Essays by George Orwell

Essays George Orwell 

The first thing that I want to notice is that the cover image of the edition I have is a detail from an Empire Marketing Board Poster  which to me is rather odd as I doubt that Orwell would have been in anyway comfortable with the activities of the EMB, and so this is something of a faux pas by Penguin.

To turn to the essays themselves, they range widely over political, literary, and sociological topics yet time and again the same classic "Orwellian" themes unsurprisingly come to the fore.  As someone who finds 1984 one of to the most incisive political works in the modern canon the essays were rich in contextual material which links 1984 to Orwell's lived experiences.  This clarifies the core evil in Orwell's eye is the Establishment's bending of the truth - which often leads to the demolition of 'truth' as a meaningful concept. It is Orwell's time in Spain that focused him on this, and as shown by Stradling in "Your Children Will be Next...", the Spanish Civil War was a test bed not only of the aeroplanes of WWII but the media manipulation that is now the norm in both war and peace.

Many of the Essays are critiques of writers, one I found particularly interesting was that on Dickens.  Orwell notes that Dickens is claimed as a hero by both the 'Right' and the 'Left' - but Orwell argues that he defies them both because fundamentally Dickens did not see a 'political' solution to the ills he saw around him.  Dickens was a moralist not a politician, in the sense that the ills of society would be cured if only people lived righteously, that is lived up to the highest ideals of human nature.  What Dickens (according to Orwell) saw was that neither this political system nor another would make better people, and also almost any system if populated by the best of people is preferred to the 'best' system populated by ordinary human corruption. Through Dickens, Orwell advances his distrust of politicians of every colour and the belief that people, people with freedom, are the answer and the only hope (however often they fail).

I found myself often in agreement with Orwell and while he dismisses religion, much of his hope in people is for me core to the Christian hope, that liberated people can become the salvation of the world.

Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler

Scum of the Earth

I read this of the back of references to it in one of the collection of George Orwell Essays I have also been reading, and it gives a griping account of Koestler's experince in the opening years of the Second World War in France - with all the tension and drama of the best thriller writing - and while you clearly known he must escape to tell his tale for much of the time you live in the moment where its impossibility is the reality.

Koestler had travelled across Europe ahead of the tide of the Nazi advance and made a home in France, only to be betrayed by the French along with countless other 'enemies' of the Nazis.  The reasons behind his arrest and imprisomeant go to the core to the France collapse and murky years of collaboration with the Nazis.   And this is a lesson writ large in the truth of the saying of Burke ""All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." In the French Concentration Camp Koestler receives numerous acts of kindness from the guards which sound them to be fundamentally 'good' which only adds to the tragedy of their failure to see the evil of which they had become a part.

Koestler's escape was a stroke of luck, many other remained imprisoned and found themselves handed over to the Gestapo and in most cases death. One of the most interesting perspectives we gain from this account is the complete sense of hopelessness of 1940 as France fell, and Britain gave no real sign at that stage of having either the will of the capacity to fight on let alone to ultimately triumph.

Your children will be next: Bombing and propaganda in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Robert Stradling

Your childern will be next

This is a book I found out about through a review in Planet Magazine some time ago but it is particularly interesting to have read it just now while I am the middle of also reading a collection of Essays by George Orwell and to have followed it up by Arthur Koestler's Scum of the Earth. Orwell and Koestler both had personal experience of the Spanish War fighting for but ultimately disillusioned with the Spanish Republic who were the author of the Poster that gives Stradling his title and his starting point.

The Poster featuring a child killed, allegedly, at Getafe in an air raid bore the legend "If you tolerate this your children will be next", which Stradling an historian of the Spanish War began to investigate when the Manic Street Preachers took the phrase and turned it into a hit record.

What Stradling found was that the is no evidence of a raid at Getafe, and that after a brief interval the Republicans stopped mentioning and even explicitly denied it, in part because the phantom raid of Getafe could be replaced with the all to real raid on Gernika. This process of making and unmaking of an event is in strong accord with Orwell - reading his Essays (of which I will say more separately) you see that the focus of most people reading 1984 on Big Brother is perhaps a distraction.  I think for Orwell the real crime is the (re)writing of History.  Big Brother is just a symptom of the real Orwellian nightmare which is the abolition of truth - that it is a crime to state that 2 + 2 = 4 is the problem with in which the gaze of the telescreen is, almost, morally neutral.

The strange fact Stradling reveals is that in the case of the Spanish Civil War it is clear that history hasn't been written by the winners.  Not only has the non-event of the fascist air raid on Getafe remained a historical fact but the extensive use of air raids by the Republican side against civilian targets has become a non-fact - this is as true during the lifetime of Franco as it now decades after his death.  Because of Franco's links to Nazi Germany the Spanish Republic, the Allies of WWII did nothing to protect, was given (posthumously) hero's status.

We are part of this myth-making when we continue to see Nazi bombs on London and Coventry as criminal and Allied bombs on Dresden and Berlin as liberation - as if it were the case that bombs dropped by democracies could not possibly kill or main the righteous. Even our new words like collateral damage struggle to legitimise the relentless fire-stroms.

Stradling successfully kills the sacred cow of black and white readings of the Spanish Civil War - but that leaves us with the familiar task of deciding which shade of murky grey to favour.

Childhood an anthology for grown-ups Compiled by Dewi Roberts

Childhood

I have been dipping into this anthology over the last few months and I have enjoyed the mix of poems and prose.  One of the interesting features is most of the prose is snippets taken from larger autobiographical works of writers whose mature voice you are familiar with and in some it is clear that they are using that mature voice to reflect on their childhood while other narrate whatever the incident is firmly within the experience of childhood.

This is loosely a 'Welsh' collection but there is not much within it that could not have been written in an English context.  For me where there was a foreignness about the collection its due to much of it coming from rural settings in the early to mid twentieth century and therefore the absence of most of the 'comforts' we now not only taken for granted but find civilised live unimanginable without. 

The Anglican Covenant

This is not really in the usual scope of this blog however I feel that I need to make some kind of response having read the document (in prep for Deanery Synod discussion after Christmas) and so this is the most convenient forum to hijack.

The Covenant has been born out of the current disquiet in the life of the Anglican Communion and so my main criteria in reading the Covenant is its likely contribution to addressing this disquiet. 

The key phase in the Covenant comes in 3.2.3, “controversial or new”, asking Provinces to show restraint before acting in ways that are “controversial or new”.   The problem is that it asks the actor to anticipate what other members of the Communion will find “controversial” when controversy, very much like beauty, is found in the eye of the beholder. 

Not only that but in the current moment while many in the Communion find the idea of Gay Bishops controversial equally significant numbers find the idea of excluding gay people from any part of the life of the Church scandalous.  The ordination of Women also creates the same set of mirror controversies.  When it really matters we will almost always find both action and inaction are controversial and so the Covenant fails as it seems to assume controversy will be only one sided.

Another major problem is the fact that it is unclear exactly what happens if a Church decides not to adopt the Covenant, given the Communion pre-exists the Covenant.  Not adopting it does not, inter alia, invalidate your membership of the Communion.  All of the provisions for dispute resolution apply only to covenanting Churches, if you have not adopted the Covenant you can’t act in ways that are “incompatible with the Covenant” even though you might be both new and controversial.  If seems as the debates within Provinces are moving forward all those with a disposition for the “controversial or new” will end up rejecting the Covenant rendering it a hollow waste of time.  

At this point it is worth noting that Anglicans in the USA have novelty and controversy in their DNA, it  is not something they started with the Consecration of Gene Robinson, nor with their first Ordinations of women which anticipated the approval of such a move by their General Convention by a couple of year -  it dates as far back, at least, as the Consecration of their first Bishop, Samuel Seabury, when the English Archbishops were unable to respond to either the needs or the vision of the American church.  When you’ve build on these foundations the Covenant is asking the leopard to change its spots.  For many the Covenant is unacceptable because it places protection of the life of the Communion above the calling to follow every move closely the image of Christ, the idea that you can be Christ-like without being controversial is a nonsense.

While there are some parts of the Covenant that provide a summary of the Anglican identity with which I could broadly agree and so it might seem odd to focus so much on these two words, these words are the key.  They sit at the heart of the operative part of the Covenant and are the basis of the disputes that the Covenant will seek to resolve through the mechanisms set out in section 4.  I find the way they are used makes the whole Covenant problematic and more importantly it does not allow the Covenant  play a meaningful part in healing the wounds that currently mar the Communion.  The Covenant process as been a partial sticking plaster but as Provinces now move close to the ratification or rejection of the Covenant it is a plaster that is coming unstuck. 

Also in recent days we have seen the Covenant rejected in New Zealand, and it is now highly likely that it will be rejected there are the Provincial level, because it fails to attend to the special make up of the Church and its governance that gives the Maori significant autonomy.  Some have claimed the Covenant is key to re-establishing the Anglican Communion without the inherited structures of power from the Colonial past, although I can’t really see how or where it does this – but how ironic it is that the Province that has done the most to re-model itself healed of that past is unable to accept the Covenant. Once the Covenant is death and buried perhaps we should ask our Brothers and Sisters in New Zealand for a lesson in how to live together with unity and diversity, with dignity and respect.

Weekend directed by Andrew Haigh

Weekend

One of the interesting things about this film is while it is a ‘gay’ film there is an ordinariness about the characters.  The main character, Russell, living in a tower block furnished in charity shop chic is a highly unusual depiction of a gay man.  It is rare to see working class gay man on screen, and when they do appear it is usually in the context of some major issue like them being a rent boy or an abuse victim.  While Russell is not without ‘issues’, they are low level everyday angst - his characterisation of himself as ‘fine’ rings true.

Glen, the other half of the film, perhaps has bigger issues – but again these are the ordinary feelings of a failure to launch, in his twenties he hopes to be an artist but had clearly become stuck in a rut with the growing realisation that youthful dreams might not be coming true.

They talk and argue about the nature of relationships, and particularly the desirability of ‘gay’ marriage, but this is not really what the film is about – by placing these two people with differing views sparing against each other the film avoids taking either view as an ‘agenda’.

It is a slow paced film, with lingering shots which at times hold you uncomfortably in the midst of the intimate moments which in the early days (hours) of a relationship can be so tense. 

It can hold its head up well as it finds its place in the long pedigree of British Kitchen Sink dramas. 

I wonder at the 18 certification of the film, this will be due to both the sex and the drugs.  The drug use ‘deserves’ an 18 because it is recreational and inconsequential – it would not do to allow impressionable young people to see that reasonably well adjusted people who are successfully holding down jobs take coke and smoke joints.  I am less clear about the sex, where is the line that makes this an 18 while there seems to be plenty of romping in the average 15? But it is interesting to think about whether the depictions of  either activity are integral to the film – given Glen’s rants about the public expressions of gay sex and relationships it would have been incredulous for the film to shy away from their sex. But what about the drugs, perhaps you could have left them out but they do seem to be a token of authenticity which would have been lost if rather than having another line they had had another cup of tea.   

The Invention of Tradition Edited by E Hobsbawm and T Ranger

The Invention of Tradition (Canto)

This is a classic text, one that was referred to often in various contexts while I was an undergraduate and which a decade latter I have finally got round to reading.  So it is in some ways hard to judge it as I have knew largely what the point the collection makes for years and in the (almost) 30 years since its publication the ideas have been accepted and built upon - in many places where this collection scratches the surface and suggests more research is needed those gaps have now been fully explored.

The key issue that the collection points out is that many of the social rituals which we take as ancient are in fact recent inventions - for example those attached with the British Monarchy while seeming to go back to the earliest of days turn out often to have been made for television, and the most familiar example, the Scotsman in his clan tartan kilt and bagpipes, is an invention of the Victorians, particularly when worn by a lowland Scots.

The collection is well written and for those unfamiliar with the territory it would remain a great place to start, but for me the most interesting part comes in the last essay where Eric Hobsbawn beginning to look at Europe in a comparative way.  Here the question starts to be asked about why the invented traditions of the British Monarchy seem to have had a great part in ensuring its continuance other European Monarchs despite being equally inventive have been swept away.

Thinking about the Church, which from the highest incense swinging Catholic to the ultra-reformed house church is heavily constructed on traditions, this idea of invention is really helpful.  A great deal of time and energy is spent trying to find the authentic practice of the Church - so we can model ourselves on the worship of the early Church - but the invention of tradition, I think, allows us to bypass this.  We can abandon the 'authentic' because it is an impossible goal and instead ask the more pertinent question "What do our traditions say about us?"  If your ritual practice unlocks the truth of the Gospel then it is of little consequence if it is 2000 years in the making or new this Sunday - the meaning is more important than the origin.

Twenty Thousand Saints by Fflur Dafydd

Twenty Thousand Saints

While this is a Winner of the Prose medal at the National Eisteddfod is in not a novel without flaws - for example twice we are given insight in different character's minds by their bowl movements (or lack of them) however while this could have been developed into a theme it isn't, these two isolated moments are either end of the book remain undeveloped, like an idea she had but never got to working up.

I also wonder it Fflur has ever meet a nun or an archaeologist as while both are central characters in the book both were the cause for a significant suspension of disbelief in order to get through it as their "professional practice" bore such little resemblance to the nuns or archaeologists that I have met.

These notes of caution should not put you off - it is an engaging book, which creates a vivid and claustrophobic picture of island life.  It shows how petty and how loving people can be in such a small and clearly bounded community.  It is at heart a love story between two people who come to the island and to each other in part as escape from their existing love-less relationships.  The believability of these relationships, which had gone on for years in a steady 'compliance' and mild discontent, is troubling as it means they follow a pattern that is observable often, how many people do you encounter who are going through the motions of love to the point where they have forgotten (or maybe never known) what the real thing is like.

The question the book asks is whether peoples motives in seeking out places like Bardsey is more to do with what they are running from than what they are running towards - and if you deny you are running away it seems somehow you will never truely escape.  

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie

They came to Baghdad (Crime Club series)

Reading this some what battered Crime Club copy - a first edition from 1951 - with its musty bookish smell helps one to remember it is a period piece and so Christie should not be judged too harshly for some of the prejudices this work betrays (that is not to suggest that we should excuse her entirely - just remember some ideas that are beyond the pale now were common currency then).

While the settling is Baghdad this is almost entirely a European story - of the main characters only 2 are non-western, one a paper thin stereotype of a comic hotelier, the other a fanatical but seemingly junior member of the organisation that is to be defeated.

It is a stange mix - the basic plot is more typical of Ian Flemming than Christie - with a secret global organisation set of establishing a new world order - it is a 'big' story but the main character, Victoria, the accidental detective is all Christie, breaking the global conspiracy by turns with fanstical lies and all the plucky 'jolly hockey sticks' gusto she can manage and so it is cut down to a light read.

