Posted                      

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JS Bach on keyboards, Jimi Hendrix on guitar, John Coltrane on sax... Mozart is the roadie.

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Can the last Myers-Briggs witchdoctor be choked to death by being stuffed every book in the world that takes fucking Fowler's fucking stages of fucking faith fucking seriously and all of them burned on a funeral pyre made up of Gardener's Learning Styles?

And all the rest of the fluffy-bunny pseudo-scientific pop-psychology mendacious controlling bollocks that has been infesting the church like a plague for the past too many decades.

And we can get rid of the moronic nonsense about "Generation XYZ" while we're at it.

And if there is anything left of Freudianism we can lose that as well (surely there can't be, is anyone stupid or ignorant enough to take his psychology seriously these days?)

And as for the poncy post-modernists - shoot the in the kneecaps with an AK47 and then see whether they really think the narratives of the modern era are unpersuasive.

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Originally posted by Jack the Lass:
Ken on fine form on the Tchaikovsky thread in Heaven...

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On the other hand I find most pre-jazz piano music boring (except for the huge show-off concertos - talking of which the final of the Leeds Piano competition is on RIGHT NOW and the poor blole played a disctinct wrong note within a few bars of coming in - but other than that is doing pretty well) and I can easily get fed up with the dominant high-pitched violin-and-clarinet sound of a lot of late 18th & early 19th century music and I've had it up to HERE with boring songs with rambling tedious melody lines with some dull tinkly piano accompaniment and lyrics about depressed lost Germans wandering in the wintry wilderness trying to get up enough passion to top themselves and THAT BLOODY TROUT. I mean its a nice enough tune but did Schooperson really have to make the song three weeks long? If Berlioz had orchestrated it it would have been over with in three minutes forty five and involved a horn section the size of a planet, a number of distinct explosions, and ended up with the composer eating the fish on stage after it had been fried in a kettle drum.

OK, the Schupeople aren't always that bad, but they are that best when at their most populist and flashy. The serious intense stuff is boring. Out of the immediate contemporaries or successors of Beethoven - say the composers between Haydn and Wagner - or work written before 1848 - I prefer Rossini and especially Mendelsohn to Chopin or Schubert. And Brahms can be good when he is being sentimental, Berlioz when he is being pompous, and Liszt when he is showing off. Which I suppose is nearly always for all three of them.

And so I don't really like Mozart that much. He's alright, but too cool and too tricksy and too glib. The best bits are the operas and the religious pieces. When he lets some emotion in. (Or else fakes it well)

And why do foolish people say Bach is emotionless or mathematical? He's a screaming world of stuff compared to Mozart's mild-mannered slightly snooty uber-cool not-quite-frivolity.

Mozart's music so often says "aren't I clever? Isn't the Kaiser a nice bloke? Aren't we all rather clever together for liking Me? Would anyone like to commission a quartet? What are you doing after the party? Oh, no-one goes there anymore Darling! Yes, tedious, isn't it?"


On the other hand Bach's music typically says: "Glory to God in the Highest! And Peace to his people on Earth! And Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive glory and honour and power! And isn't creation wonderful! And there is all this stuff going on in my head! Talking of which I've been up all night and could do with a coffee. No, make that a beer. In fact I want a double coffee AND a pint of lager. And shoot that bloody piano player. AND WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO PAY ME YOU TIGHT SAXON BASTARDS????"

Trust me, its all in there somewhere.

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Originally posted by ken:

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Originally posted by leo:


At the end of the day, we face our Maker alone.

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At the end of the day, we face our Maker alongside Jesus.

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Originally posted by Jack the Lass:
Ah Kelly you beat me to it (though I'm pleased I managed to quotesfile it first). That quote just sums up ken perfectly for me - and it wasn't just in writing that he was like that, I could totally imagine him giving that as a monologue down the pub.

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[P]eople are going to want to fall back on familiar words and singable tunes at funerals. Let them sing their hearts out if they can and they need to.

[...]

So have Amazing Grace. And Abide With Me. And The Lord's My Shepherd. And Guide me O thou great Redeemer. And And can it be? I want all of them at my funeral (may The Lord delay it for ever so many years)

Let the people sing.

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The Benedictine Community at Alton Abbey offers a friendly, personal service for the exclusive supply of Rosa Mystica incense.

