

being an account of the Eucharistic Mysteries of the Christian Church,
described historico-empirico-polemically and at enormous length,
by the Rev'd Dr Richard Major

has been placed online (quite conveniently divided into chapters which open as .pdf files) by one of his former congregations. I gather that the link I included a few weeks back was dead and I thank whoever it was at The Ascension and St Agnes who got in touch for sending me an updated link.

Irascible is probably the word that comes to mind. Character is another. There's plenty therein which one should probably object to but, frankly, I can't be arsed. I spend too much time marvelling how much of it there is that I agree with and simply loving the language used.

So, if you don't mind, I'll just hang around outside and will tell the first policeman who arrives at the China Shoppe that "....the bull went in that way!"

The chapter on Incense is one of my personal favourites.

I'm just hoping that he finishes writing the damned thing one of these days.

From another chapter: Not Facing the Altar:

.......I have no doubt that she [the Church] will find her way out eventually, back out of her cul de sac, and reorient herself. She'll recover the classic shape of worship, lined up eastward towards a high altar, and she'll recover all (or most) of what goes with an eastward gaze. These notes describe pretty much what the Mass will be like in 2100 - and I hope in 2020. But they do not describe what Masses are generally like in 2001.......

......If anyone under forty enters a church nowadays - and, unsurprisingly, fewer and fewer of us do - he is surprised by a museum-perfect recreation of the spirit of 1968, exact down to such details as slang, sub-Jefferson Airplane music, infantile slogans sewn onto day-glo hangings, strident informality, nylon costumes, strained glee. Good God! we say: hippiedom! it's a 'happening'! it's a 'pray in'! - all good for a laugh, unless we see through to the eternal sense, and regret with a pang what we have missed.............

........The Church's modernist mania will not last. We can be so certain it will not last that the issue becomes how to manage the inevitable reaction. For it would be tragic if ecclesial counter-revolution, when it comes, not only recovers liturgical order, but hurries us into theological and moral fundamentalism.........

[emphasis mine]

Holy Chaos, or:
What Episcopalians can learn from Baptists

Emily Scott's ARTICLE in the Daily Episcopalian.

I was attending a preaching course at Union Seminary maybe ten years ago and snuck off to Riverside Church on the Sunday morning.

It's one of those places that stays with you.

The winners of the Canadian Blog Awards in the category of Best Religion/Philosophy Blog have been announced, and they are as follows:
First Prize - Dennis Gruending: Pulpit and Politics
Second Prize - Holy Experience
Tied for Third Prize - Bene Diction Blogs On and
Whatever He Says
Fourth Prize - Felix Hominum


Special congratulations to Fr Joe Walker (Felix Hominum) for making the list (the only blogger on the list I was familiar with - not that we're overly familiar or anything),

"Amazing Together"

Amazing Grace sung coast to coast by sundry groupings of Canadian Anglicans. This is a little documentary about the project itself. Thanks to Simple Massing Priest for reminding me about it.

And this was our particular contribution at the Sorrento Centre this summer when I was there on a course with my family. Brings back memories - like what the sun and blue sky looked like.

The Bishop's "At Home"

Every year, Bishop Brian and Lissa have an 'at home' for clergy and lay employees/volunteers of the Diocese of Edinburgh. We don't have many occasions to meet each other socially during the year. Here in the SEC we stick to tending our own garden plots rather a lot. We certainly never get to meet each others' spouses and so the annual "at home" at the Bishop's house is an opportunity not to be missed.

There are rather a lot of us and so the 'at home' takes place over a number of evenings. One always tries to figure out what the criterion is for why one has been invited on a particular day. My chums in the Diocese always get invited to a different soiree than me. My designated group is a bit older - fairly sedate. Nice folks to be sure but my evening at the Bishop's house is always the occasion least likely to produce people sporting lampshades on their head and blurting out inappropriate emotions. I'd sorta thought that maybe this was intentional and the that the Rector of Bathgate and Linlithgow, the Rector of North Berwick and your humble servant were being safely peppered throughout the week's gatherings at different times for the greater good of the Scottish people and the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

This year I was unable to make my appointed evening due to Advent Studies in Penicuik and West Linton on those nights. I had to try and wangle an invite for Caireen and myself on another night.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "I suppose you could come on Monday the 15th" the bishop's secretary said
"Are you sure that's okay" I asked.
"Uh, yeah, why wouldn't it be?" she asked.
"Well, you know, I thought maybe the groups were arranged in a particular way and....."

