Not the Local Paper ...

It's Sunday afternoon. Ok, it's early evening, but the idea holds: another Sunday afternoon in which I wasn't writing anything for the local paper. Usually I write a report on what has gone on in our church - either I do it or my pal does it, and we have been in the habit for years now of making sure that one or other of us was able and willing to do this, covering for one another as necessary and getting hold of someone else to do it if we couldn't. But today - no. Pal didn't do it either, though we were both in church and perfectly able to do it. Sermon was interesting and relevant too - for although our American visitor knew it was Transfiguration Sunday, she didn't know where the lectionary had hidden the readings and had prepared to talk to us about greed and God. And this led us to talking a bit about Credit Unions, and how we might get involved ... as I said: relevant.

So why, do you ask, was one of us not spinning this worthy news for the local press?

I'll tell you why. It's my theory that too much contemporary relevance in the business of church triggers some negative response in a publication that still seems to want the churches at least to submit pieces from the "and a good time was had by all" school of journalism. Now, dear reader, I would rather poke out my eyes with a quill pen than write that sort of stuff, and to date I have resisted any pressure - only there hasn't been any. Working on the assumption that most churches tend not to generate any news worth reading unless it's the Good News that we're supposed to promote, we have for years now written as interestingly and cogently as lies in our power about the message of each Sunday's sermon. Sure, we've stuck in things like impending Episcopal visitations - we're having Bishop Kevin next Sunday, folks - but these things don't happen every week. The Gospel does.

A few weeks ago, I submitted a piece concentrating on the idea that the story of the Good Samaritan showed Jesus cutting through the strictures of The Law - a human creation, when all's said and done - and showing how much more important was God's law of love. As the preacher on the day had said, it was radical then and it's radical now. And yes, I had in mind the awful way some Christian churches treat people they consider beyond the pale - but I refrained from spelling it out.

Back came the mail: "We will not be considering your piece for publication as it is too theological." 

I didn't ask the hack who contacted me how he knew this, though I did suggest to him that it might simply have been too relevant. There was no reply, and none to my comment that every week we had people tell us in the street, in the supermarket, how much they'd enjoyed reading our reports.

We do these things, I suppose, for publicity. But what kind of publicity do we want to create? If we want our church life to come over as a cosy anachronism of blinkered self-absorption, then I suppose we'd write about how happy we are to have our visitors and the loan of the hall in which we currently worship, and nothing at all of the burning issues of the day that are at the heart of ordinary life. We'd write the same stuff every week, so that we could substitute an old report without anyone noticing, and we'd seem as boring as ...

I could go on. But I don't think I need to. I have a feeling that God, and what God does to the heads of thoughtful Christians, is probably too interesting for  a local paper.

And I feel better now. I've written my piece.

Pure dead relevant

The other evening - well, more like teatime - I attended an Information Evening in the University of Glasgow Medical School, the atrium of whose new building appears left. For several years now I have supported the Beatson Pebble Appeal, and now that the new building is in place, I have transferred that support to work in cardiac and stroke research. Call it enlightened self-interest. An agreeable spin-off from this comes in the shape of invitations to interesting events in the University, of which the other evening was an example. (Sadly, I can't go to the one of the future of print media - I'd be better informed at that!)

I've decided I like going back these days, though buildings like this have transformed the campus from my student days. I found it personally fascinating to sit in a lecture theatre and be enthused about a subject of which I know next to nothing, and to talk to researchers about their work - the two I spent some time with did a pretty good job of making their specialisms intelligible to an ignoramus like me. Clever, enthusiastic, committed people - what's not to like?

I have to add here that I share Mr B's sense of the evening's reminding him of those tales of a pal of a med student who donned a white coat and snuck into an operating theatre only to pass out at the sight of blood - so many of the guests were obviously medics, some of them possibly of Lister's era (I exaggerate, but ...) who had at least a handle on what was happening. I felt the need to preface every conversation with the apology "We're Arts graduates, but ..."

But it made me think. What use had my degree been to anyone? The Medical School is enormous and forward-looking and I'm glad - but I studied English Lit., Early English language, Latin ... cui bono? So that I can use tags like that and know why? So that I can slip bits of Shakespeare or Eliot into a Tweet and wonder if anyone will notice? I know that there are things going on inside my mind that are informed by what I learned all those years ago - but what did I ever do with them, what help were they to my fellow-creatures?

That's where I'm stuck at the moment. It must be wonderful to do something that directly affects life itself. One of the speakers on Wednesday had been delayed because he'd been called away to see a new stroke patient - how good to feel that something you know or propose might mean the difference between that patient's recovering or not. How completely relevant to us all. Does it matter (I ask myself) if that doctor lapses into comma-splice in a communication?

They served some mean canapés afterwards as well.