Ancient and Modern - and spicy

Nipped along to the Cathedral today for the 11.30 Mass. Piety? No, I'm celebrating it next week and I like to know what it involves, especially when it involves the 1929 Liturgy. "It's just the Prayer Book" hides a multitude of practices. Luckily it was terribly straightforward, just as written and it was thoroughly refreshing to hear the old, beautiful, familiar words which we Scottish Piskies have been using in roughly the same order since 1764, in the moderated splendour of the Lady Chapel of St Mary's Cathedral, with the prayers including a bidding for the repose of the soul of a deceased priest and for the grief of his partner - both male. It's that blend of ancient and modern that inspired me. Glorious language and architecture with an utter rootedness in the reality of the modern world. Don't get me wrong: I love the richness of the modern language 1982 liturgy and its seasonal Eucharistic Prayers. But that classical language speaks to ME deeply and the connection with ages and generations past who have knelt and said exactly the same words touches me. But it is wired to the world and not the moon or the British Museum by the prayers of intercession which say where we are and defines our concerns and intentions. I'm a funny mix of radical and conservative: part right on leftie, part liturgical old fart!

Tonight's soup was one of my better efforts: spicy bean and pepper soup! Ideal for winter. It was the cayenne pepper that made it!

Todays theme tune.

Being on the wagon and in the process of giving up the weed, I couldn't resist this ditty by Rolf Harris as a theme tune for today:



Cheers Cobber!

Rejoice!!

Having popped over to Fife over the week-end, I returned to a very snowbound Edinburgh to contemplate a bit of waiting for movement. Off I went to deal with bank stuff this morning and returned to Emmaus to get a phone call. Yes, it was my prospective employers saying: We'd like to offer you a job, full time, starting mid-March as a support worker in a house supporting 4 clients with Autism. Conditional (of course) on references and disclosure. Yahoo!

A long time ago, when I was trying to learn to play the violin (and I am living witness to the truth of the Jack Benny line about it sounding like the cat gut was still inside the cat!), I had to memorise a little mnemonic about scales. EGBDF. Every Good Boy Deserves Favours. I must have been good recently! To be honest, it's not really a line of work I'd have thought about 12 months ago. But my experience of being here and discovering (much to my surprise) that I am really quite good with people with learning or social difficulties - and a damn sight more patient that I ever used to be - made me think it was a possibility. One of the most satisfying periods in my life was when I was working in a hands on, no academic ability needed role with the homeless in London. A degree was pretty useless, but the ability to engage with the marginalised, to befriend, encourage and support wasn't - and I could do that. Hands on is what I got distant from with all the hoopla and expectations of Rectoring. Give me a person to support in need, be it sickness or bereavement and I was doing what I joined up for. Give me admin and management and I got stuck, worried, down and started to be a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. This for me may be a return to the hands on alongside the weak priesthood I loved and not the servicing and propping up the Institution ministry I came to dread. I am so glad to have this new break and chance to go back to basics!! It's been a brilliant day. And Nina Simone says it all!

A catch up blog

Two wee bits of action over the last week which I missed out blogging on. A trip to the cinema to see the musical Nine. We went for to see Avatar but the film was sold out, so after debating going to see Sherlock Holmes, we plumped for the musical. Daniel Day Lewis can both sing and dance, Judi Dench was marvellous in her number (but, hey, her Dameship was the original Sally Bowles in the 1968 West End production of Cabaret!). Other treats were Kate Hudson blasting out "Cinema Italiano" (I bet her Mum Goldie Hawn was proud!) and Penelope Cruz doing more to promote sales of Anne Summers undies than the rest of the EU combined! Once you get into it, it's a great film! Highly recommended!

I also went to the Watchnight service at St Cuthbert's. It's beautiful Church, with a most impressive frieze of the Last Supper and a very fine bronze statue of the Madonna and Child (not at all usual in Presbyterian Parish Kirk!). Bags of candles and very little artificial (electrical) lighting. Content was pretty ordinary in terms of material (I knew the hymns, but were they ideal for a not too well Churched Kirk of revellers?) The best bit was a reading from GK Chesterton's "House of Christmas":

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

And where are we at home? In the world where God was homeless or in Christ, whose life was perfect, not because he was "sinless" in the sense of not picking his nose, but perfect in the sense of being God-centered and resting in communion with his nature in the Trinity. A perfection we cannot imitate, but only be gifted through the Incarnation.

Decadence on Ne'erday

Not quite champagne and smoked salmon and scrambled eggs but bacon and egg rolls, warm pain au chocolat and freshly brewed coffee, whilst watching the New Years Day concert from Vienna and thinking Valentino really should design more ballet costumes, counts as really rather decadent start to the new Year!

Looking back, 2009 was (to quote our Sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth) an Annus Horriblis indeed, breakdown, sick leave, therapy, quitting parish ministry, unemployment and owning up to alcohol problems. 2010 can only be better (if it ain't, then it's find a coffin year). Funnily enough, I feel I now know myself better and am slightly more comfortable in my own skin. So moving on is more of a possibility. My New years resolution: to continue growing and putting aside things that diminish me. I will start a smoking cessation programme next week, as that's the next evil to crush. Is my approach to this year "Look forward in faith"? Not quite, more look forward in trust - because I got here alive, sane and sober and that was far from certain at one point. The year in retrospect has been a case of finding that the Faith or Credal part of my religious life is not actually as important as the trusting to the actual reality of God working for me and my best outcomes. A learning that intellectual faith is less important than the lived variety. Don't live in your head so much, live in the world.

And for a New year theme song? Oh, Francis Albert and a great Jazz number: