A holiday Sunday

It was time for some leisure after all the shifting of house malarkey of the last 2 weeks.  After a perfectly enjoyable service (Phillip the organist's last) with the wonderful Howells Collegium Regale as a Mass setting, it was off to the pictures to see "Quartet".  OK, the Filmhouse was awash with the middle-aged (ourselves included) but it was a good film about aged musicians in a Home for the crumbling artiste.  No one delivers a waspish put down like Dame Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly nicks scenes like billy-o as a randy old tenor, Pauline Collins is sweet and touching as an old dear in the early stages of going ga-ga - and I completely forgotten how good Tom Courtney was as an actor.  Plus Jim from the Dibley PCC turns up and sings!  Worth an afternoon out of the cold.

 

Then home to cook a nice beef stroganoff and find the heating's on the blink.  Life resumes on Tuesday with a return to work.  Poo!

Good Holmes and new Bishops.

 

It has been brought to my attention (during the lunch break at the Electoral Synod - and no no new bishop yet as this is the "hustings"  meeting, we actually vote next week) that I've been blathering on about saints a lot recently.  True indeed.  The nearest thing to sort of social life I have had recently was an outing to the pictures with Rachel to watch "Sherlock Holmes 2"  Good fun it was too.  having never gone to see one, I was pleasantly surprised by Robert Downey Jr as Holmes, rather impressed by Jude Law as Watson and quietly freaked by Jared Harris as Moriarty.  Actually I was more freaked by a moment when suddenly he was the living, breathing spit of his father, the late, great Richard Harris.  (That's the original Dumbledore to the young and Cromwell opposite Alec Guinness's King Charles I for the film buffs).  I still adore the Jeremy Brett TV series best of all and quite enjoy Benedict Cumberbatch's efforts in Sherlock.  And of course the books are sublime!

The electing of a bishop is an essentially quite humdrum process to anyone who's ever been in politics.  3 candidates, 3 presentations to say why we should pick X or Y, 1/2 an hour to create some questions.  Then lunch and the candidates respond to the questions (4 composite queries were submitted).  Personally I'd rather have had unedited questions from the floor  a la General Synod and none of the "redacted by the primus" queries which really didn't give us much of a chance to get a feel for the candidates style under fire.  However, the process was efficiently done and simply confirmed me in my reaction when Bishop Brian retired.  I was asked who I thought might be a good bishop, I named a certain priest who is one of the 3 shortlisted and after today's hustings, I felt his vision and manner were what I think the diocese needs just now.  which I did a year ago.  No surprises there then.  At least I'm consistent.

The King's Speech

Having delayed a cinema trip 24 hours so that we could go as a group from the house, off we toddled to the Odeon to see "The King's Speech".  Excellent it was too (apart from having crowds outside the Palace in 1939 (it was 1945 actually) and Winston Churchill agin Edward and Mrs Simpson (tripe - he warbled on about forming a King's Party at the time and was very wonky and odd about Indian Independence in the 1930's - still, he was right about Adolf.  And Stanley Baldwin didn't resign apologising for getting it wrong about Hitler - how they got that wrong given that Abp Lang was superbly played by Derek Jacobi who played Baldwin opposite Albert Finney in "Churchill - The Wilderness Years") - couldn't they have asked him?).  It was difficult to decide whose performance was best: Colin Firth deserves an Oscar for being as good a King as a Queen (Mamma Mia, A Single Man), Helena Bonham Carter got the late Queen Mum's wave absolutely perfect - although this now means she is Helen Mirren's mother cinematically!!!  And Geoffrey Rush was superb as usual.  If that damn Yankee Academy doesn't give it several Oscars, then they are inward looking, overpaid botox junkies!  Go see - it nearly made me a Royalist!

"Of Gods and men"

If you get the chance to catch it, go and see the excellent film "Of Gods and Men".  OK, it's in French and Arabic with English subtitles.  And it's about French Trappist monks in North Africa, the relationship between the abbey and the local village and living with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.  But it is beautifully shot and acted with several stunning performances (ace turn by former Bond villain Michael Lonsdale as Monk and Doctor Luc  - and the abbot is excellent too).  The dinner with wine and Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" is wordless, but moving to tears (the phrase "On the night before he was given up to death" springs to mind).  There is deep and brilliant theology and spirituality in there and it really is a "must see".

The Illusionist

There are some pleasures which come quite unexpectedly - and tonight had one of them.  I finally got along to see the film "The Illusionist".  Leaving aside the excellence of the animation (which painted Edinburgh in the most splendid light possible - I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world!) and the quirky French/Scottish humour (the chippy menu was a delight!), it was the most wonderfully gentle, wistful and elegiac story, beautifully crafted and wonderfully rendered.  If you haven't seen it yet, move yer bahookie and catch it while you can!