Without one of her big name 'detectives' this is in many ways a refreshing outing with Christie although it would still be hard to argue against a charge of "formulaic".    

Hector's Talent for Miracles by Kitty Harri

Hector's Talent for Miracles

This is a book found through it's review in Planet magazine and it has as a backdrop the link between Wales and Spain forged by a miner who went to fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.  This might seem to be a little off putting - the worry that this is an 'issue' based plot with all the creaking wooden characters that generally come along with it.  However this is not to any real extent a book 'about' the Civil War - the Civil War is a backdrop and like the eldery matriarch around which it revolves its time is passing.  The question is whether that passing will be a peaceful or a tormented one.

The main theme of the book is in fact the corrupting effect of silence - that central matriarch is a Nun who was raped during the war, she has no one to share the pain of that event and so is eaten up by it and the shame she feels.  This shame not only effects her, but her daughter conceived during the rape and on to her grandson.  The bitterness prevents them from blossoming until those final days of her live when daughter and grandson break free and live without the shame.

The 'Welsh' part to the plot, a granddaughter looking for the miner grandfather who went to fight and was lost is a far less interesting side of the book - there is little of the intensity of the Spanish side.  Compared with the struggle of the Spanish characters to reconcile themselves with real crimes our Welsh heroine seems self-indulgent.  If this was a deliberate feature of the book, to contrast the national histories and question if the amount of term Welsh commentators spend soul searching, this would have been an elegant and enriching twist. However I think this reading is entirely accidental and so it becomes a weakness.

Despite this last criticism the book as a whole remains engaging with the essence of believability about the characterisation that allows you to become a part of a story which draws you forward as a thriller would turning the page to find out just how things will work themselves out.  

Tomorrow: A Conservationist's View of the Future by Oswald Barraclough

The Conservation Society

This pamphlet published in 1977 begins with a depressingly contemporary air "The world, or at least the Western World, is in crisis; this, at least, is certain.  The Financial system is in disarray... Economically, we are in the middle of the worst depression for 40 years, and there is little sign of any end to it... So bad have things become that in most industrial countries groups of individuals, desparing of getting any sort of satisfaction out of our present society, are trying to opt out of modern life..."

However most of the predictions that follow have not been lived out - the whole account is based on the eminent crippling of 'modern' society due to the rises in fuel costs limiting transport of goods and people - and yet while fuel prices have continued to rise over the last 30 years they have not resulted in the changes Barraclough expected.  While food prices have risen in the last year or two they are still relatively lower than 1977, industry has become increasingly globalised rather than localised, and every aspect of consumption has become yet more "throw out". It is not Barraclough's long life goods leading to a 'Chippendale in every home' but Ikea and Primark than have won the nations hearts. 

It is an interesting account but not only is it unfulfilled it is also perhaps misguided (even for a treehugger like me) as the road to the 'Conservation Economy' is paved with massive state intervention and a heavy tax regime, and some ideas that seem simply crazy - like the replacement over the course of a century of the entire 'historic' housing stock of the UK with new energy efficient homes, on the belief that this would not only be achievable be would also unlock a net saving in energy and resources.

 

Sixteen Shades of Crazy

Sixteen Shades of Crazy

This is a really impressive piece of writing which takes you deep into the lives and the world of the characters.  It is also a troubling vision, a world of disappointment and moral ambiguity made painful because of its pathos and realism.

Set in a small post-industiral community in the Welsh valleys it captures the lives of a group who but for the hand of fate could have been the cast of 'Friends'.  It is in particular the story of three women - they are each an archetype, one a mother, one a business women, and one a creative idealist.

The character Sian is perhaps the most tragic, as the picture of devoted motherhood becomes the annihilation of any sense of self, her existence defined only by the care she gives to the children and to her husband.  When that care goes into self destruct the destruction is total.  There may be many with a "post-feminist" lookout who are troubled by this part of the story, who would want to claim to be a mother (and even a wife) is a source of fulfilment rather than the prison cage of Sian's life. Sian reminded me on the winner of this year's "Great British Bake-Off" who had married young and raised a brood of men - core to her identity was her ability to provide for her family - to feed them well - and so her success (or failure) in the bake-off seemed to cut more deeply into her identity than any other contestant. There is perhaps some middle-class guilt as we try not to pity those who are happy with, in our eyes, such limited horizons. 

The other two women both break this mould, rejecting family life or domestic roles - however as both  find 'success' in their own terms off the back of drugs money they are hardly ones to be held up as role-models for "the Sisterhood".  They are attractive, in a kind of hypnotic way, but it is hard to see either of them as truly 'likeable'.

I Spy by Joan Peake

I-Spy

This fairly short story is told through the eyes of Myra, a school girl in Cardiff during the Blitz, and is interesting because it shows that even in wartime most of the drama is of an 'ordinary' domestic nature.

One aspect I found powerful was that the descriptions of the air raids because they were evocative of both the boredom of time spent in a shelter and the terror and helplessness when the raids were actually close at hand.

There is an air of Enid Blyton about the story when the gang of children think that they are on to a spy - but I wouldn't see that as essentially a criticism, and even if that worries you it should be noted that the plot is surrounded by complex and messy family life giving a mark of realism that Blyton would never of allowed to muddy her work. 

Where Eagles Dare by Alistair Maclean

Where Eagles Dare

I am a big fan of the film and so picked up the "Companion Book Club" edition of the book at the local Oxfam shop because I think it is interesting to see where the iconic nature of the film came from, how much Maclean's original story, how much the film's Director, and how much the clearly stella performances of Burton and Eastwood. 

Reading it however much credit is due Maclean you can not ignore the power of Burton and Eastwood in the those central roles Smith and Schaffer.  The Smith and Schaffer of the book never quite manage the same intense relationship, but in other ways the book does have greater power in the story.  The film is unashamedly all action and so it is full of explosions, and great as they are in the judgement of an action movie they at time that masks the true tension of the story. I have watched the film at least a dozen times and still found reading the book a part of me wasn't sure it Smith and Schaffer would make it out alive. 

The biggest difference from the film is the great value that the book's characters place on human life.  In the film, as in all action movies, dozen of unnamed foot soldiers find themselves either blown-up or mowed down. Yet in the book these same soldiers are tied up rather than shot, and at one point Smith risks has own life to go back an untie a soldier who would otherwise have victim to a later diversionary fire the heroes have started.  This results in a clear message, the deeply honourable nature of the mission, and particularly of the otherwise cold and ruthlessly calculating Smith, and the contrasting deep dishonour of the traitors who Smith kills or allows to die without a second thought.  Smith will not kill the 'honest' German Soldier in cold blood despite them being enemy combatants but clearly he views the double agents as no longer residing in the land of honourable men.  This is not just the difference in the medium of story telling, it is positively part of the characters Maclean has written, part those who made the film either missed or choose to ignore.      

The Late Medieval English College Edited by Clive Burgess and Martinn Heale

The Late Medieval English College and its Context

Ever since reading Edmon Duffy's the magisterial  The Stripping of the Altars I have been increasingly interested in the character of religious life in the run up to the Reformation, and this collection of essays is a valuable contribution to our understanding.

The "College", in its various expressions, sits between the familiar monasteries of the great religious orders  and the 'parish' church.  It seems to have often been overlooked, despite being the origin of many institutions which continued through the reformation, and particularly in the case of the educational Colleges, to endure even to the present day.

