Party time!

This (mercifully) blurred, phone-camera pic shows a kiddies' party in full swing. Actually, it's a first birthday party. The birthday boy's face is strangely lit, which may show another camera homing in for a flash shot, but what amuses me about this moment is the fact that the adults are all wearing the small animal masks, all singing like billy-oh to the lead of the Caterpillar Music lady, while the assembled tots do their best to crawl from the centre of the circle or look totally bemused at their hitherto perfectly sensible parents.

Perhaps it was the Cava, perhaps the excellence of the leadership, or perhaps the fact that Birthday Boy Alan, one year old today, actually maintained not only his cool but also a pleasant smile throughout the entire proceedings - whatever the reason, I found myself really enjoying this party. From the tot in the designer dress and glam black tights to the tiny baby, all of 4 weeks old, who slept impassively throughout, there were no wails, no frayed tempers, and no misdemeanours on the part of either kiddies or parents.

But I shall not readily forget the sight of Mr B struggling with the hand movements in Incy Wincy Spider. Maybe he should stick to providing the harmonies ...

The mouse's tale

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. And if you're old enough to remember where that opening comes from, I trust you're enjoying retirement. But à nos moutons - or in this case, nos souris.

Once upon a time, there was a small mouse. He - or was it a she? - might have been called a church mouse, except that he never made it to the church. No, this little mouse lived in the Rectory, in a small room under the stairs that had once been referred to as The Bishop's Bedroom but had, since the days when the hapless Bishop indeed slept there, become a dump. As the person who lived in the house gradually dumped more and more in the way of unwanted debris in this room, the little mouse found it a refuge, though there was always the dread, the flaring fear, induced by the Rectory Cat.

The joyful day dawned, however, when the Rectory Cat set off with its owner to live in a rather less damp environment, and the little mouse was free to roam and to breed and to enjoy the crumbs left by the parishioners who had returned to using the house as a hub for social activities. Free, that is, until it became apparent that the old junk was going to have to go, to make way for the junk of the next incumbent - or even, Heaven forfend, a visiting bishop. And so it came about that a hard-working and selfless couple turned up one dreary day and put all the junk in their car and took it to the tip.

A few days later, the selfless lady noticed that a packet of biscuits, left in the car against a peckish moment, had been nibbled at. Her equally selfless husband denied any snack attacks, and their suspicions grew. Eventually they found a tiny nest in a corner of the car, under a seat where no-one would look. They did not, however, find the mouse.

Several suggestions have surfaced among the faithful as to how to deal with this phenomenon. It was thought that a cat in the car could be messy, and might damage the upholstery; poison or a trap seemed likewise messy and distasteful. To date the most enterprising seems to be a trip in said car to the incumbency of the former inhabitant and the former Rectory cat.

After all, it is their mouse.

Change ... but no decay, yet.

We've got the decorators in at the moment. The contents of our biggest room - except for the piano and the harpsichord - are crammed into the spare room, the stairs (each step a bookcase), the landing (where I keep walking into a sharp-cornered carry-box full of pictures). We've discovered that the gable end is bone dry (cheers) and today I've been relieved to find that the paint I chose for the walls is indeed a pleasantly warm neutral shade and I won't have to sell the house after all. So far so good.

But stripping your house back to the basics reveals much of what has been before. As a Victorian semi, the original house had ceiling roses, picture rails, dado rails, tall fireplaces and panelled doors, and our bedroom retains much of what it must have had over a hundred years ago - even the fireplace, though we lack the maid to light our fire in the morning. Downstairs, however, is another matter. At some point in, I imagine, the 60s, the then owner succumbed to the desire for modernisation and DIY, with the removal of the ceiling rose from the sitting room and the covering of the panelled doors with hardboard - remember 'flush panelling'? - and plastic lever handles. (I suspect that the dado and picture rails went earlier - you can still see their brown varnish outlines on the plaster.) We removed the hardboard from the doors in the '80s, though not before we'd lived with their white glossiness for 10 years or so. It was fortuitous that at that time we were able to use the resulting sheets of white board to make the most wonderful CND placards of varying shapes and sizes and outstanding durability for our usually rain-soaked demos.