Well it now appears that it's merely alphabetical and that my surname, beginning with a "W" is in merely coincidental proximity to a group of people who tend to be restrained, tranquil and reflective.

But tonight we're with a different group.

Party on!

There's one in every congregation!

My colleague and friend RevRuth has taken the plunge and will include a Caganer in her Nativity Set this Christmas. She doesn't mention whether any of her faithful yet know this and we await a paragraph in some future Bishop's Letter about Achieving Consensus in the Local Congregation.

The Caganer is of course a little pooping fellow who you place in the straw somewhere to the left of the Pious Donkey or the Praying Sheep in your Nativity Scene. It's a Catalan tradition unknown in Scotland until Christmas 2008 "....when it's inclusion in a local Nativity Scene provoked the first recurrence of ecclesiastical chair-throwing in Portobello since the Reformation."

The Wikipedia entry for Caganer includes the following rationale for the use of the little pooping fellow in Nativity Sets - much of which makes eminent theological sense but will not dissuade any children from suddenly blurting out "Mommy there's somebody doing Number Two behind the sheep!" during a moment of silent adoration on Christmas Eve:

---------

Possible reasons for placing a man who is in the act of excreting waste in a scene which is widely considered holy include:

• Tradition.
• Perceived humor.
• Finding the Caganer is a fun game, especially for children.
• The Caganer, by creating feces, is fertilizing the Earth. However, this is probably an a posteriori explanation, and few cite this reason for including the Caganer in the Nativity scene.
• The Caganer represents the equality of all people: regardless of status, race, or gender, everyone defecates.
• Increased naturalism of an otherwise archetypal (thus idealised) story, so that it is more believable, taken literally and seriously.
• The idea that God will manifest her/himself when s/he is ready, without regard for whether we human beings are ready or not.
• The caganer reinforces that the infant Jesus is God in human form, with all that being human implies.

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

Anyone wanting to purchase something for the Midlothian clergy who have everything can follow this link

Update: I have checked with Alison our Sunday School superintendent and her greatest objection to acquiring such a figure for our Nativity Scene is that I or some subsequent Rector will want to do a live nativity scene in the Precinct one day and will insist on having a live Caganer in order to make the whole thing authentic.

Flash - Penicuik youngsters reinvent Glam Rock

The bass guitar at the birth of our Lord may be an addition by a later author. Nonetheless this morning's (admittedly early) Pageant was a great success with a good crowd and a lot of fun. Everyone got together for breakfast in the church hall at 9 am before the final rehearsal.

While waiting for the results of the Best Canadian Philosophy/Religion Blog (a competition I got bumped out of on the first ballot) I notice that they're not going to be announced until the 16th of December. So I checked out what had been announced and noticed that in the Activities Blog category there was one which won with something like 90% of the vote - which seemed like rather a large percentage.

So I checked it out and it turned out to be a knitting blog - which doesn't interest me overmuch. But it was a very very good knitting blog. The sort of blog which makes you not only want to point the blog out to others but makes you wonder why the hell you bother blogging yourself.

"My blog is just no feckin' good" you say.

I'm hoping that the second stage in the process will be something along the lines of "I'm going to make my blog better".

Maybe it's just a Kubler-Ross sorta thing where there are stages. You reconcile yourself to upping the morphine dose and eventually you see the light and dead relatives and feel better about the whole thing. Shantih Shantih Shantih

Anyway - there's even a post where the author of this knitting blog (which is called Yarn Harlot) decides that she needs to explain to her overseas knitting friends why the Canadian political process has suddenly become chaotic and messy.

I guess it's what people might talk about while they're knitting.

Anyway - check it out. It's really quite good.

Stuff I did not know

Carrying on with the theme of 'this is bigger', tonight's full moon is to be the largest of the year - 30% brighter and 14% larger from one edge to the other. It's immaterial to me here in Scotland because tonight we have our usual complete cloud cover. If it's clear where you are, though, you might want to go outside and have a look around. From the NASA website:

Dec. 9, 2008: No, you can not see Neil Armstrong's footprint. But go ahead and look: The full Moon of Dec. 12th is the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year.