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One person said I seemed to be "on fire" with what I was saying. I hardly know how to take that. I felt quite calm and very tired. The curate said that part of it reminded him of the Orthodox Kontakion for the Dead. Which was not in my mind at all.

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Originally posted by Qoheleth.:
Ken's music list

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[P]eople are going to want to fall back on familiar words and singable tunes at funerals. Let them sing their hearts out if they can and they need to.

[...]

So have Amazing Grace. And Abide With Me. And The Lord's My Shepherd. And Guide me O thou great Redeemer. And And can it be? I want all of them at my funeral (may The Lord delay it for ever so many years)

Let the people sing.

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Well, it causes more pain to the survivors than almost any other human act. Often even more than murder, or child abuse. So anyone who kills themself is almost certainly ruining the lives of others. So in that sense suicide is nortmally selfish. The suicide is putting their own choice or convenience before the happiness of others. That's what "selfish" means.

Of course they might not know that. They might be so depressed or screwed up that they don't or can't think about the consequences of their deaths. They might even think their family and friends will be better off without them. If they do think that they are almost certainly wrong. That misperception is a sign that they are too depressed or ill to see the world as it is. I've known people who killed themselves because they thought they were easing the burden they were on their families. They weren't.


Just as we try not to allow drunks to drive cars or epileptics to fly planes, anyone insane enough to believe that the world would be better off without them is almost certainly not sane enough
to be allowed to make the choice.

Which is one of the main reasons I think we should always do anything possible to prevent suicide, and assisting people to kill themselves must remain a crime that is tried in public court. Even if those who do it are let off unpunished.

Another reason is that suicide is an infectious disease. When someone kills themselves it becomes more likely that others will. Sometimes quite dramatically. When a well-known person kills themselves there is often a wave of copy-cat suicides. People sometimes kill themselves in the same way or on the anniversary of the suicide of a family member or spouse. (I have personally known at least three people who did that. That is six unneccessary deaths). So in that sense its almost a kind of reckless manslaughter.

And another reason is that we don't own our own bodies. We are our bodies. Not the same thing at all.

And another reason is that it is not our business to choose who dies and who lives. Whether by ending our own life or murdering someone else. That's God's department. Suicide, like murder, is in a sense ultra vires for humans. A choice it is not ours to make.

Not that suicide is in any real sense a choice, because it is entirely negative. There is nothing there to choose. It is an anti-choice, anti-freedom. The suicide has less choice, less freedom, than someone clapped in irons in a dungeon does. There is nothing there to choose.


So yes, it means something to say that suicide is selfish. Though it probably doesn't help someone depressed enough to kill themselves to point it out.

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If its not the Youth of Today its asylum seekers or bendy buses or bishops or bishops wives or Catholics or chavs or child protection services or China or council estates or dropped aitches or Estuary English or falling house-prices or French or Germans or Godless Evolutionists or Gordon Brown or greengrocers or high oil prices or hip-hop or hoodies or insensitive church restoration or Iranians or Irish or Jews or journalists or Ken Livingstone or kids who cycle on the pavement or Kossovans or liberals or Londoners or loony-left councils or low oil prices or misused apostrophes or mixed bathing or mixed choirs or modern art or modern liturgy or Mullahs or oil taxation or paedophiles or Palestinians or Political Correctness or Protestasnts or public transport or queers or rising house-prices or Scots or social security or social services or social workers or socialists or speed cameras or split infinitives or strikers or tax or teachers or terrorists or the asians or the bin-men or the blacks or the Channel tunnel or the courts or the EU or the foreigners or the Fundamentalists or the immigrants or the Miners or the Muslims or the schools or trade unions or Turks or vegetarians or women priests. I blame the parents myself.

