stand....

Sod Halloween, it's exactly 500 years to the day since Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg church and thus started the Reformation.  It might seem hard to believe now quite how earth-shattering an event this was in the European history, but consider this: we're less than a week away from Bonfire Night, when we celebrate the hanging, drawing and quartering of a Catholic whose effigy we still burn more than 400 years after his death. A Catholic plot to kill a Protestant king simply would not have happened without the events that Martin Luther kicked off 500 years ago today.  Literally hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, have died as as a result of this moment in history. All because of Martin Luther's stubborn, academic determination to prove a point and his refusal to back down in the face of what must have seemed like overwhelming pressure from pretty much everyone else in Christendom.

I studied this period of history, and I've always found it fascinating.  I can distinctly remember a particularly purple passage that my friend Mark, a fellow student on my undergraduate history course, included on an essay on the reformation: "An especially virulent strain of protestantism was now coursing through the spiritual veins of Europe".  Even before then, as a particularly pompous teenager, I can remember grandly announcing to some baffled and uncaring kids at school that I would not back down over something that seemed terribly important at the time because, "here I stand, I can do no other".

One of my first arguments with my now-wife involved whether or not Martin Luther grew a beard when he was in hiding as Junker Jorg at the Wartburg.  He did.  I was right.  Yeah.... we've always had that kind of relationship.

Martin Luther. With a beard. Just sayin'.

I might be an atheist, but I'm also a historian and it's impossible to avoid the historical significance of this particular moment in time and its reverberations down through history.

Not this Luther.

So, whilst huddling in my house with the lights off and the curtains shut in the hopes of avoiding any trick or treaters, I've spent a little time today thinking about that momentous moment of history that has played a small but important part in my own life.

cut down, shot down...any way you please.

There's a really nice little charity that provides toilets for the third world.  Their hook is that you get to "twin" your toilet with a toilet somewhere in Africa or in another less-developed part of the world. You get a little framed sign with a picture of the bog you're sponsoring and the GPS coordinates that you can hang in your own cloakroom.  My mum and dad gave me a toilet in Cambodia, and I gave one of my best friends and his wife a block of toilets at a school in Burundi (they met in Africa, although, as a French-Canadian, his wife was a little uncertain about the appropriateness of this as a wedding gift. "Is this some kind of British joke?").

It's a nice gift and the money you're spending is being used to provide safe, clean and hygienic sanitation to a community.  It's all good.

Except for one thing.

They're a Christian charity... which is obviously fine ... but they keep sending me emails like this one, which arrived this week:

--

Dear Tim,

What’s your perfect ‘Bible moment’?

It’s time to get thinking if you want to win a copy of this rather splendid prize. I’ve got five copies of a very special Bible to give away. It’s ‘The Bible in One Year’ read by actor David Suchet – best known as TV’s Hercule Poirot.

On six CDS you get 365 MP3 files – each file contains a portion of the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Psalms or Proverbs. It’s the perfect ‘three-portions-a-day’ way to listen to the entire Bible.

You could listen on your computer, phone or MP3 player – while you're on your commute or walking the dog...

How to win

You just need to hit ‘reply’ to this email and tell me:
A favourite passage of scripture.

Where you would most like to listen to or read it and why.

For instance, you could choose Malachi 4 v 2 (‘But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.’) while you are sat watching the sun rise in a favourite picturesque spot. It can be anywhere in the world (universe?) you like, just give me a great reason. Our five favourite responses will win the prize; as always, our decision is final.

You get the idea. Get those inspirational thinking caps on. I look forward to hearing the result.

With every blessing,

--

[sigh]

I really like supporting them, but COME ON! Does it even occur to them, do you think, that this proselytising might be off-putting to the demographic who are happy to support the work that they do but could happily do without having any particular flavour of deity - or, indeed, any flavour of deity at all - thrown into the equation?

Besides, Malachi 4 v2?  What the hell? Isn't everyone's favourite Bible verse from Ezekiel? 25:17?

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children".

You know it.

Word.

And whisper'd in the sounds of silence...

I've just finished reading "Silence" by Shūsaku Endō.

To quote wikipedia, "It is the story of a Jesuit missionary sent to 17th century Japan, who endures persecution in the time of Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians") that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion. The recipient of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, it has been called "Endo's supreme achievement" and "one of the twentieth century's finest novels". Written partly in the form of a letter by its central character, the theme of a silent God who accompanies a believer in adversity was greatly influenced by the Catholic Endō's experience of religious discrimination in Japan, racism in France, and a debilitating bout with tuberculosis."

I studied history at University, and I think the most interesting course I took was called "Europeans in Africa and Asia" and focused mainly on the Christian missions to India, China and Japan.  The Jesuits who founded these missions were the most extraordinary and accomplished men, writing the first dictionaries of these complex languages and finding ways to immerse themselves into the highest society of these strange new lands.  It's a fascinating period of history.

When I saw a trailer for Martin Scorcese's adaptation of "Silence", I was intrigued... but the 160 minute adaptation of a relatively slender book, my bumpy relationship with the work of the director and... let's be honest... the presence of Liam Neeson in the cast rather put me off.  I decided to read the book instead and see how I felt afterwards.

And now that I've read it?

Hm.

My first thought is that I don't think it's been very sensitively translated.  Clearly, I don't read Japanese, but it just feels too clunky and I can't believe that such a well-regarded and prize-winning book could be so clunky.  I had similar problems with Jose Saramago's "Blindness"... which is apparently brilliant, but I found my translation to be laughably poor and completely obstructive to my enjoyment.

My next thought, I'm afraid, is that the book just doesn't move me. I'm atheist, so perhaps the spiritual anguish the protagonist suffers in the book is never going to touch me the way that it clearly touched the rather more Catholic Scorcese (he says as much in the preface).  I rather think not, though.  I might be atheist, but during my degree, I actively sought out courses on the history of religion: the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish, the French Wars of Religion, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.  I don't believe in God, but I'm fascinated by the ideas of people who did and the achievements they made in the name of that belief... just read about the lives of man like Francis Xavier or Matteo Ricci and marvel at the places their faith and their brilliance took them.  I can be moved by these stories... I'm just not moved by this story.  I find the protagonist, Rodrigues (played by Andrew Garfield in the film) to be singularly unsympathetic.  He is driven by his faith in God to seek out his mentor, who has disappeared in Japan and is said to have apostatised.  Whilst there, although Christianity has been outlawed and Christians are persecuted where they are found, he seeks to carry out his mission to the peasant believers that he finds there.  Perhaps this is deliberate (the author is a Japanese Christian himself, after all), but his attitude to these peasants is patronising at best and racist at worst and his 'suffering' for his faith seems to be somewhat superficial and quite some distance from the glorious martyrdom he seems to imagine for himself.

Perhaps I'm misreading and that's the whole point: that all these people suffer and die for nothing but the silence of an uncaring God.... although it's hard to see what Scorcese would like about that.  That kind of cosmic joke would seem more like Richard Dawkins' kind of bag, to be honest. 