In common with most collections, the different writers take different perspectives and some will engage you more than others depending on your own personal interests. One of the essays I found most fascinating was the final one, which narrated the final few years of the Collegiate Church at Fotheringhay, and how despite the earlier suppression of the monasteries it was far from clear that the Colleges would meet the same fate.  There were attempts by the Master at Fotheringhay to show them embracing the theology of the Reformation and to make the most of the connection the College had with the Royal Family to try and secure its future.  Yet with the coming of the boy King and the dominance of the Puritan party these efforts came, in the end, to nothing.

Overall this collection further proves that religious life in pre-Reformation England a very rich tapestry, in places in dire need of radical reform but elsewhere full of holiness and of colour that was perhaps needlesly sacrificed to the fervour of the age.

Jesus Mass by The Experience of Worship Project

I attended a Jesus Mass, in Latin according to the late Medieval Use of Salisbury at Salisbury Cathedral on 6th October.  It was organised as part of the The Experience of Worship in Late Medieval Cathedral and Parish Church research project at Bangor University.

They asked us to provide thoughts on the service and so I thought that I would share my here too.

While not a regular worshipper at cathedral I have on a number of occasions while staying for courses at Sarum college between to early morning Eucharist in the Trinty Chapel - it is a space that I am familiar with and which I love (for me it is Salisbury Cathedral - I think I have only once been to a service at the cathedral anywhere else but the trinity chapel) and there were a number of familiar faces in the congregation.  What this did was make it very easy to encounter the mass as worship - it was in a space I have worshipped in before and I was with people I had worshipped with before.

Before the service as we were all sat around the edge the space felt quiet empty, but the moment we were told to stand up we spread out and filled the space and I think that you were perhaps more aware of the other members of the congregation than you are safely separated from one another by rows of chairs.

There were a few people who moved around but most, including myself, seemed to stay put - I guess this is partly because the service was a one off and held our attention in a way that at the time an ordinary daily mass wouldn't. If it was your daily fare you would have been able to wonder off for a bit knowing how long to be away and yet still get back in time for the consecration or the peace etc.

There were a few bits of the service that I recognised from the choral use of Latin texts in contemporary services but mostly I had no idea what the actual words mean - however except in a couple of places I was able to follow the structure from the order in the booklet and so while not being able to tie down particular words knew what that bit of the service was about.

It was interesting that for the most part the focus was on the singers not the altar or priest - and in most cases when the priest said/sung anything it was in dialogue with the singers - so overall it was much less priest-centric than I expected.

It was also a lot more understated than I expected even for a Low Mass - there were no more and perhaps less ritual actions than in a contemporary Eucharist.

The silent Canon was interesting - given that I didn't really understand the words being sung I had to concentrate was hard to pick out the different parts of the service - but this part which had no sound at all stood in clear contrast so I knew 'this bit is significant'.

The peace was interesting - I felt very self-conscious - what kind of kiss do you give it? Should it be a kiss like that on the cheek of maiden aunt or on the lips of girlfriend or what? Also I was aware of how new the Pax was - it lacked the patina than they must have got from a thousand kisses.  This was also true of the Pyx - as it was brought in the bit of brain that always trys to put you off thought - "oh look a little Christmas cake" it was so crisp and white. 

Kneeling for such a long period was no more uncomfortable than sitting for the same period on the average church pew, (and many pews seem to have been built to cripple anyone above 5foot who trys to kneel in them so it was more comfortable than I often find myself when kneeling for shorter periods in church)

I kissed the ground in last gospel almost on instinct on the cue of the singers doing the same - without any context for why we were doing it at that moment - but it seemed a meaningful action and I wasn't worried that I didn't know what the meaning was.

Why God won't go away by Alister McGrath

Why God Won't Go Away: Engaging with the New Atheism

This book's title is prehaps a little misleading as it is not really about God at all, it is about "New Atheism", and in particular the reasons why "New Atheism's" arguments against God and against religion fail.

McGrath is careful to draw a distinction between "New Atheism", which is made up of polemical attacks on religion, such as Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion', and more classical Atheist and Agnostic formulas, and so while the book concludes in favour of the probability of a God it does not deny the coherence of the classical Atheist position. McGrath tries very hard to avoid falling into the trap of becoming polemical in his own unpicking of Dawkins et al's standpoint - however he often fails and the overall argument of the book is thus diminished (this is especially true whenever he refers to New Atheist "foot soldiers" of the bloggisphere).


The core argument is that the New Atheists conflate empirical science with rationality - they deny that you can rationally assert anything that can not be proved through empirical scientific observation. McGrath methodically shows this depends not only a misunderstanding of rationality but also on pretty poor science.  He also rejoices in the great irony is the perhaps in the last decade, when New Atheist writers have found fame, "science" has become much more disposed to the possibility of 'God' than at any time in the last century.

The other key area of weakness McGrath focuses on is the New Atheists failure to show a positive case for human society without God and/or religion, they are defined by their attacks on religion not the offering of an alternative.  The fact that all the examples of 'officially' atheist societies, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and China under the Cultural Revolution, were characterised by far greater levels of violence and cruelty than most societies with religions and Gods is explained away by classifying Communism and Nazism as religions.  While this might be a fair assessment we are left without an example of a religionless society.  The evidence points to human beings being inherently religious creatures and so the burden of proof must be on the New Atheists to show humanity can exist in a state recognisable as 'humanity' without being religious about something - and so far they have failed to come up with the goods.

Pigsties and Paradise by Liz Pitman

Pigsties and Paradise - Lady Diarists and the Tour of Wales, 1795-1860

This slim volume (less than 150 pages) manages to give a really rich encounter with early 'tourists' to Wales.  Liz Pitman manages to balance the extracts and snippets from the diaries with bridging narratives that give the contaxt while allowing the women's voices to come through - and the more of the women's own words you got the better the story became.

It is mostly an education in the lives of 19th Century Women but it also reveals a Wales that was more 'foreign' to these travellers than almost anywhere you would visit on holiday today - in journeys that took longer, by necessity, than my recent tour of China.  There is also the clear evolution of the tourist industry, as the women often visit the same place and each finds it slightly more accommodating than the last.  The story leaves off with the coming of the railway and the revolution of mass travel, a sensible breaking point. 

While the Wales we hear about is interesting the real interest is the women themselves, and while one mustn't forget that they are privileged individuals they still tell a story of women in society that is very different from much of the feminist critique of the past.  This may largely be due to the fact that these women for the most part lived before Victorian moralism, and particularly its expression in larbour laws, divided 'work' and 'home' or 'public' and 'private' and firmly confined women to the private home. These are gung-ho and zesty characters, who are being endlessly rain on (it is Wales they are visiting) but who hardly ever let themselves get down hearten and are ready for the next ruin to admire or mountain to climb. It makes me feel embarrassed about the amount of time we spent in Welsh tea shops whenever the sky was slightly grey!  

The Night Lives on by Walter Lord

The Night Lives on

I have had this book on my shelf for at least 13 year (ie since it was published) how it is only now living in Southampton and with the centenary of the Titanic disaster fast approaching that I have got around to reading it.

Southampton's relationship with the Titanic is a strange one, perhaps no more strange that the global obsession with Titanic, just more intense.  We are busy building a new museum dedicated to the Titanic - hopefully the it will be ready for the all important April anniversay - the council promise it will be open on time, however the builders haven't promised it will be finished. It is a shame that this one ship can eclipse the rest of Southampton's history (not even just its maritime history) - surely tourists should be more interested in the city's link to the Mayflower a vessel famous for go one better than Titanic and getting all the way to America, or the Flying Boats which opened the way to mass airtravel, or the Spitfire - but it is clear that they aren't.