So every panelled door had its silver lining, though we cursed the imbeciles who had roughly chiselled off the original mouldings to accomodate the hardboard. We put new mouldings on the doors, or simply painted over the ruination. We ripped down the hardboard pelmets above the windows. Now we can see what was previously hidden - that someone had also ripped off the facings of a cupboard to create a tasteful alcove with gently curved top trim and painted its interior a strange violet colour. (Evidence suggests that the body of the room was green at the time. With a floral pattern.)

We've found a wooden plug in the wall, which had left a bump we'd always wondered about. It's above head height, in the middle of the wall facing the window. I imagine perhaps a dresser with a tendency to topple, steadied with a nail into the wood. I imagine a Victorian family, down from Glasgow for their holidays, with the range in the back room which would be the kitchen, the sink in the window, the cludgie in the back garden and the wash-house where we park the car. In the main bedroom there are still the wooden supports for an extra bed in the walk-in cupboard, though heaven knows who would sleep there. It's our house, but there are ghosts ...

Today we've put back the ceiling rose in the sitting-room. It's not really big enough - the one in the bedroom measures 3' in diameter - but we'd have had to wait too long for the bigger one to be delivered, and the slightly lesser one looks jolly good and matches the cornice quite well. The ceiling is painted, and the walls half done with the first coat - enough to tell me how it will look. The painter pronounced it 'warm and light', which reassured Mr B, and I'm already wondering if we should replace the curtains or not bother. I might even move away from a paper globe for a lampshade ... but then, I might not. Change, yes - but not too much!

Things left undone ...

How often have you said something like I'll do that when I retire - that being anything from playing the violin to taking up tap dancing? And if you have indeed reached that apparent Nirvana, how much have you managed to accomplish of these long-held goals?

The two examples I gave are both things I've done in my time (and have to confess that the tap-dancing, though enormous fun, was probably a bad idea as I was well past my best and seem to have jiggered my toe joints permanently with the combined effect of vulgar little shoes and percussive steps). I always hoped that when I was no longer teaching I'd find a few like-minded souls to play with - not really wonderful instrumentalists, but able to read well enough to have fun. I pictured myself having time to enjoy this on a regular basis, perhaps fortified with a small tincture. (This because on one occasion another violinist and I became so hysterical at the sight of ourselves sawing away in a full-length mirror that we were unable to go on and required more from the bottle that stood on the floor between us)

But I haven't done it in years. Nor have I written yards of poetry, nor have I studied a new language or even read enough serious literature, let alone theology. I get by on snippets of the last, taken on an ad hoc basis when there's a sermon on the horizon. So what's filling the time, and why haven't I been more disciplined?

Well, there's plenty. And though some of it is fun, some of it's plain hard work or undertaken out of a sense of obligation. This makes me wonder about my motivation - and I realise that actually I'm the same butterfly that I've always been. I can't be bothered to practise if I don't have a performance, I like to make music in company, I like to perform rather than to prepare. I won't persevere in reading something that doesn't capture my interest within the first hour, and I'm easily put off by jargon or convoluted argument or badly-handled syntax. I probably need to see the end of a task before I begin, and I become bored as readily as I did when I was 16.

So I may yet play the violin, but I'll not hold my breath. And I'm beginning to think I shall die without reading War and Peace. Sad, really...

Let's elect a bishop (part 1)

Being a member of the Electoral Synod of Argyll and The Isles comes with its own particular challenges, not the least of which is the drive to Oban and back - wonderfully scenic in the morning light, but distinctly hard work as the gloaming descends and turns into darkness as you drive down Loch Eck-side, with its winding bends and strange cambers and the dark loch water waiting on your right-hand side...Anyway, I'm a bit bug-eyed with it all, but determined to get some thoughts down while they're fresh.

First off, I have to say it was great. Not because the seats were soft and the venue (the Cathedral) cosy, but because the chair (and fellow-blogger; never mind that he's also the Primus) was skilled and adroit and handled things in a way that made people feel valued. It helped too to have not only Bishop David, but also Bishop Mark (he blogs too) - not because they're bloggers, but because they remind us by their very presence that there's a province out there, and they can help us, and we're not as isolated as we sometimes feel.

We were reminded of our responsibilities - and also of the holiness of our task, which could also be seen as enjoyable. It was suddenly important for each of us to know (a) that we were supposed to be there and (b) in what capacity we were there. Someone asked why the process of electing a new bishop took so long; +David pointed out that it was because Canon 4* said so, but built, along with +Mark, a picture of precisely why such a thing cannot be rushed. If we want a prayerful person who is truly committed to his/her calling, we must be prepared to let such a person prayerfully and thoughtfully decide if it is indeed their calling - and the time suddenly isn't a very long one at all. We were reminded of the task of the Bishop - "to interpret the local to the universal and the universal to the local", and we were reminded also that clergy come in all shapes and sizes and variations with regard to training and background, and that past experience in parish life was a vital component.

We considered the strangeness of the "gracious restraint" under which the College of Bishops now operates in the context of the Anglican Church moratoria on consecrating bishops in long-standing same-sex relationships, authorising same-sex blessings and cross-border incursions by conservative bishops: the last appears to go on regardless, which makes me wonder why the other two should be any different, but that'll be me being simplistic as usual. It'll be a good day when we catch up with the secular world on this one.

The afternoon session gave us the chance to bring up stuff we wanted the preliminary committee to bear in mind. I did my usual plea for a bishop to have a good grasp of modern communications, but I also voiced the opinion that we mustn't think a church is failing simply because it has not managed to attract any young people. The young people in my life who were in church all through their formative years now don't darken the door; they haven't lived in the diocese since they left school. Someone disagreed with this, but as this is my personal space I can now come back and say that young Piskies for the most part don't end up stacking supermarket shelves as a full-time occupation: they leave for the bright lights and never return. The people we tend to attract are older, moving to the country/seaside for lifestyle reasons, perhaps thinking more seriously on life and death than ever before - and finding our churches a suitable place in which to think such thoughts.

I don't intend to cover all that was said today. Instead, I want to make another point of my own: in a diocese where so many lay people have, through necessity, become preachers and intercessors and worship leaders, we need a bishop who is sufficiently sure of his/her own personality, faith and theology to be stimulated by our willingness, willing and able to support and cherish us, and to lead our existing clergy into a joyous partnership with the laity. +David called for "careful, eyes-wide-open" leadership. +Mark warned us to avoid asking a bishop to do it all - to think instead of a shared ministry.

So that's it started, this process. The nomination forms are available online and in publications, the preliminary committee has more thinking to do, more selecting, before we can see any candidates. Now, I must print myself a copy of Canon 4 ...


*Canon 4: governs the process of electing a bishop; prone to being used recreationally when the General Synod is under-occupied. (They alter it)

Berlin Wall remembered

A last, foolish, personal, wandering memory about the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the time, I was running the school magazine, The Pupils' View, of which No.1 son was the editor. (No, he involved me - not the other way round). We were blessed with the help of an art teacher who had a gift for wild drawing of the type just made for magazine covers, and with the creative genius of said No.1 son. And so it was that the edition that Christmas had on its Santa-decked cover a free gift: a piece of concrete, about the size of a pea, supposedly from the Berlin Wall.

Now, I don't know how many gullible infants were convinced by the authenticity of this, though I do know that I heard no-one actually question it. But I have the most vivid memory of two girls, one of whom at least was extremely elegant and beautiful from an early age, sitting on the step of the Techy building, both wearing safety goggles, both wielding hammers, battering a lump of concrete from our drive-in (which is still in a state of disintegration) into small particles. 600 of them. An army of minions then solemnly sellotaped a piece onto each magazine, and off they went...

Get it only in the Pupils' View! Your very own piece of the Berlin Wall!

I knew there were things I missed about teaching ...

Huvtaes galore

My pal Kenny's been blogging about having a day off work, coinciding nicely with my thoughts today on what to some must seem like a life of days off - this retirement business.One of the things I joked about missing when I first stopped work was the absence of a proper "sickie" - because if you're not staying off work because you have a bug of some kind, there seems little point in actually taking to your bed for a day. No, you just slope miserably around doing things in a half-hearted sort of way that doesn't seem all that different from normal life - not the same thing at all.

But more seriously, now that I'm on my 5th year of retirement I've realised that there are people who retire properly and people who seem to miss that particular boat. I'm one of the latter group, as is Mr B. There are people who retire and find themselves without a single obligation in their lives - not a single "huvtae" to impose a deadline or produce a modicum of stress. They do what they like when they want to, and don't give it a thought: they're retired, after all. And then there's me and people like me. Ok, a lot of it's church - and I'm not talking just turning up on a Sunday. And it's not actually religious faith putting on the pressure - it's people, and the need not to let them down, and the difficulty in saying "no". Perhaps the tasks and obligations look interesting, fulfilling, even, so you say "yes" - and suddenly your life takes on the familiar structure where there are no weeks where you can see clear space of more than a day at a time.

Add to that any little job related to your past life that you take on because you know you can do it and it might be fun and anyway it'll pay for that new suite you've rashly ordered. It turns out to have a deadline and suddenly you're rushing home at 4.30pm to get a couple of hours' work on it before, domestic goddess that you are, you produce a wonderful meal. (The DG bit keeps cropping up, by the way, just as it always did when you were working - it's just that you thought you'd have more time for it and you don't)

It was, however, pointed out to me today that I'd probably be bored if I had no huvtaes. I have, after all, chosen my burdens - most of them, anyway. So I'll just carry on singing and writing and planning concerts and writing exams and blogging and preaching and attending synods and running discussion groups and performing in workshops and ... and ...

And I'll enjoy my holidays, which will still feel like holidays. And I won't ever know what boredom feels like.

Slip of the tongue?

A wonderful, poignant moment at this morning's Remembrance Sunday service. One of our few old servicemen went out to stand at the altar during the two minutes' silence, waiting to take the wreath out to the churchyard where there is a war grave, of a serviceman who died in 1918. After the silence he spoke the usual words - only this year we all heard him say: "They shall not grow cold as we who are left grow cold".

Dead right too. The heating hadn't gone on in time to make much difference, and someone had left the door to the tower open so that any heat was vanishing as quickly as it was created. The miracle was that no-one so much as sniggered. Guess we were all so cold we didn't really think about it till afterwards.

Nectar from New Zealand

I don't think I've ever blogged before about wine. But that's not to say I don't think about it, don't enjoy wine - and I dare say I'm well on the way to being more than a little fussy about the wine I drink. The last couple of nights - in fact, I think it was the last three nights, as we're being pretty abstemious these days - we've enjoyed simply one of the best whites I've tasted. So here's my shout-out for a wonderful New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc: Esk Valley 2008, from Gordon Russell of Marlborough.

I can't really bear to go off into a wine-buff's rant, but this was a marvellously fresh, layered taste, with fruit and citrus and a wonderful aftertaste that reminded me of my fave champagne. We bought it in a special offer from Laithwaites, the mail order company we've had our wine for from as long as I can remember. Not that we mail them any more - in fact, they phone us up periodically for a little chat, like old friends.

And that's that. A brilliant wine from a company who've never let us down. And no, I'm not getting any buckshee bottles for saying so.

Apostrophe Disease: a remedy?

I rejoiced at the discovery today of a web page dealing humorously and effectively with the use of the apostrophe. I've blogged before about apostrophe disease, but then I was inspired by a piece on typography. This new discovery, tweeted by @nmcintosh, actually makes a wonderful stab at setting down the rules and using illustrations and jokey examples (I do not =* don't like putting honeybees in my underpants) to drive them home. The site contains other examples of things you might have forgotten - like all the stuff you need to pass your driving test - and maybe it's ok for the apostrophe to join road signs: linguistic road signs?

Of course, every teacher knows you can have a riotously jolly lesson in which everyone has fun learning about whatever bee currently inhabits your bunnet (as distinct from your underpants) but seems to have forgotten the point of the exercise the next time they have to use the bee (if you get me). And maybe this would have no greater success. But it's a valiant effort and a good reference point the next time someone's struggling.

And struggle they will - it's the surest thing in written English that the most unexpected people will exhibit the symptoms of apostrophe disease. But at least we don't have to reinvent the wheel any more.

*I really need to put an arrow here, but have lost the will to work out to how to. Anyone?

Pipe to the spirit ...

Thought I'd join the hymn fray before it's all over bar the singing ...

It's harder these days to find hymns that I can bear to sing, actually. The big, ponderous hymns that we used to bash out regardless leave me cold, even if they have wonderful tunes, as some of them do. Maybe too much exposure to them is part of the problem - they're boring after the nth repetition. So even Come Down O Love Divine (to Down Ampney) feels like a drag these days, and in a way that makes me sad. Part of the problem could be that it's not the same sung by half a dozen people with the rest a gentle murmuring in the rear - a proper choir at least gave me the pleasure of balanced harmony and colour as we sang.

I used to be thrilled by Let all mortal flesh keep silence (Picardy). This hymn was completely new to me when I first encountered the Episcopal church, in the cathedral on Cumbrae, and is forever associated for me with firsts - incense, communion, the sense of the holy. I can still feel the hairs rise when we get to the alleluias, and the imagery is so poetic that there is little sense of the banal or the absurd. The same could be said for Lo he comes at Advent - I'd never heard it until I had moved to Dunoon, and it bowled me over.

Otherwise, I still find plainsong powerful. Ancient words tend to be timeless, somehow - the imagery so obviously not to be taken literally that I can just enjoy the poetry of it. I love Be still my soul and Lead kindly light, just as I love There is a Redeemer. I find the Taizé stuff we do a true vehicle for meditation and a way out of the ordinary, and I get the hair-on-end moments when we do Ubi Caritas with the solo verses as found in HON - especially if it's Bishop Martin or Mr B singing them.

But I'm at once fussy and fortunate. I rarely have to listen to inadequate organ playing, and I expect a high standard of harmonisation of last verses. If there isn't a decent musician around, I'd rather have said services than fight against flaccid rhythms or duff harmonies, and I've had enough Victorian bombast to last me an eternity. In the end heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter ... no?

Guising, anyone?

Hallowe'en. Guisers. None of your 'trick-or-treat' nonsense - that's American. Guisers had to go round in the rain and the dark and sing songs or recite a poem or be especially wonderfully dressed so as to elicit admiration and reward without the need to perform. Whatever you think is the right pursuit on this evening, I have never, ever done it.

When I was very small, we went out to friends in the next close (wally closes, if you're interested in such cultural minutiae) who hung treacle scones from the pulley in the kitchen and who dooked for apples both ways - the fork held between the teeth and dropped on the basin full of floating apples from the back of a wooden kitchen chair, or the whole head plunged recklessly into the basin to pick up apples with the teeth. My mother always opined that our hostess had the advantage as she had none of her own teeth and the false ones (we didn't call them wallies, we who lived in wally closes - too vulgar) were stronger than my mother's real ones. It was an occasion for much mess, much wet hair, and considerable hilarity. We always thought the adults were having more fun than us, but perhaps they weren't drinking chilly orange squash on a chilly October night.

But I was never, ever, allowed to go out guising. In fact, I don't recall ever dressing up - though I do remember sending no 1 son out to school as a mini punk with green gelled hair (food dye and my gel) and no 2 son almost passing out under my mini cape (floor length on him) when he was Darth Vader because of the heat at a Sunday School party. (This in the days when there were children in the church). But they didn't go out round people's doors either.

And that is probably why our hall light is off and the door firmly shut, and why no 2 son has already Tweeted a dare to any hapless child to ring his bell tonight. Just shows you how conditioned we all are by what happened all these years ago.

I wonder if kids went guising in the blackout?

Calm restored. For now.

Well well. The Dunoon Observer appeared today with my piece over which the argument arose intact - complete with the "Ands" which a hapless sub deemed unacceptable. I must say I was pleased to see this; perhaps there are areas in which people are prepared to bend after all. I should jolly well hope so anyway.

Thing is, of course, when you teach in a small community, everyone knows who you are and what you do - and if stuff with your name under it starts appearing in a form which anyone you've taught would wonder at, then it's time to stop. In today's edition of the paper, for example, a swift skim discovered a split infinitive (I know - I'm old-fashioned), a singular subject with a plural verb and an example of the word "nice" in its customarily lazy usage.

But at least it's not under my name. Whew.

Voskresenije in Ayr

Went to hear my old friends Voskresenije last night - in Ayr, for they aren't singing in Dunoon this year. (The impresario is too busy helping to run the church in a vacancy, if you're interested). I think this was one one of their best performances in recent years: the appearance in their number of a counter-tenor made an enormous difference, especially in the beautiful "Lonely bell" song. I've not heard it so beautifully sung since the lovely Oleg was singing with the group.

Voskresenije is a fluid choir, like many professional groups. In fact, the only constant over the years I've known them is Anatoly Artomonov, the basso profundo from St Petersburg - and Jurij Maruk, their director, who spends his non-touring season hunting out new young singers to join him. It's a hard life, living out of a mini-bus for months at a time, sleeping in different houses, eating whatever their hosts choose to give them. Today they were going to be driving to Skye to sing, before heading back down the country to be in Glasgow on Sunday. I hope I'll be able to have them back in Dunoon next year - they lift the spirits as the darkness descends.

It was great to hear them again. Look out for them singing in a church near you...

House style in the sticks

Urged on by Tim, I was going to blog about hymns. But the grim weather has turned my thoughts instead to the irritation caused by our local rag, the redoubtable Dunoon Observer (and Argyllshire Standard, if you're feeling long-winded). Every second Sunday, more or less, I bash out an account of the service at Holy T, just to remind people that we're still alive, so to speak. I landed this job, along with Mrs Heathbank, because "you can write". And usually, my copy appears more or less as it left my Mac.

But not, it would seem, this week. This week my usual contact, a journalist to whom in the distant past I taught the odd thing, is on holiday, and I was mailed by another. This other informed me that as well as cropping my headline (not unexpectedly) he had "altered a couple of grammatical errors". Dear reader, I felt the blood pressure rise. Tell me, I requested, what you regard as a grammatical error. Back came the mail. It was not, after all, a matter of grammar. He apologised for that. No, it was a matter of "house style". Apparently all who write for the paper, paid or not, have to adhere to this. (First I've heard of it) From this, no contributor, it seems, may be allowed to stray. And that includes beginning a sentence with "and".

Whether or not I shall bother writing for this publication again remains to be seen. But am I being horrid when I find it hilarious that a paper which abounds in comma-splice and other linguistic unpleasantness talks about "house style"? But maybe I've got it. Maybe I need to go back a bit. How about this kind of thing:

Mrs Blethers, in giving her vote of thanks, expressed her gratitude to all who had given so freely of their time and talents to make the event so successful. It was agreed, as the congregation wended their way home, that a good time had been had by all.
(Submitted)

Backward in Fear?

Having an extra hour on a Sunday morning gives time to think about what we do - on Sundays, for sure, though not exclusively - when we go to church. Having spent yesterday with a former Moderator of the kirk (great crack, Andy - and a great lunch), having listened, interminably, to the news on the car radio about the defecting Anglicans who are tempted by Rome, and having been Sponged the previous day, I'm feeling particularly turbulent this morning. There. I just asked Mr B how watching the Forward in Faith* people on the telly (somehow even more disturbing) made him feel, and I've just summed up my own reaction: turbulence just about does it.

The rotten thing is that much of what these people (no women priests, certainly no women bishops, no openly gay men) do in their religious practices used to be attractive to me. I still love really good music, incense, order - but I abhor the smugness, the "I'm a man and I'm ordained and you, my dear, are not in my league at all when it comes to the worship of God" underlay, the willing piety of the permed ladies, the self-righteousness. And on this grey Sunday morning I contemplate the essentially man-made edifice that is the church and I despair. I despair partly because I know that all my non-Christian or non-church friends and rellies probably think that what was on the news yesterday was my church and either despise or pity me for it.