What I can't escape is that I just found the book boring... slow is one thing, but this novel seems to take an inordinate amount of time taking us nowhere very interesting.  Even the ending - a series of afterwords in the form of letters and diary entries - is dull and anti-climactic.

So, do I fancy going to watch a 160 minute adaptation of this book by a director who -- for me -- often seems to make overly-long and underly-interesting films and has a track record of dwelling on his own faith?

Not so much.

--

Speaking of highly-rated books that I'm not enjoying, do people honestly find "The Third Policeman" funny? Really?

wRoNg

the inevitable heat death of the universe, in equation form

2016 was a year when it seemed easy to believe that at least half the world was batshit crazy.

How else can you possibly explain why Britain would be so keen to apparently make the entirely ridiculous and unjustifiable decision to walk off the cliff and determine that, not only were they hellbent on leaving the EU, but also that they were determined to make it the most painful, damaging exit available? How else do you explain the election of Donald Trump? I understand that Hillary Clinton is a pretty long way from being an ideal candidate, but in a two horse race you honestly thought that Donald Trump was the preferable answer? DONALD TRUMP?

These are both difficult things to understand, especially when you are encased in a lovely, liberal bubble where you surround yourself with people who largely believe the same things that you believe. I have tried to remind myself that, just because someone is on the other side of the debate to me, that doesn’t automatically make them a moron. I debated Brexit long and hard with a few ‘leavers’ before the referendum, and although I thought they were fundamentally wrong (or at the very least, seriously misguided), I never for a moment thought that they were voting with anything other than honest intentions.

We live in an increasingly polarised world, but you can't live your life thinking that people are either with you or against you. It's just not possible and you don't have the luxury of everything being that simple. Life isn't black and white, no matter how hard you might wish that it was.

I’m an atheist who thinks that the belief in an all-powerful Sky Fairy is nonsensical, if not downright delusional. And yet…and yet…. I know enough people who are warm and intelligent human beings who also believe in God to understand that you can’t always put people into neat boxes; that evidently you can believe in something I believe to be ridiculous and also be a perfectly sensible person. That’s life. My dad - a doctor - is also proof positive that a belief in God certainly isn't compatible with a belief in evolution.

Of course, in the main, the belief of these good people in God doesn’t affect me (or anyone else) negatively in any way; their belief makes them happy and that’s wonderful (and sadly, can’t really be said for everyone religious). A vote for Donald Trump or for Brexit is a little more problematic, because these things will have a tangible impact on the lives of others.

I mention all this, not as some kind of half-arsed review of 2016, but because I’ve been watching the BBC documentary on Yellowstone over the last couple of days. Following hard on the heels of Planet Earth II, this is another nature programme in the last few weeks that has laid bare the impact of climate change on the natural world. Of course, there are other sides to this debate, but the evidence of the impact of rising global temperatures is surely now overwhelming, isn’t it? The temperatures in the North Pole this winter have been THIRTY degrees higher than average. Thirty!

You can argue all you like that there isn’t sufficient evidence to definitively conclude that this is a change driven by human agency, but the balance of probabilities would suggest that it almost certainly is (as Richard Dawkins says about belief, just because I can’t definitively prove that there *isn’t* a God, doesn’t mean that it’s 50:50). Any yet, climate change denial seems likely to become US Policy – after all, Donald Trump is on record as saying that he thinks it’s a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

I’m struggling to understand this, I really am. It seems intellectually dishonest to continue to trumpet that climate change isn’t real when the empirical evidence is growing every day and we can see the changes with our own eyes. As a historian, I’m well aware that climate has always fluctuated and that (for example) we had a medieval “warm period” when global temperatures were a couple of degrees higher on average…. but frankly, the debate about human agency –ridiculous though it is - is fundamentally irrelevant. Surely the simple fact of the matter is that we need to do something about climate change or risk mass extinctions and global catastrophe. If restricting carbon dioxide emissions will help with that, then what are we arguing about?

...it’s almost as though these people had some form of vested interest in extracting, refining, selling and burning every last bit of carbon energy remaining on this planet.

Nah, it can’t be that, can it?

These guys just honestly believe that climate change isn’t happening and we should respect that as we watch the world burn.

you know you got it...

I see that Theresa May has been talking about the role her faith plays in her life in an interview in the Radio Times (even though this is the extra primo big edition of RT, I still won't be buying it. I still haven't really recovered from the irritation I felt as a teenager when my elder brother felt he would go through the Christmas listings with a pen and circle the things HE wanted to watch.  Imagine!  I read about this in the Guardian, which also loops in a handy summary of things she said in an interview with the Sunday Times).  I expect that the average RT / Sunday Times reader rather likes that nice Theresa May).

I imagine you're expecting me to drop into a rant about May's politics or about her belief in God.  Sorry, to disappoint, but what caught my eye was this bit:

"As the only child of a vicar, Theresa May’s early Christmases inevitably revolved around the parish church. She attended midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and was back in church the following morning, with her mother playing the organ and her father preaching the sermon.... After church, her father often had pastoral visits to make to lonely or bereaved parishioners. Little Theresa – and her presents – had to wait...The religious meaning of Christmas was important to her, she said, adding that she would attend church twice in 24 hours, as well as spending part of Christmas Day at a social event hosted by churches in her constituency. Speaking to the Sunday Times a week earlier, May recalled one Christmas when her father spent most of the day visiting parishioners who had been recently bereaved by a car crash. The faith instilled in her so early on had guided her life, helping her to understand “the right thing” to do. She said: “I suppose there is something in terms of faith, I am a practising member of the Church of England and so forth, that lies behind what I do.”"

My dad is a doctor, and for most of my childhood, he was a GP in a fairly rural practice on the Buckinghamshire/Northamptonshire border.   Reading about how a young Theresa May would have to wait to open her presents as her father visited his parishioners really struck a chord with me.  My dad was the father to three young children, but he was also someone who was selfless enough to always put their hand up to be the on-call doctor in the area so that everyone else could have Christmas off.  This typically meant that, as a family, although we would do all the normal stuff like opening stockings as soon as we woke up on Christmas morning, we wouldn't sit down to open our presents until my dad had finished his rounds... usually around lunchtime.

My friends at school often talked about how they opened all of their presents as soon as they woke up, but funnily enough I don't think I ever really minded having to wait and to open our presents as a family when my father was back.  I probably didn't really appreciate at the time how generous a gesture it was of my dad to put his patients before his family, but it was just the way things were.  My dad was (and is) the kind of person who won't travel anywhere by car without his medical kit and some portable defibrillators.  Why? Because he used to be the doctor responsible for covering that stretch of the M1, and he always says that it was no good having the skills to help someone if you didn't also have the equipment.  He's retired now, but as far as I know, he still carries that stuff around with him.