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It is in public space that civilisation is born. The market, the city gate, the courts of the temple, the agora, the streets of the city, the forum, the church, the theatre, the public house, the commons, the town square, the beach, the park, the promenade, the football ground, the playground, the shopping mall. These are where people meet and where most importantly they meet people they wouldn't meet if they only met the people they intended to meet. They are where we rub up against each other, learn to negotiate our own way in society, become individuals rather than social clones of our parents, where we are socialised and develop our public, political lives. They are where we have carnivals, parades, bonfires, demonstrations, protests, marches, processions, street-parties. They are where unexpected social encounters happen. They are where unplanned social encounters happen. They are where unregulated social encounters happen. They are where democracy was born, where the Reformation came from, where things get done and deals get made, where politics is the property of the people rather then their masters, which is why kings and queens and planners and police and big business and bosses in general don't like free association in public space because they can't control it. Which is why they like alcohol bans and ASBOs, and "controlled strategies for delivering safe public space", and curfews, and customs and excise duty, and dog-toilet grass emptinesses round tall point blocks, and dole queues, and eavesdroppers, and emigration bans, and fences, and front gardens, and gated communities, and "get out of the car slowly", and ID cards, and immigration bans, and immigration control, and laws against electronic music with repetitive beats, and laws against riding bicycles on the pavement, and laws against secondary picketing, and laws against so-called dangerous dogs, and licensing laws, and logfiles, and monitoring, and paid informers, and passcards, and passports, and permits, and photography bans (when its you with the camera), and police permission for parades and demonstrations, and police spies, and private cars (for those who can afford them), and psychotherapists, and "show me your papers", and rfid tags, and state-funded state-regulated political parties, and the War Against (some) Drugs, and TV cameras (that they control), and windowless walls, and workhouses.

We live in a world of social sensory deprivation where isolated lonely people become little more than production units driving in their lonely air-conditioned cars to their lonely air-conditioned jobs and going home to their semi-detached worker-storage-units at night to be plugged into the Murdoch-mush satellite-soma-feed or the cable-cabal drug-drip to switch their lobotomised brains off like obsolete cars with empty tanks in a cold garage in a brutalist basement of a deserted dead ex-Soviet post-industrial complex in a snow-bound empty bus garage in the unvisited part of Belorus until their bosses have a use for them again. Fuck the Man! Break out! Disobey orders! Irritate someone! Get in the way! Shout in the Streets! Get out and talk to people and rather than doing what your capitalist lords and masters plan for you. Hang around on street corners!

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Posted by ken, May 23 2013:

I put up with show-offs, and those who mean what they say, even if they disagree with me. But that "talk about it with the person sitting next to you" nonsense. It gives the illusion of allowing discussion while at the same time making sure its not heard. Its also excruciatingly embarrassing to vast numbers of people. Its embarrassing for the quite/introverted/shy/bored/asleep/thick who have nothing to say, and also embarrassing for the opiniated loudmouths like me who can talk till the cows come home and know perfectly well they are likely to bore the pants off the poor victim next to them, or else shock them with their real opinion. Its embarrassing for anyoine who is a newcomer, or a stranger, or has been coming for years and hasn't made any friends, or who just forgot your name or who is feeling sad, or feeling randy, or who just doesn't want to talk to you for whatever reason. For many people being asked to talk to a possibly unknown one or two people at short notice is a lot harder than talking to a large group because of the more personal nature of it. Its a horrible ploy. Congregation abuse. I hates it! I hates it for ever!


Its the post-modern fucking-Myers-Briggs-licking liberal bullshitters that really annoys me. And as for Fowler's "stages of faith" the socially controlling elitist crap that pretend to treat everyone as equals but in fact censors out all but the most watered-down levelled-out socially-acceptable boring ultera-liberal pap and so is in fact a way for the powerful to control the weak. No wonder some people turn to street robbery and crack cocaine.

And did I say I didn't like it?

I think I need a lie-down. Or a fag. Or a blood-pressure pill. Or a pint of cider. Maybe all four. It must be the heat.

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Posted                          

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Originally posted by Qoheleth.:
Ken's music list

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So have Amazing Grace. And Abide With Me. And The Lord's My Shepherd. And Guide me O thou great Redeemer. And And can it be? I want all of them at my funeral

