The Marriage of equals

Now here's an interesting link ....

Rachel weeping

The events at the Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, are tragic, and mean unimaginable loss for the families involved, and our news media is full of the story. Our emotions and feelings of compassion are stirred by this futile and evil act of one young man.

Barely 24 hours before, on Thursday, 7 children and several mothers were killed in another school, but this one received only passing mention in the media. This school was in Damascus where a car bomb exploded.

It is right to feel outrage and sorrow over the deaths in the small New England town, but we need to be aware that we are often partisan in our compassion.

Some 21,000 children die every day around the world.

This is equivalent to:

• 1 child dying every 4 seconds • 14 children dying every minute • Just over 7 ½ million children dying every year

Or to put it another way, it is equivalent to:

• A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days • A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days

The silent killers of these children are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage, or arouse our feelings of empathy and sorrow.

Feel compassion for the familes devastated in Newtown, but feel it for the families of all young lives lost across our world, and in your desire never to see such events happen again, decide to make your response active not merely passive.

The ongoing cycle

I have been castigated for failing to post hereupon for many a day, but the only explanation I can offer is the lack of time to do so, and the dearth of subjects upon which I wish to comment.

Leaving aside the disastrous vote on women bishops, and today's climbdown by the Government over same-sex marriages in our churches (it will be illegal for CofE clergy to conduct such a marriage unless the CofE as a whole agrees to it - we're such a welcoming organisation - not!), so much is going on in the local churches where we continue to struggle with the future of one, and I feel like nothing I have said over the past 11 years has made any difference whatsover in the other 10. Maybe this is all well and to the good, for I have seen too many churches where congregations have become focused on the person up the front rather than on the reasons for gathering together in the first place.

One church has quaestioned the choice of carols made by an assistent who is leading their seasonal worship. The service contains all the old familiar carols with the exception of one unfamiliar one that is sung to the tune of "Morning has broken" (it wouldn't have been my choice, but that's beside the point). There was also the comment made over one of the other perennial favourites that it is too hard to sing, and that people come along to such a service to sing the familiar. I commented back that if someone has been asked to lead, then they must be allowed to lead. Thinking more upon it over the last few days I realise that the request has come from a desire for a community sing-song whereas the leadership has come from the standpoint of Christian worship. Christmas is always a balancing act between the two, but I do not like the idea of the "tail wagging the dog!"

My own Carol service layout for the two churches in which I shall conduct such a celebration is traditional in music, although there are continual comments that they don't know "Of the Father's love begotten" despite my having chosen it every year since 2002. However, I am interjecting two passages from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Jesus into the usual canon of nine. I'll be interested to see what sort of comment that brings.

It's my eldest brother's birthday today, his wife's tomorrow, and my other brother's in about a week's time. I have yet to send greetings since it took me two days to deal with all the Christmas cards and the accompanying post. I sneakily bought all my stamps for this year and next before the postal charges rose in the summer, so that has saved me numerous £s.

Today - my day off - I have visited the dentist as a large filling dropped out last Friday, put up the greenery and string for the Christmas cards received in the hall, and am now awaiting the arrival of two new duvets - 15 tog - just in time for this cold snap. I have still to sort out the house for hosting the Benefice Shared Supper this Friday night, and that will entail moving tables and chairs and getting as many seating spaces as possible, for the Chrismas Supper is always well supported. I also need to get the lights up on the Christmas tree in the garden, though I can't do the house one until after the supper, otherwise I lose too much space.

The PCC's continue; there's the star to put up on the church tower opposite, the crib to be sorted out, and the church tree to erect. More sermons, more printing of carol sheets for the "Crib & Carols" on Christmas Eve in another of the churches, and not forgetting shopping for seasonal provisions as well.

Oh, and there's another birthday to mark this coming Sunday, when the person's parents are also coming down to visit.

Mind you, as this coming Sunday is Gaudete Sunday I shall get to wear my new pink chasuble for the first time! Let's hope I don't get candle grease or wine on it.

It's that night again!

Play Misty for moo

This, for the time being, is my new desktop wallpaper. It was taken on an early Sunday morning a week ago from the parking area at one of our more rural ancient churches.

In the deep dark of last night ...

... the faeiries were dancing merrily on my lawn.

There's laughter in heaven

HERBERT LOM 1917 - 2012

This is my kind of FlowChart

Tower of Babel

I now know what those ancient builders felt like as I reconstruct the programs on my, now working, pc. So many layers and so many levels, and a multitude of strange-sounding phrases.

Windows into the soul

Windows Vista is now loaded and validated ... there was a problem with the Knowledge Base files - 45 of them - some of which had failed. They are now on and we're coming to the end of 125 Windows updates ... and they have taken about 5 hours. If the pc survives this, then tomorrow is when we start loading on the various drivers and programs and rebuilding the whole cosmos. My resident technician has proved his worth - I've fed him lasagna and garlic bread tonight. God help us all!

*farp*

(phew!)

Aaaaaagh sob sob

Having used the OEM Recovery discs to restore the operating system, Microsoft now says that the Windows it has put on is not an authentic version, and it wants me to buy Windows 7. Hmmmmm. And my IT technician just sits here at 22.36 playing Solitaire on his laptop. Why do I accomodate and feed him? Ah - he's a lodger and I occasionally get some rent. Oh well, I suppose as he's been at it all day I can't really complain. Just as well I have my own laptop!