As it happens, he is religious (more now than he was when I was growing up and living at home, although I think that's purely a coincidence and not entirely down to my modifying influence), but I don't think it was his faith that was driving him to do the right thing... it just was the right thing to do.
If I have a strong moral compass today, then it's not entirely a coincidence and it's nothing to do with God.

...although don't tell him I said that because he's a cantankerous old sod at the best of times*.

*not a hereditary trait, before you ask.

lord above...

When Nadiya Hussain won the Great British Bake Off last year, people went a bit crazy. We live in a time when many (stupid) people associate Islam with terrorists who burn people in cages and blow people up with homemade bombs… and here was a lovely, charming lady in a hijab baking cakes in a big tent. She seemed nice and loved her family and everything.  Imagine! And she won! Well done Britain. What a bloody lovely, inclusive country we are, etc. She even baked the bloody Queen a cake for her birthday. Well, for one of her birthdays, anyway.

Lovely Nadiya, living embodiment of how wonderful Britain is, has been given her own TV show. It’s called - working title at least - “The Chronicles of Nadiya”.

Do you see what they did there?

Well, perhaps it’s just me, or is it a tiny little bit odd to name a show presented a Muslim after a series of books that are well-known Christian allegories? Aslan is JESUS, you see….

Am I overthinking this and just spoiling some REALLY CLEVER WORDPLAY, yeah?

Maybe she just presents the whole thing from inside a wardrobe surrounded by fur coats.

I’d watch that.

no matter what comes my way, I'll lift my voice and say...

I’m an atheist. Although it might sound ridiculous, I try not to use religious turns of phrase in my every day vocabulary: oh my God, Jesus Christ, Good Lord, heavens above…. That kind of stuff. I know that they’re only words, but there are so many other words that I could be using instead, that I’ve imposed this little rule on myself to push the language of religion just that little bit further away.

That being true, it probably seems a little odd that I’m perfectly happy to sing devotional songs at choir. We’re not a religious choir by any means and we don’t sing all that many songs about God, but we do sing some. One of my favourite songs from the last season was a gospel song called “Total Praise” and another was “Heaven Help Us All” by Stevie Wonder. They’re both great songs, and the gospel song in particular, originally performed by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, was an absolute joy to sing. This season we’re doing a few carols (as you’d probably expect when all our concerts are in December), as well as another gospel song called “Hallelujah Anyhow”, which is also shaping up to sound pretty good.

So why no problem with these?

Well, because. Just because. They’re only songs and we make a splendid noise as a choir when we sing them. Do I need another reason? Some of the other singers might be wholeheartedly offering them up to their God in devotion, but the fact that I’m not doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy them for what they are and how we sound and how they make me feel when I sing them.
I like visiting cathedrals. Part of my interest in them stems from my love of history and art history (I once wrote an essay on some of the iconography on the stained glass windows in York Minster, and it tickles me greatly that, tucked away on the side of the choir screen of this great Yorkist stronghold is a little stone carving of a chained white hart, the symbol of the very Plantagenet Richard II). Even as an atheist, I can appreciate the devotion that went into these buildings and I love spending time soaking it up (providing they haven’t put bloody turnstiles up asking for money to get in).

I was a chorister at school, and we would almost exclusively sing devotional songs, lifting our voices in praise of God. I loved them. My favourite carol is an old medieval English number called “Adam Lay Ybounden” and I love many of the Christian songs of Christmas as they celebrate the birth of a man that I don’t believe was the son of God. And you know what? That doesn’t matter at all and I certainly don’t have a problem with it.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph….why on earth would I have a problem with it?

Better to ask me instead about why we seem to sing so many bloody songs by Queen in this choir…. I seem to be in a minority of one, but I can’t be doing with bloody Queen.

confound their politics....

Here’s a question for you: how well do you know the British National anthem?

My reason for asking, of course, is because the new leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has been the centre of a storm over the fact that he chose not to sing the words of the National Anthem at a memorial service to honour those who fought and died in the Battle of Britain. He didn’t “refuse” to sing, he just elected not to.

He’s long on record as an atheist and a republican; if he had decided to sing the song, then he would have been betraying some of his principles and would have been guilty of being exactly the same as every other politician we have who don’t say or do what they actually believe, but instead say what they think we want to hear and will get them elected. Maybe he should pick his battles more carefully and could afford to have avoided giving his enemies a stick to beat him with by mouthing along… but actually I think more highly of him for not doing so. This is what makes him different. Apart from anything else, his presence at the memorial service was paying respect to people who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedoms, including our freedom not to sing the National Anthem. In fact, he paid a warm tribute to those servicemen:

“My mum served as an air raid warden and my dad in the Home Guard. Like that whole generation, they showed tremendous courage and determination to defeat fascism. The heroism of the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain is something to which we all owe a enormous debt of gratitude. The loss of life – both civilian and military – should be commemorated so that we both honour their lives and do all that we can to ensure future generations are spared the horrors of war.”

Do you see anything offensive or controversial in that? No. Me neither.

Let’s not forget too what our Prime Minister thinks is appropriate at a memorial service.

Apparently, there’s a school of thought that Corbyn should show some respect to our head of state now that he’s leader of the Opposition. Really? Exactly what kind of a hold does the Queen have over our elected Parliament? She’s the only person in the world who isn’t allowed to set foot in the chamber of the House of Commons. She has no power here: never forget that in 1649, Charles I was executed on the orders of Parliament. We did it once, we could technically do it again. In fact, maybe it would be a mercy….she’s had a good innings and doesn’t look happy.

Why should any MP be expected to slavishly bend the knee and sing this servile nonsense if they don’t want to? It’s a dirge. Compare this to something as brilliantly vibrant and defiant as La Marseillaise. My wife’s father was born in England but has lived in France for many years; he refuses to sing God Save the Queen, but used to make the family stand up for the French anthem. Better, he says, to be a citizen of a Republic, even a rubbish one, than to be a subject of her Gracious Majesty.

This brings me back to the lyrics. How well do you know it? It has six verses, for starters:

1. God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save the Queen

2. O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all

3. Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour
Long may she reign
May she defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen

4. Not in this land alone
But be God's mercies known
From shore to shore
Lord make the nations see
That men should brothers be
And form one family
The wide world over

5. From every latent foe,
From the assassins blow,
God save the Queen!
O'er her thine arm extend,
For Britain's sake defend,
Our mother, prince, and friend,
God save the Queen!

6. Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the Queen!

What utter nonsense. I’m English, and I think it’s rubbish enough…. imagine being Scottish. “Rebellious Scots to crush”? Is it any wonder they want shot of us? “Thy choicest gifts in store, on her be pleased to pour”? Even if you can get past the hideously contrived meter, what the hell is that supposed to mean? You could refuse to sing this rubbish on aesthetic grounds alone, never mind anything else. If you’re a republican or an atheist, it’s a nightmare. I don’t sing it, and I certainly won’t criticise Jeremy Corbyn for not singing it either.  Haven't we got more important things to be talking about?

