Jaguars & Electric Eels by Alexander Von Humboldt

Jaguars and Electric Eels (Penguin Great Journeys)

This account of his journey across South America in the early years of the 19th Century is full of vivid incidents, and unlike many of the accounts in this Great Journey series I didn't find myself having to stand back from some of the expressions attitudes, particularly about local population, as Humboldt seems to have a more balanced view of the locals, in places he is perhaps critical but that is matched with critique of the 'European' population'.

I also have to share a quote which is a bit of an aside to the main theme of the book, speak of the USA's acceptance of emigres he says "A government that is strong because it is free, and confident because it is just, has nothing to fear in granting refuge to exiles." Look at the USA today it is sad to see how far it has fallen and succumbed to fear (I would date this fall not to the current war of Terror but somewhere during the Cold War) - this idea also seems to speak volumes in the face of the current turmoil in the Middle East, where governments that are neither free nor just are being overwhelmed - and not but external forces but from within. 

My Father's House Has Many Mansions by Michael Hofmann

Found in Selected Poems Michael Hofmann

Who could have said we belonged together,
my father and my self, out walking, our hands held
behind our backs in the way Goethe recommended?

Our heavy glances tipped us forward - the future,
a wedge of pavement with our shoes in it...
In your case, beige, stacked, echoing clogs;

and mine, the internationally scruffy tennis shoes -
seen but not heard - of the protest movement.
My mother shook her head at us from the window.

I was taller and faster but more considerate:
tense, overgrown, there on sufferance, I slowed down
and stooped for you. I wanted to share your life.

Live with you in your half-house in Ljubljana,
your second address: talk and read books;
meet your girlfriends, short-haired, dark, oral;

go shopping with cheap red money in the supermarket;
share the ants in the kitchen, the unfurnished rooms,
the fallible winter plumbing. Family was abasement

and obligation ...the three steps to your door
were three step to heaven.  But there were only visits.
At a party for your students - my initiation! -

I ceremoniously downed a leather glass of slivovica.
But then nothing.  I wanted your mixture of resentment
and pride in me expanded to the offer of equality.

Is the destination of paternity only advice...?
In their ecstasy of growth, the bushes along the drive
scratch  your bodywork, dislocate your wing-mirror.

Every year, the heraldic plum-tree in your garden
surprises you with its small, rotten fruit.

A Wayward Cymric Genius: Celebrating the Centenary of the death of Iolo Morganwg by Hywel Gethin Rhys

A Wayward Cymric Genius: Celebrating the Centenary of the death of Iolo Morganwg

This is a very esoteric booklet giving an account of the events held to celebrate the centenary of Iolo Morganwg - a centenary which occurred just at the moment when he was revealed to be the fabricator rather than the preserver of Wales' literary past.

To me there is something strangely attractive about Iolo - quiet what he thought he was up to is a puzzle - did he believe the myths that he was writing? He give a bright flash of colour on our past.

This essay also gives an insight into the Welsh establishment in the 1920s- the ground swell of support for the Welsh Language amongst a class of respectable Welsh men and women. And for all the forgeries and fantasies we are left with the feeling that without Iolo as a standard bearer the survival of Welsh literary culture would have been much harder won.  So while you would not recommend Iolo as a role model you can not totally dismiss him and within the rich tapestry of the nation's life that should be a fond place kept for Iolo.   

The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity by P F Bradshaw and M E Johnson

The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity

This is the 2011 Alcuin Club Collection and yet again it is a useful contribution to bridge the gap between the scholarly debates about liturgy and the folk in the pew.

Much of the liturgical reform of the Twentieth Century was justified by 'evidence' of the universal practice of the early church.  This volume gives a a balanced assessment of the reseach of the last twenty to thirty years that has questioned the evidence for those practices and certainly demolished claims for their universality.

While I think the some times slavish devotion to the primitive practice of the Church of Twentieth Century reformers was misplaced, and is now impossible due to the diversity there appears to have been in those early centuries, an awareness of origins is useful as we need to know the journey we have been on in order to understand where we have arrived and to make good choices about where to go next.

As a Christian I find the development of the major festivals of the Church fascinating - but I think this book would interest non-Christians too who might want to find out about the beginnings of the shape of our week or Christmas, Lent, and Easter which are still key features of the 'secular' calendar.

Overall this is an accessible volume which I would be happy to highly recommend - however I have to note that it is a book of two halves, the first dealing with change from Sabbath to Sunday and with Lent, Holy Week and Easter is excellent, the second on Christmas and on Saints Days is not as strong for 2 reasons - one the use of extended quotations to make the argument, something that was beaten one of me as a young undergraduate, (with chapters of around 10 pages side long quotations are out of place) while the other is making key points by comparing Greek terms that have not been transliterated - which is a major turn out for the general reader and undermines the potential of the volume.  Thankfully the faults are in the second half and so the reader gets the best of the book before they are encountered.

I will end with an idea from the book that in fact has little directly to do with liturgy but I liked - in one of the extended quotations I have just bemoaned Bernard of Clairvaux speaks of Chirst having 3 comings, first in flesh, second in spirit, third in glory and he says "In the first, Christ was our redemption; in the last, he will appear as our life; in this middle coming, he is our rest and consolation."

Martin Warner on Candlemas

This quote comes from a piece Martin Warner wrote in the Church Times for Candlemas last year which I pasted into my copy of Exciting Holiness and which resonates deeply for me;

If today is your Candlemas, do not be sentimental about the candlelight. Some words from a visionary bishop of the past century remind us that the procession to our destiny is a costly one: "We are here as a Church to represent Christ crucified before the world.  Because that is so, it may be the will of God that our Church should have its heart broken, and if that were to happen, it wouldn't mean that we were heading for the world's misery, but quite likely pointing the way to deepest joy."

As I look around me that phrase 'our Church should have its heart broken' seems so powerful, something to wrestle with. I don't like it yet it seems to give a perspective on so many of the struggles in the Church.  There is great joy in Christian fellowship but there is also a lot of pain - I think this tell us that we have to claim the pain as an authentic part of our experience of the Christ centred life and not treat is as an alien polluting other.