It's no illusion. Some full Moons are genuinely larger than others and this Friday's is a whopper. Why? The Moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other: diagram. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called "apogee" (far away) and "perigee" (nearby). On Dec. 12th, the Moon becomes full a scant 4 hours after reaching perigee, making it 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons we've seen earlier in 2008.

New York is big
.....but this is Biggar

I live down the road from a town called Biggar. South Lanarkshire, here in Scotland. I guess once upon a time a few folks from Biggar moved to Saskatchewan. When they established a town they decided to call it Biggar instead of something catchy like Pile of Bones (Regina, Saskatchewan's name before they decided to call it something that would make schoolboys giggle).

Anyway - the Rector of Biggar, Saskatchewan has a blog called Expanding the Circle and the readers of Raspberry Rabbit (that's all of you - Mom, Dad, Anne, Ruth.....

Karl! stop chewing the Guinea Pig and listen up!
........need to read it.

No, Canada is not Zimbabwe

But to see the Prime Minister asking the Governor General to suspend Parliament in order avoid being subject to its voice can't help but provoke the comparison among the simple and hysterical (i.e. the media).

The GG agreed to prorogue Parliament until some time in January (she must have had her reasons - chief of which being that handing over to the particular Coalition made up of the three other parties would have been unthinkable and we've just had an election.)

The present Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, is a laudable idiot who was put in post to avoid THIS MAN, Michael Ignatieff. Dion's idiocy having now revealed itself in its purity and singularity (best typified by an interview he gave a while back which his opponents have now circulated widely), THIS MAN has now been acclaimed in post as Liberal leader. We'll see what happens.

Maybe Ignatieff's views on torture have been tweaked in such a way that they won't be too much of an affront now that there's a man in the White House to the left of him.

It'll be good to see the back of the present incumbent, however the change takes place. Canadian politicians are responsible for a geographically large and delicately mixed country. The sorts of attacks which the PM has undertaken in recent weeks have done little to pave the way for good government of any sort and won't even end up protecting his precious and fragile ego.

Our brother in Christ, Simple Massing Priest has a good thumbnail of the present political crisis (although the bit about the Anglican wars is a bit of a stretch - just nod politely and ask how the weather is in Winnipeg.)

The rarely-seen and last-known honest man in Canadian politics. Ed Broadbent, spoke out on the subject last week and pretty well summed up the ethics of the PM trying to drag the country down with him when he's in trouble.


By the way - our Governor General is way prettier than the Queen and can do many of the same things (at least in Canada). She could be borrowed by other Commonwealth countries should the fellow with the ears end up not abdicating and actually replacing his mum.

American media is a bit slow on the uptake but they're coming to terms with it as you can see HERE. Starts about 45 seconds in - quite entertaining.

Old Email

InnsServiceSurvey
January 16, 0000 6:14

At InnsService/Bethlehem we are committed to maintaining a high level of customer care from our member Inns and Roadhouses.. On 10/12/01 BCE you, or someone from the same IP address peformed a search for Inns/Roadhouses BETHLEHEM_REGION for the NIGHT OF 24/12/01 AND THREE NIGHTS THEREAFTER for TWO ADULTS arriving LATE AFTERNOON by HORSE/DONKEY

In order to achieve a continually improving accomodation experience for the peak season traveller at competitive rates it would be helpful if you could answer the following questions.

Did your InnsService search provide a satisfactory range of affordable accomodation options in BETHLEHEM_REGION?

Did you subsequently contact any of Inns/Roadhouses provided by the search.

Were individual contact details for the Inns/Roadhouses provided or were you forwarded to other accomodation brokers or accomodation websites?

Did you eventually book accomodation for BETHLEHEM_REGION for the nights in question.

Did you find your reception to be cordial and helpful?

Was the final price the same as listed on the InnsService website.

Was parking/water/fodder for your HORSE/DONKEY included in the price of the room?

Was your room clean and well appointed?

Was your room in the Inn/Roadhouse protected from the noise of animals or local industry/agriculture?

Were security arrangements adequate to keep strangers out of corridors or common areas?

