Church Services for 19 February 2012, Sunday before Lent
8 am           Holy Communion
10.30 am   Matins
10.30 am   Sunday Club for children aged 5-12
4 pm           Christian Family Fellowship at the Old Manse
7Past7        15-minute reflective service, every Wednesday at 7.07 pm

Fillet of Soul

Part of the Ipsos MORI poll into Religious and Social Attitudes of UK Christians in 2011, commissioned by the Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, sought to strip self-identifying Christians of their cultural flesh to get to the theological bones beneath. The results moved Richard Dawkins to announce that “Despite the best efforts of church leaders and politicians to convince us that religion is still an important part of our national life, these results demonstrate that it is largely irrelevant, even to those who still label themselves Christian.”

This is at best a questionable conclusion:

Answer *that* question…

We were very fortunate the Annual Quiz finished just before the snow started coming down in earnest! The event was  successful as a fund raiser: £570 was the final count; and it was a very enjoyable social occasion that has attracted kind comments, not only on the night but on line in a couple of places as well. How nice..!

Our questions were for fun, unlike those people considered at the Time to Talk conference

Candlemas bells

It is often observed that Christianity deliberately coincided Christian High days with older, Pagan festivals in an effort to supplant those traditions and it is certainly true that the coincidence is quite remarkable – so remarkable in fact that, were the argument to be put before any jury in a court of law, they’d likely find that on the balance of probabilities this had to be true.
Candlemas is a case in point and I came across a blog that discusses all the traditions and legends of this mark in the Christian calendar so exhaustively and entertainingly that I have linked to it here. It explores the various traditions, folk, Pagan and Christian, that were observed at this time of the year and also touches upon the connection between the snowdrop and Candlemas.

One thing this blog does not mention about Candlemas is the Nunc Dimittis, the song

Gentle Activity

“Occupy your soul! The Christian Left gets active“  was a recent headline on the New Internationalist blog, introducing an article written by Symon Hill, associate director of  the Ekklesia (see the Blogroll) think tank.
The article is inspired by the planned ‘ring of prayer’ in connection with the expected eviction of the Occupy camp around St Paul’s. Hill endorses the plan and offers an analysis of current Christianity that juxtaposes this sort of activism with other manifestations of Christianity that he sees as complacent or fearful.

In trenchant advocacy for the cause of radical Christianity the article calls upon those “Christians who do not want the options for the future to be nothing more than a choice between promoting bigotry and maintaining tourist attractions” to get up and do something.
Although the remark is a distillation of earlier paragraphs and ought to be seen in context, I doubt that such stridency is helpful when trying to get people on side against the undoubted shortcomings of the established church.

I have a problem with radicalism. It has a visceral appeal but makes me wonder:

Epiphany – now you see it, now you don’t…

Chesterton’s ‘Here is a little door‘ is a puzzling little poem.
It is often attributed to Frances Chesterton but thought perhaps to have been written by GK himself. If it was he who is the author it fits, because the poem is ‘paradoxical’, a word many commentators most readily associate with his work.
The first verse is atmospheric and charmingly describes the scene of the Magi finding the birth place of the King they sought and giving their gifts:

Here is the little door.
Lift up the latch; O lift!
We need not wander more,
but enter with our gift.
A gift of finest Gold,
Gold that was never bought nor sold;
Myrrh to be strewn about his bed;
Incense in clouds about his head;
all for the Child who stirs not in his sleep,
but Holy slumber holds with ass and sheep.

It is the second verse that puzzles, that is unlike the usual nativity carol. The mood radically changes, becomes darker, ominous even, using words of violence and death:

Bend low about his bed: for each he has a gift!
See how his eyes awake-lift up your hands! O lift!
For Gold he gives a keen-edged sword (defend with it thy little Lord!)
For incense, smoke of battle red.
Myrrh for the honoured happy dead.
Gifts for his children, terrible and sweet,
Touched by such tiny hands and oh! such tiny feet.

The second verse is no longer the Magi speaking; it is the poet marvelling at the legacy of misunderstanding and subversion that issued from such tiny hands and oh! such tiny feet.
Crusaders did indeed take up the sword to defend Christ and; ‘God on our side’ became an oft-heard claim to justify wars. Atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ. The history of Christianity is bloody.

Christians may no longer rampage around the world sword in hand but they have found subtler methods to defend their God; it’s done by excluding others from the celebration of Christ’s saving love in the Eucharist unless those others embrace the precise teachings of their particular brand of the faith. It’s done by withholding God’s blessing at a wedding service. The hurt this stance causes may not be bloody, but it often still cuts deep.
The misunderstandings and subversions are still with us.
Click on the player to hear the Kyrie Eleison from Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G min

Christmas Eve

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, no witch has power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time

Thus Shakespeare wrote in Act I Scene I of Hamlet, voicing some of the many beliefs that attended (and still surround) this holy night. Marcellus’ words above are answered by Horatio with “so have I heard and do in part believe it” and so, despite our 21st century sophistication, do many of us- though again, only in part.
Among my favourite Christmas poems is The Oxen by Thomas Hardy. With him, I would want it to be so that the oxen are kneeling at midnight, not because I share his wistful regret at the loss of innocence and security the poem so poignantly expresses, but for the sense of holy wonder it invokes- even as I am aware that the genuflecting was probably fabulous.

Enlightenment reductionism has robbed us of the confidence to see core truths behind the myths and legends. Science’s confident claim that everything has a rational explanation has made us doubtful about the validity of deep-down sensed truths; beguiled by the assertion that if it cannot be proved it doesn’t exist, we dare believe only in part.

But man, the twofold creature, apprehends
The twofold manner, in and outwardly…
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

Books have been written about this tension and I can recommend the one by Malcolm Guite ‘Faith, Hope and Poetry: theology and the poetic imagination’, published by Ashgate. Though it comes with a hefty price tag it is illuminating as well as beautifully written and attempts to show how “the poetic imagination helps us to see the reality of the unseen”.

Have an imaginative Christmas!

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