Walter Lord does in places reflect on the nature of the obsession with the Titanic and how the story so fixed in our minds came into existence.  There is a lot of myth busting in this book - repeatedly he shows that while we can not be sure exactly what did happen the one thing we are sure did not happen was what you saw in the films (even the films that have come after this book).  It brings to mind the Greenbelt event by Ikon "you know the one about the Titanic - it was made up!"

The book, writing shortly after she was found, is also interesting in the exploration of the various attempts to find the Titanic and the schemes to raise her, what drove these mad ideas to often gain a level of credibility.  And I found another connection, one of the great schemer Douglas Woolley was from Baldock where I was living when I first got this book - a fact I didn't know at the time.

A book that was worth the wait...

Treasures of Heaven at the British Museum

Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe

This is really about the exhibition more than the book - although the book is lavishly illustrated and at 250+ large format pages justifies the price tag.

Relics are one of those things within Christianity which became a bête noire for reformers and within Catholic circles remain a bit of a sore spot - while the Church still teaches their validity most Catholic would rather talk about something else.  And so it is interesting that the British Museum decided to put on such an exhibition, in step with the National Gallery's The Sacred Made Real a year or so ago, - is it a token of our secularisation that we can now look upon these relics and objectively consider their historical importance as we do the Museum's Eypgtian Mummies and Witch-Doctors Masks. 


Most of the Reliquaries were empty but a significant number were not and this means that the experience of the exhibition had two distinct layers for me. For the most part those reliquaries that were empty just sparked the usual thoughts of craftsmanship, or the changing fashions, all the things 'art' is meant to do for you. But those where the relic was in place triggered a different set of responses - the first and most challenging was about whether one thought the relic real.  Most of the reliquaries contained a part of the True Cross, but the ubiquity of fragments of the True Cross in Medieval Europe was one of the great scandals that brought down the whole culture of relics. If I was in the presence of a part of the True Cross then it could not be anything other than profound but if I was in the presence of a fabrication then I would hardly bear to look upon it.  The trouble is that there is not, at least as a Catholic, a straight line between the genuine and the fake.  You never knowingly buy a fake and in the context of a faith that believes Sunday by Sunday that bread and wine are transformed one should not dismiss the possibility that generations of sincere devotion and prayer could turn a sliver of old tea chest into the 'True Cross'. And so I looked upon the tiny scrap of wood, knowing that specialists would tell me the tree it comes from could never grow in Jerusalem and this tree in particular grew a thousand plus year after Christ had died, and couldn't help but be humbled because in every way that mattered it was the tree on which my Lord had died for me. 

This is why many Catholics would rather change the subject than be drawn to take a position, not because  they disagree with the Church's claim of validity nor that they disagree with Science's evidence of impossibility, but because they understand that it is only by first believing that holding these two views simultaneously becomes even remotely plausible.  And all our mission action plans tell us that we have to come up with something better than remote plausibility.

Jacob's Ladder by Henery Gee

Jacob's Ladder: The History of the Human Genome

Gee takes us from Aristotle right to the edge of current research into the Genome in a very readable style.  It is interesting that in some ways his project echoes that of the Revd Kendall which I was reading in parallel with this book, as both organise vast periods of history into a fundamentally coherent story.  As well as the science there is great interest in the way in which theories competed for acceptance, and how despite Darwin's celebrated status his ideas did not come out of nowhere and were not really there widely accepted at the time, and it was only with the much later establishment of genetics as the mode of variation that his ideas of natural selection were about to win the day. 

For me it was the first part of the book with its historical focus that was most interesting, the second part that explained the current theories of genetic was informative but not so engaging.  It was interesting to learn about the importance of networks within the genome and how allows the relatively small (albeit c.35K) number of genes to determine the seemingly infinite variety of human existence.

Gee concludes the book looking to the future and the possibilities of human manipulation of our own genome - he paints a stark picture in which we are meddling in something we do not fully understand - in particular we are no where near understanding what it is that give human's their 'humanity' and so we run the risk of creating more perfect physical bodies but disrupting the network so that we create super human zombies who lack "the spark of humanity" as Gee puts it.

Finally on p250 out of 251 you get a reference to Jacob's Ladder - he has titled the book after it so you think it must be important - yet it is oblique in the vision God promises Jacob that his descendents will inherit the ground on which he sleeps - so Gee asks the question "But does this licence extend to becoming angels ourselves?" Yet this does not seem to fit with the biblical text at all - for a start God's promise is local, it is a promise of the land of Israel not a general one, and how does possession of the land imply mastery such that we can remake ourselves.  God seems always to set limits, for example after the Flood he extends Adam's permission to feed on plants to animals - yet he tell Noah "I will demand an accounting from every animal".  I realise that I am making a mountain out of a mole hill in terms of the content of the book but Gee did use Jacob's Ladder as the title implying somehow he thinks this point runs through the whole - and I would largely agree with the point it is just an odd choice of metaphor.

A Short History of the Church of England by the Revd J F Kendall

I picked up this book published in 1910 for the local Oxfam shop mainly because it is "Illustrated with direct colour photographs taken at the Church Pageant" showing the delightful Edwardian fantasy in which Notables dressed up and reacted the major scenes of the history of the Church in the Bishop of  London's Garden at Fulham.

As a 'history' Kendall account is of limited merit, however as a window on to the mind of an Edwardian Churchman and as a treatise in defense of "that middle yet catholic position which is the glory of Anglicanism" it is insightful and engaging.

We learn from Kendall that the Church of England existed first as an independent National expression of the Catholic faith - but this independence was sold down the river in the early middle ages by the political expediency of Kings needing the assistance of Popes to secure their position against internal or external rivals coupled with bungling or self-interested Archbishops.

Therefore when we get to Henry VIII, Kendall shows that the throwing off the supremacy of the Pope was not a revolution but a restoration of the English Church's former and true identity - and the 1549 English Prayer book a suppression of medieval additions in favour of a purified Catholic worship. It was the action of Puritans after the death of Henry that broke with Catholic doctrine, only to be restored by Elizabeth, and then again in 1662 following further Puritan spoiling.  The Act of Toleration is significant to Kendall as while it ends generations of destructive religious conflict it is an admission that the National Church could not hold within itself all the [Christian] people of the nation. 

It would be interesting to learn what Kendall made of disestablishment in Wales and the debacle of the 1928 Prayer Book neither would have helped his case.  And I think he would have his work seriously cut out to paint today's Church of England as either the National Church or the authentic English expression of Catholic faith - but maybe a man would could read a thousand years of history as building inevitably to the Oxford Movement would be up to that task.

Greenbelt 2011 - Padraig O Tuama on Our Lady of Greenbelt

Padraig O Tuama is one of my favourite Greenbelt speaker - coming originally for Cork he his the most beautiful soft Irish accents and honestly I would go and listen to him if he was reading the telephone directory.  It is therefore an extra special treat that what he actually has to say is delightful too.

This talk on Our Lady of Greenbelt should be compulsory listening for anyone who thinks that either Mary can be sidelined or that devotion to Mary is corrupt and should be suppressed.

It had strong echos of a talk Nicola Slee gave on her Book of Mary as both Padraig and Nicola were trying to rescue Mary from the sanitised and perfected imagine the Church too often uses in place of the real woman Mary was.