Meanwhile, whilst this is the hot news in the papers, the Conservative government today put their plan to cut Working Tax credits before Parliament, where it was passed by 35 votes. This makes working people on lower-wages poorer. As the Labour MP, Frank Field said today “In one single move [the chancellor] has destroyed his 2020 election strategy because we heard the very powerful speeches the chancellor made saying the Conservative party was in favour of those individuals who got up in the morning, who did grotty jobs for very low pay and they passed the windows of their neighbours whose curtains were still drawn, who were on benefits. Those individuals who still rise to the work motive in this country, which is so important for both economic and human advance, will know as they pass those windows with the curtains drawn they do so on average with £1,300 a year less in their pocket.”

And we get outraged at someone not singing a stupid, irrelevant song as these trolls gleefully set about making the poorest people in this country poorer. For shame.

The Queen's views on this are unknown. So are God's.

I'll see you burn...

I keep walking past a huge poster advertising Soltan. 

I don't generally scare easily and I'm not inclined to believe in the supernatural, but I've got to be honest with you here: this particular poster gives me the heebie-jeebies. If I was holding a casting call for an advert like that, I fairly sure that I wouldn't be looking for the spawn of Satan to stare demonically out of the poster, transfixing passers-by with that sulphurous gaze.  She's smiling, yes.... but she's smiling because she can see through you to your very soul and is planning an eternity of torture in the deepest circles of hell.   Look at how the sheer terror on the faces of the other figures in the poster; see how they're trying to pull away from this demon spawn but are held by some dark, diabolical force.

Soltan / Satan.   Even the product name is suspicious.  Hiding in plain sight, perhaps? Who really makes this stuff and what's their agenda?  Do they really want to protect our skin from the rays of the sun so that they can better roast it in the fires of the underworld for all eternity?

It's not just me, right?  It's all there in that poster.  Surely you can see it too?

No?  Look more closely.  Take a deep breath and let go your preconceptions.  Look behind the obvious and pierce the curtain of lies.

Don't just look, SEE.

Pretty freaky, right?

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.

I really don't know and I really don't care....

One of my team at work is mildly disgruntled about the fact that her birthday this year falls on Good Friday.  She is, it seems, unwilling to share her twenty-third birthday with Jesus' death day.
"But this day isn't about Jesus.  It's about me!"
"Well, to be fair, Jesus got there first"

[it's probably worth noting at this point, before we get any further into this conversation, that neither of us believe in God.....]

"No he didn't!"
"Well, yes he did."
"NO HE DID NOT!"
"What year were you born?"
"What do you mean?"
"What year were you born?"
"1991.  Why?"
"One thousand nine hundred and ninety-one years after what?"
"Eh?"
".....never mind."
"If it's my birthday on Good Friday, can I have my Easter Eggs then instead of waiting for Easter Sunday?"
"Um.  I suppose so.  You can eat them whenever you want for all I care.  I'm pretty sure God isn't all that bothered when you eat your chocolate eggs in memory of the horrible death suffered by His son"
"What are you talking about?  God wasn't Jesus' dad!"
"Um.  Yes he was.  That's why Jesus is commonly known as The Son of God....."
"But I thought it was the Holy Ghost!"

At this point, I considered it wise not to try to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, but it seems that my colleague wasn't finished with God yet....

"Did you invite God to your wedding?"
"We had a civil ceremony, so not really... but as He's ominpresent, there's probably not much we could do to stop Him attending."
"Oh, right.  I wouldn't invite him to mine"
"....!"

To be fair to her, she's interested in learning and really likes to talk about this sort of stuff.  Since I joined the team, she's been happy to learn about Schrödinger's cat, non-Newtonian liquids, how liquid helium can be superchilled to the point where it can pass through solid glass.... all sorts of stuff.  Only on Monday, we had a conversation about time travel.  I outlined this scenario:

A mysterious stranger hands me the blueprints to a time machine. I build the machine, disguise myself and travel back in time to hand my younger self the blueprints. Where do the blueprints originate?

By the look on her face, it quickly became apparent that she wasn't quite ready for Multiple Universes, so I told her that as long as her mum kissed her dad at the Enchantment Under the Sea ball, everything will work out okay.

Turns out she hasn't seen Back to the Future, either.

(...but mostly me)

My stage career isn't very long or distinguished.  Over the years, I have appeared in a number of plays in a variety of minor roles.  Only once have I appeared in anything close to a leading role, and I like to think that my performance as Thomas Stanley, the puritan former vicar in the Roses of Eyam is still talked about by some of the tens of people who came to see it..... who can't relate to a man who refused to comply with the terms of the 1662 Act of Uniformity?

Most of my roles have been in musicals, which is somewhat ironic as I really don't like them very much at all.  I have been a stoat in Wind in the Willows, The Reverend John Witherspoon (another vicar?  typecasting!) in 1776, a workhouse boy and an old lady (seriously) in Oliver!,  a slave in Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat.... for that last one, I appeared onstage wearing nothing but a loincloth.  Such is my dedication to my art.  I used to be a chorister, so sometimes I would also be given something to sing.  Although, for reasons that will be immediately apparent to anyone who has seen me in action, I've never really been asked to do any kind of dancing.

Singing and dancing.  That's what musicals are all about, innit?  Yeah.  I don't really like them.  Every time I'm in London, I marvel at the sheer volume of the bloody things and often - with "We Will Rock You" being the prime culprit - at their complete and utter creative bankruptcy.  I'm sure some of these shows are excellent, but why do people pay good money to watch people doing shit cover versions of famous songs with a crappy, contrived storyline tacked on?   Quick!  We must sail across the seven seas of Rye! [cue music].

Anyway.  C. gave me tickets to go and watch "The Book of Mormon" for Christmas, and so this weekend, we went down to the big city and took in a show.  We nearly saw this on Broadway when we were in New York in 2011 and they were doing previews, but it turned out that their day off was the day we could have gone, so I've had to wait.  It opened in London a few months ago, but has remained the hot ticket in town and I was pleased to get a chance to check it out.

I don't like musicals, but if I was going to like a musical, then one written by the guys behind South Park that has Mormonism as it's central theme was always likely to have a fighting chance....

I'm sure you know the story of the Mormons: Joseph Smith, Moroni and the Golden Plates that must not be shown to anyone else under any circumstances?  Yeah.  Ridiculous, right?  The musical takes this religion, with its earnest American missionaries, and it transplants it into war-torn and AIDS-riven Uganda where people have rather more to worry about than something as cheerfully ridiculous as this.

It's very, very funny.  Within fifteen minutes of the start of the show, we have a gloriously blasphemous song called Hasa Diga Eebowai (a kind of profane parody of "Hakuna Matata".  Disney's Africa this is definitely not) and the show is off and running.  If you've watched South Park, then I'm sure you'll have a decent idea of what to expect, and it delivers in spades.  Hats off to the bright spark in the audience I overheard in the interval explaining to his girlfriend that you could really see the influence of South Park on the musical.  Erm.  Yes.  You noticed that Jesus Christ spoke with the voice of Cartman, right?  That wasn't an accident....