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Bugger. We're missing one. He never mentioned Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer during the brief conversation we had about this, and the order of service is already pushed to its limits. There's no room for it. Bugger. I find myself being really kind of upset about that. We've got all the others, though, and other things he asked for and other things that I think are important and - and all sorts.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Mining the quotes file:
[QUOTE]If its not the Youth of Today its asylum seekers or bendy buses or bishops or bishops wives or Catholics or chavs or child protection services or China or council estates or dropped aitches or Estuary English or falling house-prices or French or Germans or Godless Evolutionists or Gordon Brown or greengrocers or high oil prices or hip-hop or hoodies or insensitive church restoration or Iranians or Irish or Jews or journalists or Ken Livingstone or kids who cycle on the pavement or Kossovans or liberals or Londoners or loony-left councils or low oil prices or misused apostrophes or mixed bathing or mixed choirs or modern art or modern liturgy or Mullahs or oil taxation or paedophiles or Palestinians or Political Correctness or Protestasnts or public transport or queers or rising house-prices or Scots or social security or social services or social workers or socialists or speed cameras or split infinitives or strikers or tax or teachers or terrorists or the asians or the bin-men or the blacks or the Channel tunnel or the courts or the EU or the foreigners or the Fundamentalists or the immigrants or the Miners or the Muslims or the schools or trade unions or Turks or vegetarians or women priests. I blame the parents myself.

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on 09 September, 2007 00:17 :

The royal Stuarts of Scotland must have been about the most unlucky family in the history of history. As well as surely the only long-lived dynasty of monarchs most of whom spent many years in prison.

Robert II lived out his life as king, though his mother died bearing him. His son Robert III lost his second son to the English on the Bass Rock (why the Bass Rock? Who other than a gannet thinks that is safe? And who with even the brains of a gannet thinks that the place to hide from the English of all enemies is on a tiny island in the sea?) and asked to be buried in a dungheap. So they buried him in Paisley (Kings of Scotland are supposed to be buried at Iona or Scone. I quite like Paisley myself) The first son had already starved to death in jail not a lot of princes manage that when their Dad is still King. It takes a right Stewart.

The second son, James I after nearly 20 years imprisoned in England, returned to Scotland to be murdered in a tennis club while trying to escape through a drain. The eldest son having died before his father (as usual amongst the royal Stuarts) his second son reigned as James II under a series of violent regents who took power by murdering each other. When James finally came of age he took an interest in experimental arms manufacture and blew himself up with his own cannon. Wooden guns have ever been a good idea.

His second son (see the pattern?) became James III. He was deposed twice by rebellion, once by an English invasion, and in the end by his own son, and is traditionally supposed to have been assassinated by a priest while fleeing from a battle - though many historians now say he was honourably thrown from his horse. He still lost though. The buried him nearby at Cambuskenneth which is one of my favourite place names.

The side that won the battle was supposedly supporting his eldest son, James IV, who had neglected to die as a child and was annoyed that his father had followed Stuart tradition by making the second son the heir. James IV founded the Scottish Navy and tried to make peace with England. Then he changed his mind and invaded England anyway. The English thought that that was a bad idea and wiped out the Scottish Army at Flodden, killing the king and most of the nobility, an event now only remembered in the Very Sad Song "The Flowers of the Forest" as played by pipers at military funerals all over the world. Ochone, ochone, achree.

His baby third son (presumably the second one had to die to keep up the averages) was just over two weeks old. So the country was ruled by his mother, who happened to be the sister of Henry VIII of England. Which was OK, as the English had won the battle. She remarried and her new husband kept the king a prisoner for about twelve years. When he got out he married a French princess, had two legitimate sons who both died, seven illegitimate ones who all lived and messed up the Kingdom for, well the rest of its independent history, and one legitimate daughter, Mary. In honour of this he decided to invade England. Whoops.

Mary you know about. She was nine months old when she took the Coronation Oath (which basically said she had to be nasty to the English and nice to the Protestants) As she was too young to invade England herself, the English invaded for her and her mother hid her in a monastery until she escaped to become Queen of France. That didn't last, and after two murdered husbands and Scotland's first recorded assassination attempt by IED she spent most of her adult life in prison until Elizabeth had her head cut off for her disgracefully bad understanding of cryptography protocols.

Her son became James VI and I and ruled England and almost uniquely never spent any time in jail. He was gay and didn't like Calvinists. His first son died of course. His oldest daughter married the Elector Palatine and ended up Queen of Bohemia which was one of the most disastrously tragic bits of history ever and led directly to the Thirty Years War. His second son. Charles I, managed to be king for a bit. Then parliament defeated him. So he cleverly decided to restart the civil war in Scotland and so he got killed. His first son having died, of course, his second became Charles II and managed to put his period of imprisonment and exile at beginning of his reign rather than the end, which was less hassle. And then James II and lots of exiles AND warming pans.