Padraig drawing on his Irish Catholic childhood began with a poem about Mary turning up as a parish rosary group and explored with gentle comedy how the group would react.  This was a jumping off point for a number of themes. One was the issue of Mary's Virginity, he challenged the conflation of virginity with purity.  Being a virgin has limited at best use as a predictor of someones purity or holiness.  He also challenged the public ownership of another's sexuality that calling her 'The Virgin Mary' involves - this is also true of the old fashioned term 'consecrated virgin' for a Nun, why make the primary designator of somebody in fact the one thing they are not doing.  As a Gay man he also points to the dangers when the Church decides that it is entitled to know and discuss and judge the private sexually lives of some of its members (and the Church has always hypocritically only been interested in 'some' of its members sex lives).

Padraig also addressed the 4 major doctrines of the Catholic Church concerning Mary, highlighting that the truth that each attests to (when properly expressed) is a truth not primarily about Mary but about Christ.  Although when it comes to the Assumption of Mary he express the view that it was perhaps unfortunate that this had been raised (only in 1950) to the status of an infallible dogma - however it has a long and venerable history in the Church and in itself should not be the flash point of division between Catholics and Protestants that it so often is. 


Coming home I found the Walsingham Review on the doormat, and Walsingham is often the home of the wrong sort of devotion to Mary and so it was refreshing to find Bishop Lindsay Urwin using the imaginative writings of Erasmus to make a point not a million miles away from Padraig. Erasmus has Mary say "You shall not turn me out unless you turn my Son out too, whom I hold in my arms.  I won't be pulled away from him.  You shall either throw us both out or leave us both unless you have in mind to have a Church without a Christ." - This is a Mary full of bile, the Mary who remained at the foot of the cross while future apostles ran away, the Mary when encountered as a real person rather than a porcelain doll who tells us of depths of humanity and so of Christ.

Greenbelt 2011 - Andrew Tate - Outerspace - Jo Swinney

Monday began with Andrew Tate talking under the title "All families are psychotic" - a great title for a talk that turned out to be about something else - he, tying in with the overall theme of the festival,  focused much more on the idea of 'home' in literature. I have made a talk my Andrew a feature of Greenbelt over the last couple of years, he is an engaging speaker and ranges widely over both literary classics and more 'popular' output including significant reference to The Simpsons.  It is interesting to hear about themes you never noticed in books you have read.  There is also a sort of game of literary bingo - to see how many of the countless books he touches upon you have read (or even heard of), occasionally as you look round at the audience all nodding knowingly at the obscurest of references and you are sure that they are all liars. 

After this I went to the Outerspace Communion service, it perhaps like the Catholic Mass appeals to me partly for its ordinariness - there is no great radicalism in the liturgy.  There must have been a little over 150 people there, and it is great to be able to share uncomplicated, unqualified, worship together with such a group of Gay, Lesbian, and Trans people.

From there I had to run to catch next session which was  Jo Swinney talking about depression - she spoke fairly briefly and then people were invited to share thoughts and experiences of which there were lots. Some were heart and/or gut wrenching others.  Many pick up on the anecdote Jo had shared of people at Church wanting to know if she was better because they had prayed for her - this is not only deeply insensitive but betrays a complete misunderstanding of the nature of healing ministries, what is intriguing is what it is about depression that allows people to ask the question which you somehow can't imagine being posed to a cancer sufferer.  It was quiet an intense session and of all the things to do at Greenbelt probably left me with the most things to think about, to wrestle with.

Greenbelt 2011 - Accord - Brain McLaren - Jim Cotter

After a very enjoyable mug of tea in the sunshine Sunday evening began in true Anglican style with Choral Evensong. It was sung for us by Accord who promised Evensong with a twist - if you come expecting this to be some kind of radical in your face re rendering then you would have been somewhat disappointed.  The main twist was that the Magnificat was sung with words other than Crammer's and to the tune of Amazing Grace.  The other twist was the Choir members were conducting the service in its entirety, which included one of them giving a Provisional Blessing at the end.  There isn't anything wrong with that as such, Evensong can and often is conducted by members of the Laity, but the lack of someone acting as a minister separate from the Choir blurred the boundary between Divine Service and a Concert.  Also given that there was a small handful of Priests there (and that is just the ones known personally to me) it seems a missed opportunity to have given a Provisional Blessing rather than wheeling one of them out to give the Blessing.

After Evensong I went to hear Brian McLaren on Naked Spirituality - I am not sure exactly what I was expecting, perhaps a Christian retelling of Gok Wan's How to Look Good Naked. I arrived to to find the Big Top full to it 3200 capacity and not a lover of crowds I hovered at the edge and reversed judgement.  He began and it became clear what was on offer was a fairly straight forward reworking not of Gok Wan but of Fowler's stages of faith development, admittedly Brain was only going to give us 4 compared with Fowler's 7.  Also there didn't seem to be anything particular to commend the title 'Spiritual' and so half way through stage 1 I left.

Jim Cotter has produced a collection of RS Thomas's poems accompanied with a DVD in which Jim reads the poems against the backdrop of the places RS Thomas was writing about. The session, which was a viewing of parts of the DVD, was hosted by Jim's two collaborators in the project as Jim himself was unable to attend due to ill health - clearly a major disappointment for many there who hoped the Venerable Cotter's shadow might fall across them. There was a gentleness about the coming together of RS Thomas' words and the images of the Llyn - images of the Llyn, as noted in the DVD, in uncharacteristically sunny and tranquil moments.  Missing the wildness of the land you also tended to miss the ragged layer of RS's poetry.  He is a complex man and his place in Welsh literary and cultural life is contested, encounters with RS Thomas should never be simple - you have to contend with the man, with the words, with those who claim him as a hero and those who denounce his as the epitome of every cultural wrong. I would need to spend more time with Jim's collection to really find if it is part of the complex journey.      

Greenbelt 2011 - Communion - Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies - Michael Mitton

On Sunday morning the programme is cleared to allow everyone to go to a massive 'Communion' at the mainstage.  The Communion, in my experience divides Greenbelter into two groups - those who feel obliged to go and those who don't.  For those of us in the second group this is time better spent catching up on sleep, allowing all the experiences of the weekend so far to settle in the brain, time to wonder aimlessly and get a coffee.  I struggle to recall anyone every talking about the Communion as their highlight of the weekend.  The major problem is that it is an "Ecumenical" celebration of the worse kind - not a celebration rooted in one tradition but open to all, but a celebration denuded of any thing that might offend, it is traditionless, soulless.
As I wondered contentedly this year I overheard one sentence of the service - the leader explained "and now we break the bread - and one of the things that we remember is that Jesus died for us.." - this set me off on a rant 'one of the things' - ONE OF THE THINGS - the moment of fraction is the moment of Jesus' death, of the earthquake, of the ripping of the temple curtain, for me a moment of singular meaning.  I will happily to admit this might be a particular theology of the Eucharist, but the problem with the Greenbelt Communion is that it is based on the belief that we can ignore the differences but leaves it bringing ten thousand people together either to do their own thing or to do nothing at all.  

With the Communion over the programme restarted and I managed to get myself in the right place at the right time for Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies . I was at Van Mildert in Durham with Harry and from the first night on the corridor as he played Brown Eye Girl there was always an anarchic joyfulness about him but there was always a slight worry that graduation would bring a pin-striped suit and a job in the city.  While it did that to many of the great rebels I knew in Durham, Harry is just the same as he always was.  It was great to be in the packed venue, packed with people and packed with joy - Harry and his Wellies are one of my favourite bands - they are full of life, characterful without affectation.