It was funny, but my enjoyment was somewhat tempered by the fact that it is, after all, a musical.  No matter how ironic your song and dance routines may be, they are still basically song and dance routines, aren't they?  No matter.

Two things about the show really surprised me:

1) Mormonism comes out of this surprisingly well: they seem like earnest people with a daft set of beliefs who are really only guilty of naivety and of wanting to be nice to other people.  It's a ridiculous story, for sure: golden plates that no one else must ever see under any circumstances? lost tribes of Israel in America?  Jesus Christ visiting them between his crucifixion and his resurrection?  Cattle, sheep and horses in pre-Columbian America?  God changing his mind about the "stain of Cain" on black people in 1978? Nonsense.  Manifestly ridiculous.  But on the other hand, it's not any more stupid than any other religion, is it?  It's just a lot more recent.  They're all nonsense. We can all agree on that, right?  No one who believes in any kind of mystical sky fairy can really laugh too hard at the Mormons.  Why is Joseph Smith's story any harder to believe than what you read in the Bible?

2) Mormons are bulletproof: they actually advertise their religion in the programme for the show.  It's impossible not to admire that, isn't it?  Even if only a little bit.  I'm almost tempted to ask them to send me a copy of the book (which the musical describes as the Return of the Jedi of the Bible trilogy....).  I'm hardly likely to convert, but I am curious.

It's a good show.  How can you not love a show with a leitmotif of a guy singing "I have maggots in my scrotum"?  Scatalogical sacrilege?  Yes please.  I'm pretty sure "We Will Rock You" would be improved by some of that.

Great fun.  For a musical.

just a stranger on the bus....

I do a lot of work for charity that I obviously don't like to talk about.  Don't we all?  I'm not saying I'm a saint, but I support lots of charities for lots of reasons.  I'm sure most people do the same.  It might be a charity whose work I strongly believe in - Oxfam or Shelter or Amnesty International.  It might be a charity that I have a strong personal interest in - the MS Society.  It might be the chosen charity at work: Macmillan.  It could just be a charity that I'm supporting because I want to support a friend as they raise money for something close to their hearts.  There are lots of reasons for supporting a charity.

A few years ago, my mum and dad sponsored a toilet in Cambodia on our behalf.  It was a really cool gift where you get a framed picture of the toilet in question that you can hang up in your own bathroom, officially "twinning" your loos, and the charity gets the money to provide clean toilet facilities somewhere in the third world. You even get the GPS coordinates, so if you really want to, you can visit your bog (and trust me, in Cambodia, you might be glad of it).  I liked the gift so much that I used the charity when I was looking for a wedding present for one of my best friends,  He met his wife whilst travelling in Africa, and a toilet block at a school in Burundi seemed like an excellent idea.

The charity is called Tearfund.  I was aware that they had a Christian background (and that's probably how my dad found out about them), but it was a great idea and I do not have so great an ideological objection to religion that I can't see past that to the good work they might be doing.  Helping people is helping people, right?

They sent me an email today, and I'm afraid it's a deal-breaker for me:

"Hello! Since I last checked in, we've come up with a brand new strapline which we feel tells the right story about our work here at Tearfund: 'Following Jesus where the need is greatest.'"

And with that, I'm out.

I have absolutely no objection to them being religious - the work is clearly the most important thing - but they don't seem to realise that putting the big JC front and centre of their work might be alienating to some people.  Surely not everyone who supports them is Christian, and presumably not everyone they work with in the third world is Christian either.  I'm sure they mean well, but is it not enough to be doing a good thing for another human being without bringing religion into it? Are you motivated by the desire to help or by the desire to please your God?  Does it matter?  I sort of think that it does.

I'm sure they'll continue to do great work, probably with shiny-eyed zeal and a lot of clapping and singing, but I'm going to take my charity dollar to somewhere less political, or at least to somewhere the politics are more aligned to my own.  Sorry about that, Tearfund.  All the best with your work, but I'm out.

money for dope, money for rope....

I probably should have known better than to get involved.  No.  I definitely should have known better.  One of my colleagues was ranting and raving about a short book that he'd been reading, and he asked if I minded reading it too.  That way, he said, he would have someone else to rant and rave with.  Apparently, the book had been given to him by the headteacher at his children's primary school.

The book?  A short little pamphlet of 96 pages by Steve Maltz.  Never heard of him?  Well, the back of the book describes him as "a web consultant, tour guide and writer.  He is married with three sons and lives in East London".  Apparently, according to this primary school headteacher, this book will blow your mind.

The title?  "The TRUTH is out there: the ultimate world conspiracy.  Who is really pulling the strings?"

We start with a long description of the solar eclipse in the UK in August 1999.  The author seems fascinated by the fact that this amazing event can only happen because of the size of the moon, it's exact position in orbit around this planet and the the distance from the sun.  The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but at that precise moment in time, from our planet, it looks as though the sun has been completely obscured.  Amazing, for sure... but our author seems reluctant to put this down to dumb chance in an infinite universe.  After a long analogy about a child receiving a trainset for Christmas and assembling it with his father, we get this:

"For life to be able to exist we need a whole swathe of things to be fitted together and to work together.  The distance between us and the Sun and the Moon has to be just so.  The forces that pervade the universe, from gravity to magnetism, have to be just so.  The features of our Earth, such as its rate of spin and the composition of its atmosphere, must be just so.  If any of these are not just so, then so are we - we would never have been born because our planet wouldn't be here.  Where did our toy train set come from?  Did it materialise out of nowhere or was it designed and put together by a toy manufacturer?  If you accept the latter, perhaps we should be asking a similar question about Planet Earth."

....and so we're off and running into a somewhat ham-fisted attempt to explain the principle of Intelligent Design.  Oh good.

I'm cool with all this stuff being down to random chance in a boundless universe; that many billions to one chance of the right conditions for a planet like ours and lifeforms like ours to exist, but it seems that our author is not.

Ever wondered why no one ever pressed the button or made the mistake that unleashed nuclear armageddon on the world during the cold war?  Intelligent designer guiding our hands, of course.
Did you know that two of the critical events in the history of the Second World War (the rescue at Dunkirk and the ultimate success in the Battle of Britain) were preceded by requests from the King to pray for our salvation?  (three days before Dunkirk and seven days before the crucial moment in the Battle of Britain.)  This not only proves the existence of God, you understand, but it also proves that he's English (or that the Germans weren't praying hard enough).  Apparently the reason "we're not all eating bratwurst in McGoebbels or attending compulsory Wagner recitals at the Royal Adolf Hall" is because GOD WAS ON OUR SIDE!