And so to Mary II and Anne who were Proper Protestants and Settled the Constitution and Ruled the Waves. So they did have a bit of luck at the end. Except that all their children died, not just the oldest ones. It came with a lass and it left with a lass.

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Originally posted by Persephone Hazard:
Bugger. We're missing one. He never mentioned Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer during the brief conversation we had about this, and the order of service is already pushed to its limits. There's no room for it. Bugger. I find myself being really kind of upset about that. We've got all the others, though, and other things he asked for and other things that I think are important and - and all sorts.

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Comic Sans has no valid uses. If you find yourself thinking that it does, take that as a sign from God that you are not called to edify the church through typography.

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So beautiful, so opinionated, so correct!

Elsewhere - and long enough ago that I'm not sure I can find a supporting quote - I will be eternally grateful to ken for the phrase "rhotic accents" and explaining what they are (i.e. that Brits sometimes put in an "r" sound where other English speakers may not). That has helped me decipher much on the Ship when shipmates write as they would speak.

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Originally posted by ecumaniac:

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Originally posted by Persephone Hazard:
Bugger. We're missing one. He never mentioned Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer during the brief conversation we had about this, and the order of service is already pushed to its limits. There's no room for it. Bugger. I find myself being really kind of upset about that. We've got all the others, though, and other things he asked for and other things that I think are important and - and all sorts.

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Could we sing it at the pub? (Serious.)

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Originally posted by Persephone Hazard:
Bugger. We're missing one. He never mentioned Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer during the brief conversation we had about this, and the order of service is already pushed to its limits. There's no room for it. Bugger.

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We'll just have to sing it in the pub then

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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing

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OOn a thread about something else entirely.

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the entity posting as BCP1662 drivelled:
Native birthrates are currently below replacement levels should lead to a steadily declining population. In time, housing and other living costs and reform of the welfare system should make supporting a family less of a burden for the respectable middle and working classes. (Instead of the current gross injustice of having to support (via punitive taxes) the offspring of immigrants, feckless black babyfathers and the indigenous underclass.)

Reform of the welfare state, abolition of the race laws and some sort of assisted repatriation should remove the problem of the growth alien groups with higher than indigenous birth rates.

It goes without saying that third world immigration should be stopped.

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I replied to this racist nonsense in anger.

quote:

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BCP1662 then replied:
Perhaps you would like to explain what is wrong with my post. In scriptural terms please, rather than the secular religion of today

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A quick sample of the well-known proof quotes to be going on with:

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Numbers 15.15,16 The community is to have the same rules for you and for the alien living among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You and the alien shall be the same before the LORD:The same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you.

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quote:

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Deuteronomy 10.18-19 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt

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Deuteronomy 24.19-21 Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this. When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow.

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quote:

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Deuteronomy 27.19 Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.

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Isaiah 56.6,7 And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD , and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant- these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

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quote:

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Matthew 28.18-19 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations

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Galatians 3.28: There is no Jew nor Greek; there is no bondman nor freeman; there is no male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus

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Colossians 3.11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

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quote:

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Revelation 5.9-10 And they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.

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Revelation 7.9-17 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'

All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:

'Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!

Then one of the elders asked me, 'These in white robes--who are they, and where did they come from?'

I answered, 'Sir, you know.'

And he said, 'These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.'

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(don't bother to go looking for the thread, I dug it out of Archive X )

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Originally posted by busyknitter:

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Originally posted by ecumaniac:

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Originally posted by Persephone Hazard:
Bugger. We're missing one. He never mentioned Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer during the brief conversation we had about this, and the order of service is already pushed to its limits. There's no room for it. Bugger. I find myself being really kind of upset about that. We've got all the others, though, and other things he asked for and other things that I think are important and - and all sorts.

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Could we sing it at the pub? (Serious.)

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Personally I'll be disappointed if we don't have some kind of Beer and Hymns session. Because of distance (I live oop North) Greenbelt was one of my fixed points in the year for seeing Ken in recent years.

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Originally posted by Tina:
So many times I'd read one of ken's rants, and be simultaneously thinking 'Oof, Ken, you know better than to post that there, you're gonna get a Hostly slap', and 'AAA-MEENN! Preach it, brother!'

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Oh gosh. er hmm, wow.

Is this a Christian web award?

