Holiday Pics: 1. In the Cell

St Canice's Cathedral in Kilkenny is interesting in very many ways.

As with all ancient cathedrals in the Republic of Ireland it is Church of Ireland (Anglican, Protestant) not Roman Catholic.  This is an ecclesiastical remnant of British rule when Ireland's ancient foundations departed Catholicism with the English establishment rather than the local majority.

It also contains the remains of an Anchorite Cell.

The nun would enter the cell, thereby dying to secular life.  Dedicated to a life of prayer, the cells of Anchorites were usually by the altar so they could receive the Eucharist.  On entering the cell, the Bishop recited a rite that closely resembled the funeral liturgy: this really was dying to the world.

Protestants eschew such medieval practices.  I was, however, speaking to a Christian lady recently.  She had been baptised many moons before, but no longer attended any church (or Eucharist) on account of being far too busy.

I thought of this when I thought of the Anchorite. 

I'm too Protestant to believe it is a great thing for a young woman to be in a cell by the altar for life.  But I can't help feeling it has its strengths over against a life that has forsaken the altar entirely for a life barely Christian in its expression at all.

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 7. Unforgettable (Nat King Cole)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 7 - 'Unforgettable' performed by Nat King Cole  . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

Funerals help us remember - to make someone more unforgettable.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It's nothing to do with death, life in general, or life beyond death - just a sweet romantic song.

Line that's most like a Christian song:

It's incredible that someone so unforgettable thinks I'm unforgettable too.

Line that's least like a Christian song:

'Darling' [It's the one word in the song that means, however hard you try, you can't associate it with your relationship with God!]

A Quote from (singer) Nat King Cole:

'I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money'

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

I have no interest in being unforgettable - at least by humans. 

A better Christian alternative:

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 10. Always look on the Bright Side of Life [Eric Idle]

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs now contains no Christian songs or hymns at all - for the first time.  So let's take a look at the merits and demerits of the top ten, starting with 10th place : Always look on the bright side of life;

Why it's good for a funeral:

It makes you feel you can laugh.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It doesn't give you any grounds to laugh in death

Line that's most like a Christian song:

You know, you came from nothing

Line that's least like a Christian song:

Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true

A Quote from (writer) Eric Idle:

Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

The song is originally sung to the Jesus figure (Brian) on the cross in Monty Python's Life of Brian film.  So not only is it meaninglessly defiant rubbish, it's origin is blasphemous too.

A better Christian alternative:

On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise,

And the glory of His resurrection share;

When His chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies,

And the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.

[A brightness of a better sort.]

World Cup Blogs 11: France

France are one of the teams you hope to get in the office sweepstakes.  They are a strong possibility to win the World Cup (my wife got Morocco . . .).

Here is a nation that has a strong identity, a famed language and a colourful history that has at times made it as important as any nation on earth.  It's relationship with the Christian faith is very mixed.  It was the home of the popes for a while (or one of the popes for a while too - another story), and still today hoardes of Catholics flock to Lourdes.  On another side of the theological ocean was John Calvin and later the Huguenots.  Then the revolution sent France into a secular tailspin which I feel leaves it artistic, monumental, important but somehow a little empty of a soul.

But in the hectic life of London (Londres, sorry) and in the materialistic 21st century as we all start to share the secular spiral away from true hope, let's enjoy some moments of peace from a 20th century French institution.  The World Cup draws people of many nations, but whether it benefits them is not so clear.  Here's another way:

A Second Look at a Christmas Card: No 2 The Donkeys

Today a fairly dreadful report has decided that the UK should officially not be Christian.  This idea seems a sad misreflection on the fact that the UK we live in owes almost everything in its better aspects of identity to the Christian faith.  

Christmas Cards are well ahead of the game on this issue however as can be seen here:

Without question this is a Christmas picture.  There's the Middle Eastern town in the background, the night sky with the great star (albeit in the wrong place) and the stable, the hay and the donkeys.  It reminds me of one of those holiday photographs (though this is a painting) when, in trying to capture the yacht passing the pier you end up with a seagull or a passing steam train is missed and you have a piece of fencing instead.

Dame Butler-Sloss (not for the first time unfortunately) did it, the Christmas card did it, I must remember to keep centred on what it's all really about - because I too might do it and end up, in the long run, looking like an ass.

Magna Carta

Freedom is a strangely elusive idea.  Instinctively we want it, value it, demand it, yet it is much less clear what it really is.  

Take the striking opening of the Magna Carta, and one of the only four of its clauses that remain in contemporary English Law:

• I. FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. 

This might warm the heart, one would think, of any Christian. Yet strangely it did not work out quite as this reads.  After all, it was the Monarchy that effectively changed the Church of England (on account of Henry VIII's marital woes) into a non-Roman Church.  That seems some way short of the Church being free of the monarch as the Charter indicated.

Then there have been the times when, whatever freedoms the Church did enjoy it used against other expressions of church and religion.  You would have to look very hard to find any other longstanding expressions of Church on the actual City of London (which is a double irony as the freedoms of the City of London are also contained as a remaining Law from Magna Carta).

Then there is the irony that the institutional Church of England (which Magna Carta most obviously references) is, in fact, the least free of all expressions of Church with a multitude of things it can't do, must do, must have and may not have.

On the bright side, it offers an early trend toward freedom of religion in a broader sense, and one which is happily still respected (though losing ground through the double whammy of militant Islam and rampant secular Humanism).

What it most confirms - and this I think is truly frightening - is that the basis of what old King John did was under the watchful eye of God - We have granted to God.  A society that no longer believes it is answerable to God and where pockets of it believe in a God of vengeance and violence is not likely for too long to hold dear the idea of freedom.  Oppression is so much more human (as Cain effectively said).

Morons of the Oxy kind

As a former foster parent who also believes and - horror of secular horrors - teaches the Bible I am singularly unimpressed by the supposed wisdom of Messrs Munby and Beatson in their judgement against the Johns released today.   The case was not necessarily wisely brought either but it deserved better than it received.  How can highly-paid judges use a non-word like Pentecostalist?  Or make daft statements like this nation has an established church which is Christian when they presumably mean religion not church?  Or state that they are thoroughly secular and then declare Religion – whatever the particular believer's faith – is no doubt something to be encouraged.  Even religious people couldn't agree with that never mind atheists!

In the words of Robert Pigott (BBC), . 'Today the message was that courts would interpret the law in cases like the Johns' according to secular and not religious values.' People 'with traditionalist Christian views like Mr and Mrs Johns' might well not make good foster parents.

We have moved steps nearer a day when, in the United Kingdom, 'Christian Foster Parent' is an oxymoron [a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms] 

Mind you, while I'm on the oxymoron theme, Munby and Beatson also declared,  We sit as secular judges. 

But if the much-maligned Bible is true there's also coming a day when 'secular judges' will itself be an oxymoron: For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

I've a feeling that Day might go somewhat better for Mr & Mrs Johns.  And I hope, for their sake, that Messrs Munby and Beatson find out what church really means before then too.