Wedding Words

Yesterday we went to a wedding.  Thanks Matt and Martha!!

A friend said to us today, "Was it a Wedding you went to or was it an Anniversary?".  I understood their point: Usually the only time people our age go to weddingy things it is to take part - or for someone on their second or third attempt.  One of the blessings of Christian ministry is having young people who know you!

What strikes me these days is the radical nature of the words of Christian marriage in our society.  In a way I mourn the loss of social Christianity but in another way I love the thought that the simple words that once resounded every Saturday in every Parish Church now seem more Corbynite-radical than the Government's newly invented Same Sex Marriage idea.

Better than that, although the ideas of prayer and blessing, of hymns and Bible readings seem radical because they are, well, quite religious in a secularised culture the really radical bit isn't religious at all:

to have and to hold

from this day forward;

for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and in health,

to love and to cherish,

till death us do part.

When I write isn't religious at all I am both right and wrong.  Such promises as above can be made - are made - by rabid atheists or ruminating agnostics.  However they are dying out with the dying interest in Church weddings.  Sometimes they are not replaced by anything much (in my experience) but a flowery insistence of lifelong dotage or mutual self-fulfilment.  Here's an example:

I am proud to take you as my husband/wife. For all the time we have been together, there has always been the kind of mutual understanding which is only shared when there is true love. You have helped me triumph over challenges presented, encouraged my personal growth and boosted my self-esteem.

You have helped me become the person I am today, and with your help, I will be a better person tomorrow than I was yesterday.

Like the arrival of the Humanist funeral there is a refreshing honesty about these vows.  They more accurately reflect what most people mostly mean.  Perhaps they represent the most that can be really expected without the help of the Lord and the example of Calvary.

Staying Safe

However dirty the child might be parents do need to be careful.

Holiday Pics - No 6 Contentment

The weather was good apart from one day.  That's the kind of thing we all say about a British vacation (except the one may be up to seven!).  Cornwall, once a poor faraway mining and fishing area, is now quite a slick kind of place and it doesn't take an expert to work out that much of the money in Cornwall has been gained elsewhere and brought here as to nature's playground for some fun in old age or earlier.

I wonder whether this makes for more contented people though?  Or were the miners that crowded the Methodist chapels to sing their praise to God as happy in their limited expanses as the people popping down in the Porsche to the Michelin starred seafood restaurant?  I cannot say.

I know this cow was content though.  Just some grass will do.  I think I'll try and learn a lesson from the cow.

Holiday Pics - No 5 Beware Pedestrians

So there in the middle of Falmouth is the narrow shopping street which, fortunately, is pedestrian only.  Except than when you walk down it you have to stay on the sidewalk because so many vehicles are flouting the rules.  Or so you'd believe.  There are buses and vans and cars and motorbikes - often in a line.  It is the least pedestrian-friendly pedestrian only street that I know.

At the end of the street is this sign.  When I read the sign I understood my several years of quiet fury at the hoards of drivers invading the pedestrian space.  They aren't.

Access to off-street parking at any time renders the whole point of a pedestrian street meaningless - after all a thousand cars an hour could head down the street to see if there is a space in a quayside car park.  And they do.  So do the motorbikes (with more hope of a space).  The buses are allowed too.  And taxis.  And for all but five hours vehicles to load.  

It struck me, looking at the sign, that this is exactly the way a person, a family, a nation, creeps into the chaos of rebellion against God:  an exception here, another here, some excuses over there and a permissiveness in a few things too.  Before you know it the semblance of God's ways have become obliterated even though there are signs - perhaps a church spire, or a personal self-identity that say there is faith here.

The exceptions we take to God's plan destroy our ability to enjoy God's plan - which was always the best.  

We look forward to the upcoming further deregulation of Sunday trading and the first smatterings of euthanasia.