Now on a roll of right places and right times I heard Michael Mitton . The talk was called "The homing instinct" and while I enjoyed listening to him, he has the voice of  Nicholas Parsons, I will be honest as say that I can't really remember the content of the talk - maybe I will have to download it from the Greenbelt website and listen again!

 

Greenbelt 2011 - Ikon

Giving Ikon a post of their own because I thought their 'event' was fabulous - ‘Based On A True Story’.
They bring together music, poetry, prose, movement, costume into a total immersive experience - you are lost in the encounter. And yet some of the power is that they don't take it too seriously - and are willing to puncture an intense moment with a witty twist or yet a cheap pun.

Ikon have a reputation for a certain level of shock value - one Greenbelt event, I am told, included a prolonged sequence in which a Bible was torn page from page (perhaps it is a game to see if you can break that Greenbelt liberal - find the spot where they turn Pharisee and draw a line) - but this event was not in your face in quiet the same way and yet it was full of challenge.

It opened with the following:

Every Story Is Made Up

Every story is made up. Have you read ‘The BFG’? Roald Dahl? Yeah, it was made up. It’s a good story though. Every story is made up. Did you ever hear the one about the Moon Landing? 1969, man on the moon and all that. Yeah, it was made up. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. But the story you know is just a story that was made up. Just words… about an event. And I bet Neil Armstrong has a different story to you. It’s a good story though.

This really was 'the' point of the event - and as I have said I am a good post-modernist and so it is a point that falls easily into my ears.  When this is applied to conflicts it becomes an opportunity for liberation - Ikon applied to their native Belfast - conflicts, particularly those between neighbours, find much of their energy because the two sides tell different stories about the same event.  Greenbelt always has a lot going on about Palestine - and there is a conflict between people who have been telling stories for thousands of years and the power of the stories overwhelms any attempt to get to 'facts' or 'truth'. What is needed is a way to acknowledge that stories can be inreconsilable even when they speak of the very same event.

Greenbelt 2011 - London Catholic Worker - Keith Skene - Luke Bretherton

Saturday at Greenbelt started with a bit of a fail as I turned up a full 24 hours early for Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies only to have a second fail a couple of hours latter finding myself 24 hours early for Michael Mitton at which point I finally got the hand of the programme!

So the proper start of the day was Catholic Mass offered by London Catholic Worker an unreconstructed socialist expression.  This throw back to the politics and fashions of the last Seventies when encountered in the midst of Yummy Mummy liberalism of Greenbelt is quiet a tonic perhaps teaching us that things should be rough around the edges. After giving the chalices to the Eucharistic Ministers Fr Martin noticed a lack of Purificators and had to search in a brightly coloured satual from which he eventually retrieved some crumpled cloths which after inspecting for stains were felt suitable - and I thought back to Blesséd and knew if there had to be a choice it was the London Catholic Worker that I would choose.      

Next I found my way to a talk by Keith Skene who was speaking about "tribalism versus diversity" - he was an engaging speak and great example of the richness that we gain when people break out of their academic silo and speak across disciplines (well expect when their name is Dawkins!). Using his background in biology he illuminated a key discrepancy in the Darwinian theory of evolution - that while Darwin states that competition drives evolution research now shows that it is those times when competition drops (eg mass extinctions) when evolution going into over drive.  Having shown in biology competition does not occupy the role of positive driver usually credited it he asked he same question of human society and almost left it hanging in the air - avoiding pushing the metaphor to breaking point.

I then took up the role of groupie and went to hear Luke Bretherton who was one of the co-leader of the  MA I took at Kings a few years ago and was pleased to find several of my fellow students had also wound there way to the master's feet.  It was amazing to see him in jeans and t-shirt rather than the terrible cord suits that accompanied him to our classes and yet the energy was just as intense - carrying you along even when you have lost the plot of the talk struggling to keep up with the vast historical sweep he deploys to explain the present moment.

Greenbelt 2011 - Blesséd - Show of Hands - Outerspace - Jesus Arms

I have decided to share some thoughts about some of the stuff that I did at Greenbelt as being a good post-modernist I think all of life can be treated as "a text" and therefore can be read and so if I "read" it then it should feature in this blog...

First up was Blesséd an alt worship / fresh expression group described in the programme as "outrageously incarnational, rabidly Anglocatholic and wildly inclusive" who were offering Eucharist@home in the Big Top.  I find Blesséd a fascinating group as I strongly believe that a highly sacramental approach should work as a fresh expression and yet on the basis of this service I have serious doubts (to a lesser extent this is also true of their offering at last years Greenbelt).

The geography of the space clearly didn't do them any favours - the altar was up on the stage and behind a very solid crowd control barrier (think Laudian altar rails writ large) - but they didn't do themselves many favours either - as while the acolytes, crucifer, and thurifier came down into the main space for the entry procession the dozen or so Priests who were to concelebrate the mass didn't.  I can see no practical reason for this abnormal deviation from processional etiquette.

Another issue I found problematic was while there were some beautiful words spoken about brokenness and the gathering of the broken around the altar I struggled to connect the highly choreographed presentation with the pain and confusion we were being told was so central. This is partly the decontextualising of action that occurs when worship is taken to festival and offered as a company of strangers rather than as an outpouring of community life. Linked to this was one thing I found especially puzzling, which they did last year and again this year, is have sections of the liturgy prerecorded. Some of  it was, or at least had been made to sound like, that of a child but most of it was Fr Simon Ruddel the principle celebrant. I don't know what they thought this brought, but exchanging a the voice of a real person stood in the room for the disembodied prerecording of them certainly didn't help foster a feeling of connectedness.

As a final point of Blesséd, we were given pots of bubbles as we arrived and asked to blow them during the confession - the interpretation of this was not completely clear - were we to see that as the words of confession were spoken and we expelled air from our lungs into the bubbles so we also expelled our sinfulness?  But then the Big Tent slowly filling with beautiful bubbles was metaphorically filling with sin and that just doesn't seem to be the right metaphor at all.
 
After Blesséd I when over to see Show of Hands and really enjoyed their upbeat folky sound with just a little bit of politics sprinkled in.

Outerspace a group that comes together to provide stuff at Greenbelt about being a Gay Christian and the first session this year was about finding a Spiritual home - it took the form of a panel discussion with four of the members of the group sharing their personal experience of Church and how being gay had changed their relationship with it. For 3 of the 4 this involved them going on a journey to a different type of Church or beyond the boundaries of Church, for the other one it seemed while he had stayed put his home Church had been on a journey (with the metaphors of death and resurrection coming to mind).  It is always a privilege to hear people speak so openly on what are personal even intimate aspects of their lives.  One thing that was interesting was that  all 4 (two non-alined Evangelicals and two Roman Catholics) had had fairly intense experiences of Christianity within the home as well as at Church growing up - all mentioned "family prayers" for example.  So while I grow up in a Vicarage it was one in which the very idea of "family prayers" was treated with a mix of suspicion and ridicule, where we never said grace, and Morning Worship on Radio 4 was the only thing switched off more quickly than the Archers. Maybe this is the natural effect of having the Church next door - any praying that needed doing could be done quite easily there.  I think this isn't a question of right or wrong but understanding the seedbed of your faith tells you a lot about how to make it grow.

I think I should of course mention that the text most heavily read during Greenbelt was the Jesus Arms where not only do I love the beer but all the beautiful people with whom I talked such profound rubbish :)

the church as as life-giver and life destroyer by Nicholas Mosley

This extract is this week's Literary Companion to the Lectionary and it really spoke to me - I hope you find it thought provoking too.  