But thankfully, it is not my church. My church still has a way to go before it sorts out the Christ-like response to gay Christians, gay church people, the gay ordained; it has yet to elect a woman as bishop though there is no legal barrier to such an election; my church tends to be anything but smug though there are pockets of undeniable smuggery. Personally, I'm on a wee crusade to remove the words "us men" from the Creed as said by the celebrant in Holy T (they don't say it in Southwark Cathedral, I note); Mr B is working to remove the dire hymns of the past from our repertoire (leaving us, it has to be said, with a very small selection that meet any sort of criteria at all); I look forward to this morning's sermon from a lay woman that will disturb and challenge in the light of the week's news.

But there is much to be done before we shake off the bigoted and the entrenched. And yesterday's news, as far as I'm concerned, is good news. Let's wave them off to the diluted form of Rome to which the Holy Father invites them. God speed, folks, God speed.

*Or, if you like, Backward in Fear.

Sponged, again

Yesterday evening I was in a packed church - and St John's, Princes Street is quite a size to pack - to hear Bishop Jack Spong talk about the difficult subject of eternal life. Difficult? From my early teens I've realised how difficult, when my father used to quizz me: what kind of eternal life did I envisage? Would I fancy it as a spotty adolescent, or would it be more like an eternity of arthritis? He knew, and even then I knew, that these were facetious questions masking an uncomfortable reality - Richard Dawkins would have felt quite at home chez nous in the early sixties. And of course, it's the simplistic notions that the Dawkinites, and plenty of people who actually simply know very little about religion, keep insisting are the bread and butter of the Christian faith and any other you might care to mention. No wonder they dismiss us as daft. And no wonder we get fed up.

But Jack Spong had this crowd feeling anything but fed up, if the applause was anything to go by. He's just brought out another book: Eternal Life: A New Vision, and reading it would give you a better idea of his drift than reading this post. But a few bits stick: the God-filled man that was Jesus showing that the Kingdom of God was within him, and telling us that it is also within us; the living of a life of loving that aligns us with God who is timeless; the self-conscious humanity that is at once our original sin and our saving grace. And a joyous recognition of the impossibility of sharing our experience of God in words, in this question: Can a horse tell another horse what it means to be human?

The laughter showed the relief of those who had realised that the high and crazy and the low and lazy were not for them, and that sharing their own experience didn't fill pews. That's not our job, said the bishop in his wonderfully American way. We're not here to do that. The faith we hold is not to bring peace, but to help us to grasp reality and have the courage to go on facing it. It takes, he said, a lot of courage to be human and realise that we are finite - the whole nature of humanity is to be anxious.

In the end, I can't even redeliver this talk, any more than I can redeliver religious experience without resorting to art. But the realisation that there are so many of us - including people we met whom we know in more conservatively Christian circles - was thrilling. Our churches may be falling down around our ears, they may be populated by people of my age and older - but maybe that's as it should be, at this time. And for sure I came away with the conviction that if the church is diminishing, it should probably not moan about the failings of society.

It's time to take a long, hard look at our own failings. And then? I don't know. But it should be good ...

As Richard Holloway, winding up the evening, put it: we'd been well and truly Sponged. I recommend the treatment!

Love's Labours Lost

Love's Labours Lost
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I know I've blogged about this already, but I needed to return to the experience of the Globe Theatre and Love's Labours Lost when I didn't have a cat's bottom distracting me by hiding the screen, to say nothing of the typing paws.

The thing is that in all my life I've only once been to a performance of a play by Shakespeare that I didn't know already, and that was so long ago that I have only the vaguest memory of it. (I think I was still at school, and it was at Jordanhill College and may have been As You Like It) And it struck me forcibly that much of what I get from a performance of, say, Hamlet, comes from anticipation and speculation: how will the Ghost be treated? How will they stage the prayer scene? How will Hamlet say the big soliloquies?