Was there anything else remarkable - either positive or negative - about your stay at a member Inn/Roadhouse in BETHLEHEM_REGION that you think we should know about?

Was the InnsService sign (with logo and contact details) clearly visible at reception?

Did you mention to the proprietors that you had discovered your accomodation via the InnsService website?

We thank you for your time.

Benjamin Ben-Benjamin
Customer Satisfaction Officer

It had to happen eventually. It was just a matter of time. The number of electrons in the world is finite, the number of people with extra time on their hands is not infinite. I'm talking of course about the following hyperlink. If we'd known before we could have had a party. Before you click it I just wanted to say that it's been a slice.......

HERE

According to an article in the Telegraph, these lists are the words which are being taken out of the Oxford University Press' Junior Dictionary and those being put in. Further comment is probably unnecessary.

"Here are the words taken out:

Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe

Dwarf, elf, goblin

Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar

Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade

adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.

Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow

And the words put in:

Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue

Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro

Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph"

One more idea for Scottish Episcopal bumper stickers. For those of you not in the UK it's a piss-take on the RSPCA's "a dog is for life...." campaign. General Synod might elect not to adopt it in its present form since it tends to prejudge the whole issue of rectorial tenure.

Still, there are some poignant similiarities: The new priest arrives, he's unwrapped quickly (although the way everybody's been shaking the package to guess its weight and substance it's a miracle the poor man isn't missing his bits). The parents speak sharply about being careful with him.

"We want him to last longer than the last one did", they say.

Billy notes that he didn't look at all like like the one advertised.

"He'll do", says mom, and offers Billy a cinnamon swirl.

Later, the children take their toys next door to show to the Anderson children. Billy's about to haul the new priest out of the bag to show him off, when he notes that Bobby Anderson got a Johnny 7 gun for Christmas which was just as good as the one advertised on the telly, and so he shoves the vicar back into the bag.

A work in progress, then.

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
Radio Scotland
Thursday, December 4th, 2008

So how do we get to where we’re supposed to be?

My godson is a military policeman with British Forces in Iraq. He finishes his term of service close to Christmas and has a tiny window of opportunity to fly back to the UK and from there to his parents’ dinner table in British Columbia. There may be touch-and-go moments at airports but once Justin is strapped into his seat on the plane he can leave the navigating to the pilots.

Birds seem to find their way by navigating with the help of the stars. And there’s been a story this week of a new theory about how Scottish salmon manage to get from Greenland or Norway back to the exact bit of the Scottish stream where they were hatched. The theory suggests they have a map of the magnetic fields of the earth printed right into their circuits. Not overly clever creatures, salmon, but they know where they’re supposed to be heading.

We don’t all feel so connected to our origins or our final destination either. In December we feel the distance rather than the closeness – distance from other people – and distance from a familiar story of Love and Reconciliation – a star – a baby – a new beginning.

We’ve perhaps just accepted that. It’s the way our cookie has crumbled. But some of us would give our right arm to feel like we were home again - like we were somewhere on the way to understanding that Story –maybe for the first time.

People will come to Church this Christmas seemingly out of the blue. I was always taught that nobody shows up in Church by accident. We are all at the midpoint of some journey. Feeling some longing within us – our perceived distance from our destination we set out to discover our route. We too have a map imprinted deep within our circuits. Or as one African saint, Saint Augustine put it in his Confessions:

'You have made us for yourself, O Lord,
and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you'

The first of our three Advent Studies begins this evening at St James' Penicuik. We're going to discuss common conceptions of the afterlife (as exemplified by the lyrics of a number of songs by the Carter Family) and compare them to what we find in the Gospels and Saint Paul.

I'm making use of an old book - Oscar Cullman's Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead and a relatively new book - Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope to see what can be said about our future hope as individuals once the idea of a separable soul going where it naturally belongs has been set to one side.

Quite a touching and worthy article appeared in the last day or two over at Episcopal Cafe on the subject.

Astrud Gilberto
The Girl from Ipanema

Snow has fallen on Penicuik and the sky is blue. Cozy here inside the Rectory preparing for tonight's Advent Study and tomorrow morning's Thought for Today. Time for my favourite winter video. I was around in 1964 but I don't think I'd spend a lot of time pining for the fashions of the time - be they women's hairstyles or men's jumpers (although I do own a button-up cardigan sweater).