O M G

My main pc has got corrupted Windows! AAAAAAAAGH. Factory settings disc has been inserted (not in the orifice I would have chosen) and is currently overwriting the whole C drive. EEK!

In the heat and dust ...

... the harvest must go on. Thankfully, modern combines are air-conditioned. It must have been lethal when they had open cabs!

I'm melting!

21.50 and I'm sitting here dripping! Three changes to tops and tomorrow I have to get dressed up in my liturgical clobber to do the business. It's not giving away any trade secrets to say that in this heat and after the celebration of the Holy Mysteries x2 I'm not a pretty sight!

Phew! It's a scorcher!

A breath of salt air

A 48 hour sojourn down to the south coast again to meet up with a few friends to mark the occasion of my 60th birthday last Friday. Tempus Fugit, or something like that. Maybe I should have taken more note of my old school motto; "Absque Labore Nihil" which roughly translated means "Get off your backside you lazy old git or you'll never achieve anything!" Ho hum.

Colour me beautiful

After all the rain we had earlier this month, and now a few days of hot sun, everything in the garden is growing apace. I have three gro-bags with some courgette, marrow and squash plants in them, two per bag, and they are speedily taking over the patio! The bushes are heading towards the sky; the holly tree is disappearing under a rampant honeysuckle, and my one hydrangea plant is stunning!

The bare essentials

Visiting a hardware shop in a nearby town a couple of days ago I found that they had carried out some reorganisation of the departments. I was tempted to obey their sign, but I thought I might frighten the ladies behind the till, especially if I emerged from behind the plumbing display.

How shall I spend the time?

From: The Connexion - France's English language newspaper:

GET A long lie on Sunday morning as scientists add an extra second to atomic clocks to keep them in time with the rotation of the Earth.

The "leap second" will be added just before midnight Coordinated Universal Time on Saturday - at 2.00 in France. For a brief moment the time will be 01:59:60 before flipping to 02.00.

This is the 34th time that the leap second has had to be added to cater for the change in the way the Earth wobbles on its axis as it rotates round the Sun. The last one was in 2008.

Daniel Gamis, director of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service which monitors timing systems at the Observatoire de Paris, said that the length of the day on Earth was slowing down.

This is because of the actions of tides and the reactions of the Earth's core, while violent earthquakes such as Fukushima can also upset the planet's rotation.

The Earth takes 86,400 seconds for a full 360-degree rotation but tides slow it down by 1.4 milli-seconds a day - meaning that in around 300 to 400million years the day will be just 22 hours long.

Since 1967 governments had agreed to move away from solar time and towards the precise measurements from atomic clocks but also agreed to adjust International Atomic Time to get rid of the discrepancy between the two.

The adjustment is generally every two years or so, but an unusual speeding up of the Earth meant it has not been needed since 2008.

Like sheep unto the slaughter

I was in Norwich yesterday with time to wander as my car was undergoing heart-by pass treatement with a 40k service (including cam belt change) and MoT test, and I decided to call in to the Cathedral where I unexpectedly had the opportunity to join their 11.00 a.m. BCP Holy Communion service. An interesting celebration, with bits missed out and no directions given and a priest who seemed to be saying the words by rote rather than by heart, but still a channel for God's grace to flow through. This was a refreshing stop for me by itself, but as I left the small circular side-chapel I found myself witnessing a walk-through rehearsal for the ordination service this Saturday. About a dozen ordinands dressed in their crisp new black cassocks were going through their paces for the service, and receiving instruction as to what to say, when to say it, where to stand and what they would be holding. It was a reminder of my own ordination rehearsal held 28 years ago in Salisbury cathedral when I started out on this slippery slope of ministry.

Leaving The Close I called in at the Tombland Bookshop and within minutes had found a volume by Baring-Gould on the development and change that was sweeping through villages at the end of the 19th century. There is a whole chapter on the parish church and how ancient screens, traceries, pulpits and the like were being hauled away in the name of "restoration". The book contains a timely reminder that once it's gone, it's gone, and calls for a more reasoned approach to heritage whilst balancing that with the worship needs. The words may be over a century old, but they remain bang up to date.

Then into the city centre to wander round a cheap CD and DVD store, get a coffee from a well-known Coffee House chain, and then to Cafe Rouge to use a 20% discount voucher against a wonderful main course of "steak/frites".

More wandering followed, up to the "Country & Eastern" emporium housed in the old skating rink, and its wondeful stock of oriental carpets, china, textiles and wood. On the way, passing through the Market Square, I saw something that restored my faith in human nature. An elderly gentleman walking with the aid of a frame on wheels had misjudged the shallow steps to one side of the square, and had fallen forward and was hanging on to the handrail unable to move. A group of youngsters - probably from the UEA - immediately went to his aid, helping him up, retrieving his scattered parcels, and checking that he was uninjured. Young people get such negative press, but here their help was instinctive and speedy.

And to top it all off, even though the car servicing was faily expensive, it was exactly as estimated and with no unexpected work required.

A good day off all round.

Not in my name

Here's the link for the Petition opposing the recent "Church of England" declaration against same-sex marriage.