I think I'd just like to thank everybody who voted for me, everybody who voted for anyone else, God, my parents, Erin, Noel Coward, Simon, the other Ken, Fuller's brewery, (and Harvey's. McEwan's, Brain's, Beard's (which no longer exists), Gales, Adnams, Shepherd Neame, M&B, etc) the cats, the cat's fluffy toys, the BNP for providing hours of endless fun, Stephen Fry, Victor von Doom, William Morris, Eugene Debs. Emma Goldman, James Connolly, Keir Hardie, John Burns, Joe Hill, Aneirin Bevan, Dorothy Day, Jennie Lee, Francis Wahome, Mr Haslam, Dave Bellamy, Andrew and Angela Milner, Jim Taylor-Page, Mel Henton, Johan Pachelbel, Felix Mendelsohn, Richard Wagner, Jimi Hendrix, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, Frank Bridge, porridge, the Royal Navy, the US Marine Corps, the New Model Army, the Australian Light Horse, the Hypaspists, Fanny Crosby, Fanny Trollope, Fanny Craddock, GK Chesterton. Rudyard Kipling, Hilaire Belloc, Shirley Collins, the whole Copper family, Emeric Pressburger, poplar trees in general, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Shuggie the Haggis Monster, Billie Holliday, Edith Piaf, Shirley Collins, Anne Briggs, and Norma Waterson, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Will Eisner, Herge, and Jean Giraud, John Ray, Martin Lloyd, Carl von Linne, Charles Darwin, PH Gosse, JH Fabre, Aldo Leopold, Ronald Fisher, Ernst Mayr, John Maynard Smith, Bilbo Baggins, Mum, Gran, cousin Pat, Kevin, Pete, & uncle Frank, the Lambton Worm, Joan Sebastian Bach, Christina Rossetti, Graham Kendrick, Tim Hughes, Dante, the girl who invented cheese, Dad, Andy. Kevin, Carl, Mark, Pete, Mike, Mick, Nick, Dick, Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Teddy, Tumper and Mo-mom, Pugin, Waterhouse, Scott, Shaw, Horta, Mackintosh, Gaudi, Lubetkin, Hundertwasser, Soleri, Erskine, Makovecz, Barr's (for Irn Bru), Jessica Alba for making it worthwhile to watch the Fantastic Four movies with the sound turned down while remembering the original stories which were much better, Robert Burns, Henry Vaughan, TS Eliot, the colour green, Tony, Patrick, Adam, Martin, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave and Dave, Griff, Chris, Teddy, Ed, Sarah, J Scott Skinner, Niel Gow, Runrig, Blind Mary of the Isles, Thomas Malory, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Gawain poet, most weasels, Maggie, Tracy, Jenny, Maggie, Liz, Liz, Anne, Ruth, Maggie, Christina, Maggie, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Louis Stevenson, JRR Tolkien, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Saint Bicholas of Cyra, Father Christmas, Santa Claus, the Sprit of Christmas Past, Geoff Ryman, Terry Pratchett, UK le Guinn, CJ Cherryh, Iain Banks, Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, John Crowley, John Brunner, John Henry, John Thomas, and uncle Tom Cobbley and all

er, and hmmm hah, oh [weeps] I didn't know how the votes were going cos I was banned at the time

[Hums] "the more it snows, tiddly pom..."

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13 Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall:
but the Lord helped me.
14 The Lord is my strength and song,
and is become my salvation.
15 The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous:
the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.
16 The right hand of the Lord is exalted:
the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.
17 I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the Lord.
18 The Lord hath chastened me sore:
but he hath not given me over unto death.
19 Open to me the gates of righteousness:
I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord:
20 this gate of the Lord,
into which the righteous shall enter.
21 I will praise thee: for thou hast heard me,
and art become my salvation.
22 The stone which the builders refused
is become the head stone of the corner.
23 This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvellous in our eyes.
24 This is the day which the Lord hath made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.

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The Lord hath chastened me sore:
but he hath not given me over unto death.
Open to me the gates of righteousness:
I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord:



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The Benedictine Community at Alton Abbey offers a friendly, personal service for the exclusive supply of Rosa Mystica incense.

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Originally posted by busyknitter:
While searching for one of ken's paeans to Bonfire (anyone?) I came across Towards a New Railway History of Middle-Earth

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Originally posted by busyknitter:
While searching for one of ken's paeans to Bonfire (anyone?) I came across Towards a New Railway History of Middle-Earth

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Might as well ask the bloody cat.