Brief side note a propos of nothing: The vanity of American Episcopal clergy knows no bounds. They are notorious for either lying about their ages or posting ridiculously out-of-date photographs on their blog pages or parish website. Scott Gunn must be older than he's letting on because this is clearly him playing the Vibraphone in the background at some point in his life where his mojo was a mysterious thing best left concealed.

We Love our Naughty Vicars

From Martin Beckford at the Telegraph:

"Sunday service attendances continue to fall. Militant atheism is on the march. Government ministers and even the heir to the throne hint that the established religion could lose its privileged place in society.

Yet one aspect of the Church of England retains its power, one side of it still has a hold on the public imagination. I refer of course to the naughty vicar, that figure of fun beloved of sitcom writers and seaside postcard illustrators who comes to life occasionally to delight tabloid editors and horrify churchgoers."

Read the rest HERE

Thank you Fr Heron

Thanks to Scott Gunn for bringing this oldie back from the recesses of everybody's memory.

The combination of an overnight snowfall coupled with a broken water main on the A702 leading into Edinburgh has left any number of people at home from work today. Edinburgh, interestingly enough, doesn't have any snow at all. The ducks were out having a great and noisy time. They jumped up and down complaining about the ice covering their water basin. The cockerel charged out into the snow once the little door was opened. As I write, the hens are still cautiously putting their heads out the door, changing their minds and climbing back onto their perches.

I spent the better part of Friday morning in the Immigration offices in Glasgow having my application for Indefinite Leave to Remain dealt with by the staff there. The application was dealt with promptly - the staff were very friendly - and the results were such that I now have a piece of paper with a hideous photograph of myself over the words Indefinite Leave to Remain and Settlement.

One of the reasons that the application was dealt with as quickly as it was had to with the fact that the immigration offices were nearly empty. They had postponed the appointments of a whole series of people who needed to submit applications for Further Leave to Remain as either students or spouses (either of UK nationals or spouses of folks with Leave to Remain) People in these categories will now be issued mandatory I.D. cards, you see, and they weren't yet ready to process such folk.

As I was sitting there waiting to have my financial records perused and my excellent letter from the Bishop read by the staff there, I noticed a large room which was furiously being readied with a large picture of a finger-print on the door.

In other words, it's started! The much hated ID cards which have the backing of almost nobody are finally being introduced. The very first category of people to receive them will be those applying for FLR in these two categories.

One of the rejoinders by government is that security measures and legislation which have been introduced over the last few years will not be abused. We can sleep safely knowing that the idea of a Big Brother State looking over our shoulders and using their powers for nefarious ends is a figment of a dissatisfied imagination - doomsaying - science fiction - can't possibly happen.

Those of you who are not in the UK or who may have been engrossed with the goings-on in Mumbai (and Thailand and Nigeria) might have missed the recent story of the arrest of a fairly mild mannered senior member of the opposition - the Tories' Immigration critic. He was doing what opposition politicians generally do which is to position themselves on the receiving end of material from within government departments sent down the tube by like-minded civil servants. They then poop these embarrassing bits out during Prime Minister's Question Period and everybody goes "oooh". It's what Gordon Brown made his name doing during his time in Opposition.

Well in the case of Damian Green - the Conservative MP - the claws definitely came out. Doing what basically amounted to his job ended up provoking a near simultaneous raid on his home and his office at Westminster. Nine members of the anti-terrorism squad showed up at his house. His crime? Well - he has been on the receiving end of information from within government ministries which proved embarrassing to the government.

Matthew Parris screams the loudest amongst the mainstream media

Sam Coates Red Box Blog in the Times online is worth a read as is William Rees-Mogg.

The Guardian (the Labour Party in Print) soft peddles the political connection and blames the police for a simple and innocent overabundance of zeal

First Sunday in Advent

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
Radio Scotland
Friday, November 28th, 2008

An exhibit on the History of Pantomime opens tomorrow in Edinburgh. All those famous Dames and baddies from across the decades. While Grand-dad might get all nostalgic, the children would prefer you kept the yearly ritual going by dragging them off to a real live Panto this winter.