Evolution is just another bunk theory, you see.  An orthodoxy so entrenched that atheist intellectuals can't and won't see past it to the obvious truth, and "zealous to protect its dogmas by vilifying the slightest deviation from them and 'burning' heretics at the stake"  Yes, he really does use that language, as if it's even close between religion and science about who has burned the most people, and it's obviously Richard Dawkins who is left holding the matches and firelighters.  DNA is just TOO COMPLEX to have magically appeared by itself and it MUST HAVE been put there by a guiding hand.  Think evolution explains everything?  Well it can't even explain the human knee, or blood clotting or bacteria..... IN YOUR FACE, DAWKINS!

Best of all is the conclusion.  Drawing all his 'evidence' together, Maltz asks us to consider the identity of this intelligent designer: like looking for a name in the phonebook, where you don't just stop at the first John Smith you find, "there's a whole supermarket full of every variety of gods, powers, deities, and supernatural entities.  Just getting through to the first one you find is not good enough... you haven't come this far to get the wrong number in the divine directory... Rather than give you God's address, I will supply you with the credentials he himself provides for identification.  It's quite simple.  He is the God of the Bible, the divine author of that very book".

After all the smugly produced evidence to 'prove' the existence of an intelligent designer, it all boils down to this: it's the Christian God.  No evidence is provided for this.  Everyone else is JUST WRONG.

Ugh.  Why did I bother reading this?

The thing is that you can believe what you want to believe.  Personally, I do not understand why a belief in God (or whatever) should be incompatible with a belief in the principles of science.  Why do you have to feel threatened by that stuff?  The two are only mutually incompatible if you totally lack imagination and don't understand the principle of faith.  In addition, what I really hate about this is the smug dismissal of other people with different views on the world and the wrapping up of this horseshit as 'evidence'.   Richard Dawkins is many things, but he will be the first person to tell you that evolution is only a theory and he is open-minded to evidence that suggests it is the wrong theory.  You can't tell me for a second that Steve Maltz would change his mind on this.

You know what the scariest part of this is?  Even more scary than the fact that I've wasted a couple of hours of my life thinking about it?  This has been given to my colleague by someone who is teaching his children.  Not only is he teaching children, but apparently he's also got a degree in geology.  Geology!  He thinks this is insightful enough wisdom to pass it on.

We're doomed.

Ugh.  I actually laughed most of the way through this book because it's so ridiculous (at one point he actually cites George W Bush as a source of wisdom and insight).... but it's also very frightening.  People want to teach this shit in our schools, you know.  They really do.

---
from a press statement by the Centre for Intelligent Design in 27 Sept 2011.

Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough want the government to ban creationism and Intelligent Design (ID) theory from the classroom. Such a move shows a disturbing lack of understanding of both the nature of scientific theory and of science education, responds the Centre for Intelligent Design.

“If this was about the integrity of science education’, says Dr Alastair Noble , director of the Centre, ‘then they would be campaigning for students to have access to all the scientific evidence about evolution and origins – including the positive evidence for design in nature and the evidence both for and against evolution. Scientific theories are only credible if they take account of all the evidence. Science always moves on. The 30 scientists who have signed up to the ‘Evolution not Creationism’ statement are attempting to prevent students from hearing the rational, well-evidenced arguments that cast doubt on neo-Darwinism.”

The proposition that a scientific curriculum should be the subject of legal or quasi-legal enforcement is based on a failure to recognise that all scientific theories are ultimately tentative and may be updated or amended in light of fresh evidence. No scientific theory needs or should have the compulsion of law. And no programme of science education can afford to rule some questions illegal. That is a complete denial of scientific method and a dreadful example to commend to aspiring science students. If creationism and ID are unscientific, pupils should be allowed to explore the evidence if they wish to see why.

Students also need to understand the provisional nature of the scientific consensus. Science is not done by consensus. Indeed, students should be aware that some crucial scientific discoveries were made by individuals who challenged the consensus. The reality of science is that one individual scientist with sound evidence can trump the consensus.

John Walton, Professor of Reactive Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, agrees: “There are many doubtful passages and leaps of faith in the molecules-to-man evolutionary narrative scenario. The authoritarian attempts by old generation scientists to suppress discussion of alternatives are ill-advised and go against the open spirit of enquiry science should foster.”

The Centre for Intelligent Design notes that it is no coincidence that both Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough are prominent atheists. The Centre believes that the introduction of religious or philosophical ideas into the debate is contrary to the spirit of science which should not be exploited in pursuit of a secular or atheistic agenda.

All attempts by Richard Dawkins to indoctrinate children with an ‘evolution only’ education spring from a secularising agenda. As he himself admits, Darwin made it possible for him to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist. Professor Dawkins thus has a vested interest in promoting evolution, and therefore cannot be taken seriously as an objective voice on this matter.

Dawkins argues that ID should not be taken seriously because its main protagonists are theists. But we don’t hear him arguing that by the same token evolution should not be taken seriously because its main protagonists are atheists.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) is one of the five organisations behind the campaign, along with Ekklesia – a liberal theological pressure group that has a long history of opposing criticism of evolution. And the list of signatories reveals that many of the supporters are indeed atheists. The BHA aims to remove God from the curriculum, and is therefore afraid of any theory like ID that has theological implications.

Prof Dawkins oft-repeated claim that full-scale evolution is “as solidly demonstrated as any fact in science” is largely a rhetorical position, which well outruns the evidence. Intelligent Design theory may not yet be the mainstream view of science, but it has a solid scientific evidenced base of which students have a right to be aware. A truly rigorous scientific approach to education would be to inform students of all the views, evidence and arguments surrounding the origin and development of life. Censorship is inherently anti-scientific.

Dr Alastair Noble, director of the Centre, says: “The prime movers behind the ‘Evolution not Design’ campaign are not neutral scientists as they may have the press believe, but those who wish to promote secularism in schools. This should be taken into account by all interested parties.

--

I'm scared.  Are you?

fear of the dark....

I'm not sure why, but Stephen Hawking has been on my mind this week.  I think it was probably sparked by seeing a trailer for the new documentary film about him before the screening of "Rush" that we saw at the Broadway on Saturday evening.  I nearly went to watch the film itself earlier this evening, but the screening was just too early to make it practical.

You really don't need me to tell you that he's a remarkable man.  He was told fifty years ago that he had a life expectancy of two years at best, and he has been defying those expectations ever since, also refusing to allow the indignities of his physical decline to hide the brilliance of his brain.  It's still somewhat astonishing to think that a theoretical physicist could sell something like nine million copies of a book at all, never mind one with so much else to overcome.

"A Brief History of Time" famously concludes with the remark that, if scientists could find the most fundamental laws of nature "then we should know the mind of God".  I tend to think he's talking metaphorically, but even if Hawking had not ruled out the existence of God at the time of writing, then I think it's fair to say that he's made up his mind since then.  As he said recently:

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

I have no way of knowing if he's any more right about that than he is on his work explaining the development of irregularities in a single bubble inflationary universe... but just as I broadly agree with his conclusions on the single bubble inflationary universe*, I tend to agree with his thinking here too.  Why would we be so afraid of the idea that this life is all there is?  That when we die there is nothing.  Why not embrace the idea?