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As with intiction, as with communion in one kind, as with putting a wafer directly into someone's mouth. All seem designed to reinforce the idea that the laity are not holy enough to touch the sacred things with their hands.

The idea that it is to prevent spillage is nonsense. It makes spilling more likely as it almost inevitably splashes some on the lips of the communicant. And also a short minister can't even see what is going on at places where they stand. And communicants with moustaches always end up with wine in them.

Also such fussy, prissy practices tend to make the whole thing a little unreal. They seem almost anti-incarnational. Same for using wafers rather than real bread. Jesus was God incarnate, a real man and truly God. If we really believed that surely we'd want to celebrate him by really eating and drinking real bread and real wine - not by miming it or mimicking it or watching someone else do it, or by almost eating and drinking some bland plasticky stuff a little bit like bread and wine. The same goes for the wee cuppies of course - the eucharistic doctrines of the Baptists may be different from those of the Roman Catholics but the cultural drive to distance our religious practices from the material world is the same in both cases.

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SPK: I also plan to create ... a Calvinist Ordinariate
ken: I thought it was called Taize?

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[...] more announcements [...]

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The correct placement of the announcements is a Mystery of the Church which will not be revealed till her Lord comes back for her. Meanwhile we who watch and wait must merely do our best. Doing them twice, at the beginning and the end, might be a bit redundant but at least it means everyone is likely to hear at least one set.

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Eighteenth-century churches were anything but plain inside. They were - and some still are - often astonishingly ornate. Its just they are ornate in a style that went out of fashion at about the time of the French Revolution and has stayed out of fashion since. A kind of weird mish-mash of tasteful neo-classical, watered-down baroque, "Rule Britannia" style patriotic imagery, and a few late-Gothic hangovers. Functionless Corinthian columns and curvey pastel-painted plasterwork up against lots of vernacular English wood-carving. As if a tasteful Georgian drawing room had collided with the rear end of a ship-of-the-line inside the ruins of a Greek temple.

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A cult of national solidarity, almost an English Shinto that no-one was expected to believe as long as they said the right words and wore the right clothes. A sort of Scouting for Grown-Ups with interior design by the Arts-and-Crafts movement and architecture from the Gothic Revival. Politically conservative, theologically liberal Protestantism overlaid with synthetic Anglo-Catholic ritual

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Old hymns.

And as I realised on Sunday, for me the true sound of Christian worship, or worshipping Christians, is a real congregation singing hymns they mean accompanied by a tinkly upright piano. Choirs and organs and worship bands are all very well, but not the real deal.

And please no piddling around with slow and boring and emotionally manipulative mood music or ambient or even lovely polyphony. I like Tallis as much as the next bloke - but either you are listening hard to him (and so not praying) or letting it all wash over you (and so probably falling asleep). To inhabit the prayer you want words you can remember and words you can mean (or if you can't honestly mean them, words you can know well enough to know what you disagree with) so you own them in a sense, singing (or listening) consciously whilst praying your own prayers at the same time.

"And can it be?" is a good start. "Just as I am". "Amazing Grace". All of which we sang at church this week.

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Because we is British.

That is what we do.

We are the world champions of impressive and apparently milldy obsolete ceremonial and pageantry (even if most of it was invented between about 1840 and 1910)

We also have Bonfire, coronations, cricket (makes more sense considered as a ritual invocation of nature spirits than as a sport), genuine marching pipers in kilts (as opposed to fake ones who can only play "Amazing Grace"), investitures, military tatoos, more elaborate university graduations than you do (and the speeches are less likely to turn into tedious pap talks), morris dancing, traditional naval reviews (even without Turbinia), proper football fans with proper traditional chants and occasional genuine blood, real horse racing (American racing has those silly tantantaras, yeuchhhh, and the boring flat circular dirt tracks, and a general lack of royalty, real ale, drunken farmers, and corporate hospitality tents full of skimpily dressed PR women), Remembrance Day, shinier massed bands, state funerals, Orange Marches the size of a planet, the best ever flypasts (a Vulcan, a Lancaster, and two Spitfires flying in formation and Concorde flew overhead - beat that!), the Changing of the Guard, the Lord Mayor's Show, the State opening of Parliament, Trooping the Colour, Maggie Thatcher, Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana, and much much more!

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