You’ll be surprised how they know the plot already and what’s supposed to happen next and how they fit into their role as audience like a hand in a glove They know how it’s supposed to work

At the end of the evening when they’ve been pacified and put to bed in spite of all the sugar coursing through their veins – when you’ve finally combed the last of the popcorn out of their hair and you’re alone with your cup of tea at the table you might secretly wish that the plots in life were not so fixed.

Conversion. Recovery. Repentance. Hope. These all involve a departure from what everybody expects.

“I’m going to stop drinking”

- Oh no you’re not!

I’m going to learn to trust the people I work with

- Look behind you!

This new American administration may change the way America is viewed in the world

- Oh no it won’t!

In spite of the financial crisis I’m going to try and make time for my family

- Oh no you won’t!

You can feel it, can’t you - the suspicion that everything must remain the same?

The little producer sets his desk up out there in the seats during rehearsals and keeps yelling at you

- Yo, Twankey, keep to the script, dammit”

But isn’t that why the people gathered on high ground to hear Jesus speak. Or why the Hebrews agreed, grudgingly or not, to leave Egypt and walk East through the desert to the promised land?

Because some day the script could be different.

Because the force of habit is not one of the laws of nature.

Its grip on us may not be legitimate.

Men and women can be better than they thought,

They can be freer than they’ve been told they are allowed to be.

The Annunciation. The Birth of John the Baptist

Waltz with Bashir

It was my day off yesterday - interrupted a bit by a funeral (that I was attending but not officiating at) so I hit the cinema afterwards. I see films on Mondays which I don't think my lady wife would like. Last week it was The Baader-Meinhof Complex which I may write about later this week since it's still percolating in the back of my head.

Waltz with Bashir is probably one of the better films I've seen for a while. An animated film provoked, as its creator explains, by his inability to remember large segments of his military service in the Israeli army in West Beirut at the time of the massacre of Palestinians by Christian Phalangists in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

It's not until an old army buddy recounts a series of enigmatic dreams which he has been having that the narrator realizes that other than a scattered series of visual images he can remember almost nothing about his proximity to a horrifying event which took place over a period of 24 hours only hundreds of yards from where he had been deployed as a young soldier. It simply wasn't 'stored in his system'.

Rather than leave it in the shadows he begins a pilgrimage through Israel and across Europe to remake the acquaintance of everybody he served with who had survived the '82 war in order to put the pieces back together.

The mind, you see, is creative. It both erases and supplements. It protects us from what could not possibly be the case since we are moral creatures. As such, memory itself needs to be judged and checked. There are moments of considerable violence in the film - softened by the fact that this is animation.

As cliche as it may sound - the medium here is the message. Memory draws reality quite roughly - bends bits of it - is primitive and plastic - it lightens the load of what would, if filmed or, worse, experienced again in its full brutality, be too heavy a load to carry.

A good film. Worth seeing.

Something for Advent

This video from the dashboard-cam of an Edmonton, Alberta police cruiser caught a meteor strike in the area. It seemed vaguely seasonal: A city, slumbering - life carrying on as usual - the suddenness of the light.

The Piano in the Woods

- From CNN

Was it a theft? A prank? A roundabout effort to bring some holiday cheer to the police? Authorities in Harwich, Massachusetts, are probing the mysterious appearance of a piano, in good working condition, in the middle of the woods.

Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune.

My money's on elves. It has to do with the elves. You know the old story: the sounds of delightful singing in the forest. Humans trudging and tripping through the bracken to discover the source of the music - they get just a glimpse of the charming circles of elves dancing and singing and the *poof* and the elves disappear leaving the humans with a story which everybody else pooh-poohs and attributes either to drink or an overabundance of childish credulousness.

Well sir, in a day when, curiously, Churches and Cathedrals respond to dwindling congregations by installing massive tracker organs against their west walls and spending mega-bucks on professional music programs it appears that the elves too have fallen victim to the mantra of 'standards, standards, standards'. No elf choir is complete nowadays without its Baldwin Acrosonic.

Except that when the elf choir goes *poof* the evidence remains. Once again the pursuit of excellence finds itself in conflict with First Principles.

It's gonna take some re-thinking, this one.

Conrad Black writes from the hoosegow.....