* cough.

Here's Hawking again:

“I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

Isn't that a profoundly beautiful thought?

Besides, who are we to argue with Stephen Hawking?  The guy has been on The Simpsons AND Big Bang Theory, for heaven's goodness sake....

live alone in a paradise that makes me think of two...

Honestly, my very first thought when I heard that Pope Benedict XVI was stepping down?  

I wondered how you could be formerly infallible; how your word could one day be equal in the eye of the church to the word of God and then the next day not?  I then wondered about what kind of retirement package there might be on hand for an ex-Pope.  He's stepping down because he's 85 years old and worried about his ability to perform in his role as he becomes ever older and more infirm (probably mindful of his immediate predecessor clinging on to the bitter end).... but does he keep the same health package?  Is he going to have access to the same treatment as when he was God's Supreme Representative on Earth?  Does he still get referred to by all and sundry and his magnificent holiness (or whatever), or do people just start calling him Herr Ratzinger again? Or maybe just Joe.  Louie, perhaps?  Does he have to move house?

All, I think you'll agree, the key questions that should be at the forefront of the international debate on the abdication of a Pope.  I've not really been watching the news today, but what else would you want to know?

My next thoughts were prompted by my background as a student of Medieval History - a period where religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular loomed large.  Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Indulgences, Religious Wars.... the Middle Ages had it all going on.  When was the last time a Pope abdicated, I wondered.  Has it even happened before?

Well, it has happened before.  Not since 1415, but it has happened.  More than once, actually.  To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia (and yes, I was sad enough / interested enough to be looking this up at lunchtime):

Abdication, ecclesiastically considered, is the resignation of a benefice or clerical dignity. Every such honour or emolument, from the papal throne to the humblest chantry, may be resigned by the incumbent.  All doubt as to the legitimacy of papal abdications and all disputes among canonists were put an end to by the decree of Pope Boniface VIII which was received into the Corpus Juris Canonici (Cap. Quoniam I, de renun., in 6). The Pontiff says:
Our predecessor, Pope Celestine V, whilst he governed the Church, constituted and decreed that the Roman Pontiff can freely resign. Therefore lest it happen that this statute should in the course of time fall into oblivion, or that doubt upon the subject should lead to further disputes, We have determined with the counsel of our brethren that it be placed among other constitutions for a perpetual memory of the same.

Boniface VIII had good reason to confirm the principle, of course: his predecessor, Celestine V, had been the first Pope to decree that Papal abdication was allowed..... he had been a hermit who had the office thrust upon him.  It was a job he did not want and was ill-suited for, and not surprisingly, mere months after legalising Papal abdication, he took advantage of it and stepped down in 1294.  He lived the rest of his life - before his probable murder - imprisoned.  His successor, Boniface VIII was terrified lest his predecessor prove more popular.  Like any other absolute monarch - which is what the Pope was and still is - he took steps to ensure his security upon the throne... first by confirming that the abdication had been legal, and then by taking more extreme measures.  Probably.

Anyway.  So Benedict XVI isn't the first Pope to step down from office.  But you probably knew that already.  I'm atheist and find the whole thing utterly absurd, of course, but apparently once a historian....

Needless to say, I have personally been in contact with the Conclave of Cardinals today.  I have let them know in the clearest possible terms that, whilst I am not seeking the office of Pope, I will serve if called upon to do so.  It is, after all, time for a truly Progressive Pope.

Onwards to the Fourteenth Century!

and they drive an ice cream van....

Something that Artog said reminded me of the Reformation. Yeah. I was a medieval historian. These things happen from time to time.

Martin Luther.  Architect of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which inadvertently caused a schism from the Catholic Church and resulted in centuries of bloodshed.  He didn't come to these radical conclusions overnight, you know: he suffered terrible spiritual agonies over where his thinking was taking him.  He didn't take this stuff lightly AT ALL, but his conscience told him that the Bible was the only source of divinely revealed knowledge, that everyone should be able to read it in their own mother-tongue and that you couldn't buy your way into heaven.  Radical stuff.  The Pope was most definitely not amused.

Compare with:

Ulrich Zwingli: came to more or less the same conclusions at more or less the same time as Luther.  Without any of the spiritual agonies.  Boy, Luther was really pissed off when he got wind of that.

Plus he served with the Swiss mercenaries in the Italian Wars, so he was presumably a bad-ass too.

As radical Reformation theological thinkers go, Zwingli is by far the coolest.

Small catchment, I agree... but still.

he's making a list and checking it twice....

I received my father's Christmas list via email the other day.  He usually makes a point of saying every year how he's not a big fan of lists like this, but he didn't bother this year.  Maybe he's tired of receiving socks.

I think I actually started the trend in our family for writing Christmas lists.  I pride myself a bit on putting a bit of thought into the presents I get for people, but I'd simply had enough of receiving poorly thought out tat in return.  Clearly, what you get isn't as important as the thought, and I know that I'm a difficult person to buy for, but the year that one of my brothers gave me a giant plastic budweiser money bottle was the final straw.  After that, I just made lists.  You know: a few CDs, a few DVDs, a few books.  That kind of thing.  Nothing too fancy or expensive, but things that I actually want and would otherwise buy for myself.

Of course, once I'd started doing it, everyone else felt that they needed to follow suit.  It makes shopping a lot easier, for sure, and you can guarantee that you are at least getting people something that they want, but it does take some of the fun out it.

Anyway.  My dad's list turned up.  High up on the list (second only after "shirts") was this: "Long scarf, nice bright colours I can loop double around my neck in modern way. My current scarves are not long enough to do this."

Um.  What?  Loop double around your neck in the modern way?  What on earth is that?  I presume he means that thing where you fold the scarf in half and pull one end through the other in a sort of slip knot.  Is that an especially modern way to wear a scarf?  Have people not been doing that since there have been scarfs?  What a peculiar way of describing it.  Strange man.

Well.  We popped to Paul Smith anyway.  A nice scarf in the classic Paul Smith stripe should fit the bill.  Obviously, he'll only wear it with his hideous, huge high viz jacket with the velcro fastenings that will pull it to pieces, but that's up to him....

Anyway, other options on his list included things like "The People's Bible Commentary – Isaiah - A devotional commentary for study and preaching" (or, alternatively, the editions covering Job and Jeremiah).... and obviously I'm not going there.

well this calls for a toast so pour the champagne, pour the champagne....

So, it's the wedding of the century this weekend.  In advance of the rehearsal tomorrow afternoon, I actually read the email that the groom sent me back in July about the reading I'm doing.  You might remember that, after I was asked to read at the ceremony, that there was some debate about what I would actually be reading.  If I was given a free choice, I wouldn't be reading from the Bible, but as it's not my wedding, the golden rule is that it's not about me.  As far as wedding readings go, I'm Ron Burgundy and I will read whatever is put in front of me.  1 Corinthians 13 it is then.  And the greatest of these is love.  It's a wedding classic.  Whatever, right?

