The Congo & the Cameroons by Mary Kingsley

The Congo and the Cameroons (Penguin Great Journeys)

Like many of the Penguin Great Journeys The Congo & the Cameroons, while generally enjoyable, is at times a little uncomfortable. 

The blurb tells us that Mary Kingsley had a scepticism for the European Imperial and Missionary activity in Africa and yet there is often a patronising air about her descriptions of her African guides and helpers.  She seems to despair at their behaviour in the same way that a weary Cub Scout leader might feel after a weekend camp with some troublesome youngsters.  Although of course none of this was necessarily racially determined – she may well have spoken in similar terms of the “working class” folk she encountered back in England.

We can not ignore this but we have to hold a tension there – Mary is a remarkable woman for her time, her travels and her writing would seem to have been pushing the boundaries of what was possible or acceptable for a “lady”.   She was enlightened even if by our own standards that enlightenment was incomplete.

I have recently shared my love for Miranda Hart, and there are many moments when Mary Kingsley sounds like she has been lifted from a Miranda sketch – little turns of phrase which are very dated and yet still echo from the mouths of the tweed wearing upper classes.   There is also a certain gung-ho spirit to it all, I kept waiting for her to say “…and then a crocodile chewed off my right leg – Such fun!” 

On balance I spent more time enjoying the company of Mary Kingsley than I did worrying about her views.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry

NB: Contains spoilers

In tone as well as in subject this story reminded me of Going Under by Ray French, both deal with essentially ordinary men in the later years of middle age doing outlandish things as the outworking of a long running emotional crisis.  There is a tenderness in the writing which, without being spectacular or especially dramatic, is deeply gripping.

The way in which Harold Fry’s decision to literally walk away from his wife, and the silence that has dominated their home and their marriage for years, brings them in the end closer together speaks to a very real feeling about the way many relationships exist.  Life in the ordinary can become comfortable and taken for granted, and it is easy for the focus of your attention to be on the small things that irritate rather than the big things that under pin a relationship – put simply you fail to notice the love.  

There is also a wider theme here, and also in Going Under, about the purpose of modern life.  The crisis point in both these stories is faced at the point when work is taken away.  The business of working life had been the cushion allowing these two men to get by without facing their demons.  We live in a society that in one sense increasingly values people on the basis of their work, there is a hierarchy of value based on the working role you have, and yet at the very same time “work” is becoming an increasingly unstable feature in our lives.  The idea of a job for life, such as that Harold Fry seems to have had, is being eroded – the experience not only of redundancy but of multiple redundancies is becoming the normal arc of your career. Maybe this is healthy, preventing us from coasting for years like Harold Fry, but for many it strips them of all resources and complete collapse is the end result.

Ordo Romanus Primus: Translation by Alan Griffiths

Ordo Romanus Primus: Text and Translation with Introduction and Notes (Joint Liturgical Studies)

One of the special joys of membership of the Alcuin Club is the arrival of the latest Joint Liturgical Study, even when as in this case it takes me 6 months to get around to reading it. These slim volumes shed little windows on to topics which are normally reserved only for the most specialised of reader.

In this case we are offered a few pages of contextual introduction and then a new translation of a Papal liturgical manual dating back to 8th century Rome.   The number of people involved in the liturgy does give the impression that it was likely to be either chaotic or fussy or indeed both. But what is interesting is that I happen to also be reading The Art of Tentmaking: Making Space for Worship a collection of essays in tribute to Richard Giles. While the detail of Giles liturgical programme might have few direct links to Ordo Romanus Primus one very key principle is highlighted by both.  Against a backdrop where most thinking about liturgy is based on a fetishisation of the "Text" we are drawn to the realisation that it is the actions, the way in which you perform the liturgy that is often central to its meaning and understanding. Giles is interested in space and movement much more than words and Ordo Romanus Primus quotes the text of the liturgy only to give a cue for action and movement.

This is something which was clear within the Church of England in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries where Anglo-Catholics were able to extend the range of meaning of the Protestant (or even Puritan) Book of Common Prayer with a the addition of ceremony - the ritualist trails of that era were witness to an understanding the textual conformity was not the guarantee of shared doctrine. This understanding was lost in the latter half of the 20th Century and, for me, the reforms of the text of Anglican liturgy, as currently expressed in the liberalised textual environment of Common Worship, have been a blind alley.  I would go as far as to say that the words have been given an idolatrous status.  While some forms of words are better than others, liturgy is not perfected because we stumble across the "right" words - liturgy is only perfected by the action of the Holy Spirit.