I suspect that were a parole board asked to determine whether Mr Black had 'reformed' in any way the response likely be a unanimous chorus of ..........."maybe not quite yet".

Some howlers from the article he's written from prison "From my cell I scent the reeking soul of U.S. justice" which appeared in today's Sunday Times:

"Many of the other co-residents are quite interesting and affable, often in a Damon Runyon way, and the regime is not uncivilised."

"I wish to advise Lord Hurd that when I return to the UK I would like to take up more energetically than I did initially his request for assistance in his custodial system reform activities. "

"Obviously, the bloom is off my long-notorious affection for America."

Like any good psychopath, Mr Black remains completely convex in his being. He bulges out and not in. He is undaunted. The hyperbole continues to spew forth in a veritable torrent. He will be vindicated - he will advise governments - the crowds will come flocking and the money will come flowing in.

This acquiescence to the will of his enemies is merely temporary. His case is 99% won already. The letter confirming this is in the post.

The membership list of the British National Party was recently leaked to the internet. It contained the usual coterie of thick-necked individuals with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads. It also contained the names of a few police officers, a couple of doctors, a nurse and three vicars.

Bishop Alan writes that none of the three are CofE vicars and that one name was simply erroneous. More here on one of the named vicars with additional comments about the list in general.

Everything is being either downplayed or played up depending on who you are but it did bring to mind the famous scene from Father Ted where he stands behind an unfortunate smudge on the window and gesticulates towards a couple of Chinese visitors who he has invited to the rectory on Craggy Island.

The first clip is HERE. It makes the following video more comprehensible.

If you have a favourite Canadian (even expatriate Canadian) religion/philosophy blog you can vote for it HERE. Your humble servant's meagre offering appears somewhere on the list of about twelve nominees.

We are now in round one. I guess they'll come up with a short list so you might need to check later to see how the Rabbit has fared in the first round.

Should you tell your friends to tell their friends? You might want to do that.

I could not possibly comment.

Thought for the Day

When I was the port chaplain in Montreal I sat around with a Filipino crew who described the precautions they had had to take against pirates in the Straits of Malacca.

I’d thought pirates were a thing of the past.

 

Right now there is a standoff taking place on the East African coast where an immense oil tanker has been hijacked by Somali pirates. It’s being anchored off a coastal region which has now become dependent on piracy and its by-products. Houses are being built, children are being schooled and infrastructure developed based on one single industry – the seizing of valuable goods and the ransoming of the lives of seafarers.

Many of Jesus’ parables are stories about human need. An outmatched king is forced to negotiate with an opposing army. A poor widow loses a valuable coin. A man walks through a field and discovers a hidden treasure in the ground that is his for the seizing. Rich and poor – there’s something we need and for which we will expend tremendous energy to either gain it or retain it.

Any parable written about this act of piracy would doubtless link three needy groups of people: the seafarers, first of all, not knowing what will become of them in all of this. Then there are the ordinary people of poor and war-torn Somalia who had long watched the riches of the world passing in front of their shores just beyond their reach. 

The third group of desperate people? That would be you and me. Much of the optimism of the last twenty years has been based on the idea that the world is one big market and that all our lives are bettered by global prosperity.

Well – it seems not to work that way. The rising tide hasn’t floated all ships. Quite naively we have paraded our wealth in the face of crushing poverty and then wonder why somebody would simply seize what comes within their grasp.

This bit of history has reminded us how needy we are too and how fragile our way of life has become.

A comic strip about today's Gospel reading from the folks at AgnusDay

Not that I'd win or anything but I could be nominated for the Canadian Blog Awards even though I'm an expatriate. There is a religion and philosophy category.

Just saying......

When we had behaved ourselves in school we were allowed to watch films sometimes on a Friday afternoon. It was a different age - boys were allowed to play with knives, lonely men operated light houses on the East coast of Canada and small boats fished for codfish in the Gaspe. It's one of the two or three bits of primary school education that I remember. The film is called 'Paddle to the Sea' (National Film Board 1966) and it's based on a book of the same name which was written in 1941.



Part Two is HERE
Part Three is HERE

or the whole film (slightly better quality) can be found HERE

A later generation's NFB childhood can be found HERE - an animated film called 'The Hockey Sweater'