Communing with...

well, that would be God - in my own way. I ended up having A Mobile Quiet Day! Having started the day with Morning Prayer in our nice garden shed with the San Damiano crucifix (aka the Holy Hut of Tollcross) before doing some bits and pieces in the house, I proceeded to Costa Coffee for a breakfast roll and a cappuccino and a snoop at the paper. Rather worryingly, I found myself in agreement with John "Vulcan" Redwood on the Euro zone crisis!! Then I headed off in the general direction of the University, but cut up to the Sacred Heart Lauriston - a gloriously baroque Jesuit interior - to spent a bit of time praying. The prayer that came into my mind unprompted was one of Ignatius of Loyola:

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will.
All that I am and all that I possess You have given me:
I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will.
Give me only Your love and Your grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more.

Then it was up to George Square to the Labyrinth opposite the University Library, which walked in the sunshine, is a joy. I love the way you close in on the centre and then swing away: it is such a powerful paradigm of our relationship with God. What stuck me today was the decoration in the centre; trefoils little Trinity symbols, reminding me that my journey was to be at one with and find my rest in the Triune God.

On then to Old St Paul's in search of a lunchtime Mass. There wasn't one (8am today) so instead I snuck into the Lady Chapel, lit a candle and plonked down in front of the Blessed Sacrament to reflect on Ps 100.

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.
Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

2 things struck me: Know that the Lord he is God - and not a figment of my fevered imagination. And that his truth - the reality of the Divine - will endure for as long as the human race is drawn to worship and honour. The Church as we see and have known it may fade and die but God will not. My final Holy stop was St Patrick's in the Cowgate. Leaving aside my arrival at the tail end of a Mass, the fact the Marian hymn was syrupy Victorian bilge, sung inaudibly and at a pitch only bats and nuns can register and the dreadful glittery material at the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour (Redemptorist Church - the Jesuits had a discreet and tasteul crown of flowers on the Immaculate Conceptions' napper in Sacred Heart!), I was able to pray a bit again. My little expedition ended with a run up to the Museum in Chambers Street to behold the Lewis Chessmen on display, then a mezze lunch and trip to the cinema to see "Bad Lieutenant" with Nicholas Cage - very good, I loved the iguanas!

Our weekly Benedictine study was a bit less satisfactory - simply because it was crowded and noisy and my little brain went very Aspie and stressed out. Who knows what riches tomorrow holds? Because today was very rewarding indeed.

News just in.

What a mix of news yesterday was! The C of E voted through their sensible pension rights policy for Civil Partners of the Clergy, which is nice for the English. I finally got a start date for the new job - Ash Wednesday! So I'm giving up claiming benefit for Lent! And we went out to the pictures to watch "Precious" - not a cheery film, avoid it if your serotonin levels are low!

Pardon me, which decade are we in?

Maybe it's the fact the last time we had a winter like this I was still at school, maybe it's having gone last night to see "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll" - the Ian Dury biopic (very good, BTW- Andy Serkis is uncanny, even sings like the Man Himself) but it feels strangely like the Seventies. Rubbish is piling up on the streets of Edinburgh cos the binmen are on strike, Labour's in office, the economy's knacked, unemployment's up and it looks like the Tories will be elected come May.

Part of me wonders if that would be a total disaster for the country. Parties in power run out of steam and a change became both necessary and desirable. But my visceral reaction is not to see a Tory Govt as good. I grew up in a mining area and the Miners Strike covered my last years at secondary school. I won't vote Tory this side of the Parousia. As they say where I come from, "The only good Tory is a lavatory"! (And that's not true I know, I've know some very nice and Christian Tories).

Liberal? Until recently that was a no brainer. I joined the Libs at 18, was President of the Aberdeen Uni LD's and Senior Vice Convener of the Scottish Young Lib Dems. But I was mightily unamused by the dumping of both Charlie Kennedy and Ming Campbell, the current leader seems to be a bit of a David Cameron clone and I think the Scottish leadership were daft not to stay in Govt with the SNP and get more of our policies into effect. Voting Green isn't for me (partly because I think nuclear power is here to stay, so work to make it as safe as poss) and the SNP I disagree with because I think we need to be part of the UK.

I remeber the late George Henderson, Bishop of Argyll, Primus, Labour Lord Provost of Fort William and firm disliker of women's ordination and nasty new things like the Blue Bookie once describing himself to me at lunch in the Western Club in Glasgow as a "Prayer Book Communist" - maybe that's what I'll become!

(The cartoon just appealed to me and has no connection with anything much!)