Anyway.  The order of service was sent to me in July, containing the readings.  I read it yesterday.  It turns out that I'm actually reading John 2, 1-11.  The Wedding at Cana.  Another classic... actually one that I'd much rather be reading.

Water into wine.  What's not to like?

It's a fascinating text for several reasons.... not least because of the insight that it gives into weddings of the time.

"When the master of ceremonies tasted the water that was now wine, not knowing where it had come from (though, of course, the servants knew) he called the bridegroom over.
“This is wonderful stuff!” he said, “You’re different from most! Usually a host uses the best wine first, and afterwards, when everyone is full and doesn’t care, then he brings out the cheaper sort. But you have kept the best for the last."

But of course! You drink the good wine first and then, when everyone is "full and doesn't care" (is that what we're calling it now, eh?), you serve the cheap stuff.

I love the fact that JC doesn't just turn the water into wine - 180 gallons of the stuff, no less - but he turns it into EXCELLENT wine.

We're told that: "This miracle at Cana in Galilee was Jesus’ first public demonstration of his heaven-sent power. And his disciples believed that he really was the Messiah."  Yeah, I can well imagine that this particular trick made JC really popular at parties.  Let's face it, if you knew someone who could do this, you'd make sure you hung around with them too, right?

It might have been his first miracle, but you have to think that this one was the one that the disciples remembered with real fondness.
"Yeah.  So healing lepers and stuff is all very well, but I've got some flagons of water here, and I was wondering...."

Apparently, this was the only 'frivolous' miracle that Jesus performed.  All the others were born out of necessity: people ill or dying or whatnot.  Hmm.  I think you could probably argue that the feeding of the 5000 was more about a group of fairly peckish people than anything born out of dire need, but I wasn't there, so what do I know?  Apparently the turning of the water into wine shows that God cares about all our concerns.  Yeah, whatever.  Here's a flagon of water.  Excellent wine please, JC.  Excellent wine.

I'm looking forward to reading this.  Would comedy voices go down well, do you think?

bite me, delight me....

I was watching the telly the other night and was much amused when I realised why all of the supermarkets seem to be advertising lamb joints at the moment.  Ah yes, it's Easter and roast lamb is what people generally have for their lunch on Easter Sunday.  Well, you know how it goes..... the Bible tells us that Jesus was the Lamb of God, and Easter is the most special of all the Christian festivals because it is the day when Jesus, the Lamb of God, rose up from the dead.  Hmm.  But how best to celebrate this?  I know!  Roast lamb for dinner!

Other cultures could surely be forgiven for wondering what kind of weird cannibal cult Christianity is.  This is the religion, after all, that has a regular ritual that involves the eating and drinking of their Lord's flesh:

John 6:51-58: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. "Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Most sane people can surely understand where the Jews were coming from there ("WTF?"), but Jesus seems pretty sure and the Catholic church in particular is most specific on this point.... we're not talking about a symbolic transformation of bread into body and cheap wine into Christ's blood at Eucharist, we're talking about an actual, honest-to-goodness transformation.  Transubstantiation or bust, baby.  You spill that stuff, you're burning the carpet.

So, to recap the Bible's restaurant rules:  shellfish: no.  Flesh of the Son of Man: yes.

With that in mind, maybe having lamb for lunch this Sunday perhaps isn't quite so weird, relatively speaking.  After all, no one's saying that anything at the dinner table has been literally transformed into anything.  At least, I don't think they are.

On the whole - and this is a pretty good rule for life - I'm with Monty Python on this:

Gregory: What was that?
Man: I think it was, "Blessed are the cheesemakers"!
Gregory's wife: What's so special about the cheesemakers?
Gregory: Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

Jesus has been seriously misquoted and mistranslated over the years and everyone knows that Easter is really all about chocolate eggs.  Besides, I'm spending Easter with a house full of vegetarians, so... (how do vegetarian Catholics cope with the Eucharist, incidentally.... when Jesus talks about being 'living bread', he's still technically meat, right?)

for weak and for strong....

I've been boring people all day about the Winter Solstice.  It's like this, you see:  the winter solstice falls on the 21st of December, the day on which the sun is at the furthest point from the North Pole and is the Northern Hemisphere's shortest day.

Except that isn't quite true.

You see, it takes the Earth 365.25 days to orbit the sun.   That's why we have a leap year every fourth year, to bring the calendar back into sync.  This means that, on the December before the leap year, the Solstice is actually about 6 hours later, pushing it into the 22nd December.

Fascinating, no?  Best read the article in the Guardian where I learned that in the first place, eh?

Speaking of the Winter Solstice, I've been seeing massive posters around Nottingham featuring a picture of people all dressed up for a party.  The caption?  "No matter how you dress it up, Christ comes first at Christmas".  I've seen similar things on the billboards outside churches too.

I suppose it's not all that surprising really, but why do these people feel so threatened by Christmas meaning different things to different people?  It's not as though the idea of having a festival at this time of year is a Christian invention, is it?  The Romans celebrated Saturnalia around the 17th December with feasting and gift-giving and the Winter Solstice itself has been observed and celebrated since neolithic times as a period representing rebirth and renewal.  Christianity just tagged onto an existing party, trees and all.  You think that Jesus was really born on 25th December?  Good grief.  Wake up! Shepherds don't watch their flocks by night in midwinter, even in the Middle East.  They just moved the damn date of their party so it matched everyone else's, so let's not get too precious about how people choose to mark the midwinter now, eh?

Christians claiming squatting rights over this time of year is about as ridiculous as a soft drinks manufacturer claiming that a set of adverts produced since the 1930s somehow gives them a right to say that the red and white imagery of Santa Claus is down to them.  The cartoons of Thomas Nast from 1863 depicting a bearded, plump Santa in red and white furs have no relevance, obviously, not to mention the red episcopal robes of the original Saint Nick: Nikolaos, the bishop of Myra in the Fourth Century.  Nah.  It's all about Coca Cola.  Holidays are coming.

Why argue about it at all?  Isn't the best thing about this time of year the fact that people are a bit nicer to each other?  Can't we at least all do that, whether we attend midnight mass or not?

With that in mind, and given that I'm off to France tomorrow for the festivities - my mother-in-law is an excellent cook convinced that I'm not eating properly, and my father-in-law keeps an excellent cellar... it'll be hell - here's my traditional gesture to thank you all for sticking with me over the last twelve months.

Hard on the heels of the news that the average life-expectancy of people living on the streets is 30 years shorter than the average, on behalf of everyone here, I've made a £50 donation to Shelter, the homeless charity.  It's quite mild at the moment, but I'd still rather be snoozing on the sofa in front of a fire than out on the streets, that's for sure.

Season's Greetings to you all.  Here's to 2012.  War is over if you want it.

See you on the other side.