The rules in one sense are that which have been found to give framework, reference, order; that without which there can be no freedom because there could be nothing to be free within or free from, there could be no movement in a vacuum. But in another sense they are that which brings petrifaction and death.  In Christian terms it is the church, the institution, that perpetuates (is the manifestation of) the rules - both as life-giver and life destroyer.  In a sense the church is opposed to everything a free man stands for: it is that which Christ fought and which fought Christ: the denier of truth, the torturer of the honest, the servant of mammon. All this is too much felt now to go on about it: the concern of the church for power, respectability, vanity, money - its obsession with sexual morality and disregard for any other - all this, it is obvious to everyone except Christians, is just what stops other people being Christians and will go on doing so.  But still, opposed to this, there is preserved in the framework of the church (how else could it be preserved?) The truth of the story, the history, the art, the secret.  The church is that within which the possibilities of the freedom are held: through which is transmitted, beautifully, this experience.  (How else could it be preserved except in something so paradoxical?) Within the rigid and self-seeking church have been the things that have given the chance to alter everyone. 

The Woman at the window - Tweleve Stories by Emyr Humphreys

The Woman at the Window: click to buy on Amazon

This is a strong collection of short stories by a confident and accomplished writer.  It is perhaps unsurprising for a collection published in honour of the writer's ninetieth birthday that the theme is often reflective - it is peopled by those looking back on lives with a mix of fond recall and regret - while there is some darkness it is far from doom laden.

To quote the last paragraph of the final story which sums up the mood of the whole:
"History made me, but I'm no legend.  All I can do is accept the joke and carry on protesting.  Whether or not is means anything, without having any effect.  I shall never know, unless I find out after I stop breathing.  But at least it's my life.  It was given to me. I have no other."

These stories are little gems, tightly written and while covering only a dozen pages or so crafted as complete narratives. There is an exceptional  realism to the characters, with members of the older generation taking centre stage in most stories - not relegated to the 2-dimensional window dressing that is the case is so much fiction.

Soothing Music for Stray Cats by Jayne Joso

Soothing Music for Stray Cats

I found it hard to work out if I liked this book or not and I am still undecided.

The protagonist is in the midst of some kind of mental disturbance - himself suicidal he has to deal with the suicide of a childhood friend he has lost touch with.  Through this the book takes as a major theme the guilt felt by those around a suicide that they weren't able to prevent it.  This is challenging stuff and very easy to get wrong and yet Jayne Joso, in her debut novel, handles the material well.  This is a sensitive book clearly in tune with the despair and yet also the desperation to cling on to life that so often rub up against each other.


That said, while the general ark of the novel is commendable there were a number of things about the style that were weak and irritating.  For example the narrator/protagonist's roots in the generic 'North' are denoted by his use of 'me' instead of 'my'  - yet as a whole the story is not told in a dialect and this becomes a mere linguistic tick that simply serves to jar the reader not immerse them in a reality.   The is also heavy allusions to books and songs which I think hinder the narrative more than truly help it along or expanding it - the exchange of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino for Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf  (here described to indicate Northern charm as 'a bird') is a key event in the story yet for me, having read one and not the other, the significance of the exchange is lost.

 What I hope is that this is a glimpse of potential, a first novel that is a success not a triumph, and which will be followed up by better things to come.

Birches on a Day by Richard W. Halperin

Found in Planet 199

I walked through them in the usual dappled light,

They not turning but I, in the light, turning

Toward birches, as deeper and quieter I went,

Not falling but walking toward the cave where

Greenness lives. I’d known this wood before – over there

Under a tree (not a birch) Tolstoy reading

And Repin painting him reading, an old man

In loose white holding a book raised toward the light

That one associates with birches, I not in

Loose white and in fact I not – coming alone

From church after our wedding or whatever

The ceremony had been, you the usual

Dappled light drawing me on past the reading man,

As deeper and quieter we went, and all in all,

You, I, the reading man, the book, the day,

Were in the book; but not the birches.

The Garden by Garham Thomas

Found in Planet 199

End of another summer. The Leaves

Dry and thin, then fall, their dark

Curls the anatomy of an autumn.

Like light, the closures come and go:

A line glimpsed under the printed page

Or absence of the voice that asked

What you alone could give, but asked

The one time only. Soon the garden

Will revert to water. Daylight will hide

In its shrubbery, with only the ferns’

Geometry to save it. I shall remember

To guard my steps, before I re-enter

Kick off my boots for fear I print

Lead skeletons on the kitchen floor.

Exile by Richard North Patterson

Exile

This book is  Geenbelt 2011’s ‘Big Read’ – having finally dragged myself to end of it I am not only disappointed with the book but irritated with Greenbelt from encouraging me to read such drivel.

WARNING: the following does contain spoilers.

If you wanted a book to pass the time while lying on the beach this would be a reasonably acceptable offering but the idea, proffered by Greenbelt, that this was a work that would prompt and merit intelligent people discussing it is fanciful.

The book takes the conflict between Israeli and Palestinians, with the extensions of USA and Iran on either side, as the context for the drama, yet in this massive geopolitical scope it merely flounders.  The author feels the need to tell us a large amount of the ‘history’ of the conflict and so the hapless lawyer in the midst of the story elicits clunky monologues from various parties during his ‘investigations’.  This is one of the causes for the 699 page book being so flabbily written. I also think a strong editorial hand might have cut it by a third and perhaps polished it in something resembling a decent product.   

The book is one that should be filled with intense emotions – yet it is rather flat, we are too often told not shown what is being felt – for example on the trip to the Israel and the West Bank we are repeatedly told that it felt ‘like a different world’ without a vivid description of what this different world consisted of.

There was a major twist in the plot, which when it is finally revealed is a great relief to the reader as the frustration that everyone in the saga was so dim witted they were unaware of this twist was intolerable.  The lawyer and his lover had parted 13 years ago, and now she is back with a 12 year old daughter, the maths was hardly difficult.  This was also the ‘key’ to unlock what the author thought was the intractable puzzle of the rest of the plot.  So shocking was this twist believed to be that it revelation is spun out over 100 pages so we could keep up.

There are also points in which the plotting is weak – and the plot is all this book has going for it – there is the drama of the family and the global conspiracy, the two have become entangled in a symbiotic relationship but how did the threads first come to be twisted, perhaps the really interesting point in the story where a man manages to turn a plot to kill a Prime Minister into revenge against his unfaithful wife – this is never revealed.  

To be frank this book comes close to the category of the crass, as it invokes the Holocaust but it has nothing to say – there are some topics that if spoken of demand the best of speech and thought – not the poor or mediocre disposable ‘literature’ that Patterson gives us. 

The Customs of the Kingdoms of India by Marco Polo Translated by Ronald Latham

The Customs of the Kingdoms of India (Penguin Great Journeys)

I found this extract engaging for the turn of phrase and structure - ending each section with a dismissive "As there is nothing else worth noting, we will pass on to such and such", yet  it was clear that it had been dictated for after passing on from an area often there would a little later be some aside that returned you to a former place clearly as the recollection of it had just occurred to Marco Polo. 

That it was written some 700 years ago is a marvel as there are points at which the places some recognisable - in translating there must I am sure have been a certain amount of updating of place names but also perhaps also some adjustments to the idiom to make it more accessible to the modern reader - and that creates a weariness about just how much you are encountering Marco Polo's own voice.