Think of the Olivier film of Hamlet. Olivier took a part of one of Hamlet's speeches about the King's behaviour and used it as a voice-over for the very beginning of the play, so that the words about "particular men" who, "carrying the stamp of one defect", "take corruption from that particular fault" and so is brought to disgrace. The whole slant of the character of Hamlet is changed by this, as he seems to be talking about himself in a way that would suggest he is very aware of why he is unable later on to kill his uncle - and yet his soliloquies show that he cannot understand his difficulties.

I've gone into that simply to show how very different the experience of a play is to someone who has studied it for years - and to wonder what Will himself would have thought of such a reaction. Maybe he'd have torn his hair out, maybe he'd have been puzzled. But it was fascinating to try to "keep up" with an unfamiliar play, without benefit of the text, and not find myself laughing at something several lines too late. I noticed an earnest fellow in the row in front of me poring over the text as the play unfolded - but felt he was missing more than he gained.

Enough. No more. 'Tis not so sweet now as 'twas before - and I've gone on long enough. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo: You that we; we this way.

Change and decay ...

The new cell phone arrived while I was away. Actually, two phones - one for Mr B as well - and they came early despite my earnest conversation with the man from Vodafone to the effect that there would be nobody chez nous until yesterday. However, a neighbour signed for them and since last night they have sat, still in their packaging, on the sitting room floor.

Now it's midnight of another day and I've only just opened the box of one of them. It's very similar to my old one, with which I have been deliriously happy (that's hyperbole, but you get my drift), but longer and thinner. Whether or not this will be a good thing only time will tell. Apparently it has a better camera. And the one for Mr B is identical, which will be good in that he'll now be able to work mine if the need arises, but bad in that I can see one of us going off with the wrong phone.

But I realise that once again I'm on the threshold of change. And though I know that as soon as I start using it all will be well, right now I'm wondering why I have to change at all. My old phone - all of three years old, I think - is a familiar friend. And as yet they haven't sent me the promised recycling bag, so it will sit reproaching me as I set up its successor.

Maybe, after all, I am a dinosaur.

Master Byrd and holy smoke

To Sung Eucharist at Southwark Cathedral. And an excellent eperience it was too; not least because Mr B and I, freed from the constraints of being part of the machinery at Holy T, could sit peacefully together in the middle of the congregation and enjoy the seriously good choir (the setting was Byrd's Mass for five voices), a crisp and simple sermon and wonderful incense. Actually it was the combination of this particular incense and this particular music that took me back to when the Anglican church was a new and wonderful mystery for me; when something magical happened to me every time I was in church. Then, of course, I would have been singing the Byrd, but I was interested to note that it didn't matter to me that today I wasn't: the magic was there, in the other-worldly distance, and I was content to listen.

I've become so involved in doing church these days that I sometimes think I've forgotten what it's all about. I hold forth about not having to sit and listen to a choir sing the setting, that I'd rather we all joined in - but I'm talking poor choirs, not wonderful ones. I maintain that we can continue with our worship in the interregnum without the weekly presence of a priest - but I find myself sighing with relief at a beautifully conducted Eucharist, where there are no worries that someone will do something wrong, or forget what to do next. I can let go - and that, of course, leads to other barriers falling, and that is A Good Thing.

There were many good things to observe today - the sunlight streaming through the smoke halfway through the service, the lusty congregational singing (even if the man behind us had a very penetrating voice but a lamentable tendency to drag), the wonderful organ (especially when it let rip at the end of the closing voluntary), the very mixed, very large congregation. I felt safe, I felt part of it, I felt welcome - and at the end, we were welcomed by the celebrant, who admitted to favouring this particular incense because it was less likely than other varieties to make her cough.

And a few random insider observations: we all shook hands at the Peace - there was no grinning and bowing as has become the norm in the Diocese of Argyll in these pestilential times - but received in one kind only. And I was pleased to see that no-one, not a single server, be they never so sylphlike, wore a rope round his or her middle. Clergy and servers alike were decently and becomingly clad in albs which fell unimpeded to their ankles. (From this you may deduce that I abhor the alb as frock mode, hitched up with as much as 10 inches of leg/trouser/long skirt showing beneath it.)

And the notices were given decently and in order before the service began. This works. Oh dear. I fear my holiday may be coming to an end ...