22nd December 2014

How should Christmas feel?

Tinselly?

Sprucey?

Flashing lighty?

Carolly?

Even Richard Dawkins apparently enjoys singing Carols but as a FB friend of mine commented recently singing Carols is OK.

It's when you deconstruct the stories that the narrative collapses.

In my fifty odd years as a Vicar I have seen my main role as deconstructing the stories in order to rebuild them as believable narratives.

Of course the first story to be deconstructed is the story about Santa Claus.

You start believing as the gifts appear miraculously overnight, certainly in the days before Amazon, eBay, Yodel, Hermes and DPD, parcels did not appear moments after you had clicked a mouse or tapped a keyboard.

So Santa was a good bet.

Then one year as a young adult you wait all night and wake up with no presents and so you come to the sad conclusion that there is no Santa.

But then before you can sing Jingle Bells, having meanwhile married and begotten children, you realise that being Santa is now your responsibility, you have become Santa.

But there are Good Santa's and Bad Santa's, one year wrapping presents and filling pillow cases at two in the morning after Midnight Mass, the indoor critic and I put the wrong presents in the wrong sacks and spent the following morning correcting our mistakes with the words, what a Silly Santa .....

In Italy at Christmas one year we had a last minute shopping expedition to a special seasonal Christmas Market in order to be sure that we had local food for our visitors.

One stall was selling Salami.

We asked which was best, the stall holder held out a Salami saying Asino, uncertain for a moment as to the exact meaning and context of this reply, I pointed to the nearby scene of a Stable, a Manger complete with lowing animals and pointed to the affable looking Donkey in its straw filled pen?

Yes I was told, Asino.

And it was delicious and the grandchildren who hadn't quite worked out how Santa had followed them to Italy quickly cottoned on and asked for more Donkey Sausage without a qualm.

Early in my career as a young clergyman I was invited to take part in a Christmas Nativity to be put on by a local young wives group.

Everything went well until in the dress rehearsal Mary turned on Joseph and threw him out of the stable, throwing the baby after him and screaming in quite unseasonal language, 'and take your bloody baby with you!'

Clearly the couple had been at odds long before the narrative collapsed around them.

One year in my first parish I had spent some time working with a young musician who had used some of my lyrics to write songs, one of the songs he performed to which he had written his own lyrics was called Little Child, so I persuaded him that he might perform it at the Midnight Mass and I would preach on the lyrics of the song.

As the service was due to start at 11 30 pm there was no sign of the singer or his guitar, then the door burst open and in he fell, drunk!

It'll be fine Geoff, It'll be OK .....

I managed to get two burly sidemen to sit on him and deconstructed my way through my sermon without the musical accompaniment.

But music and Christmas goes together well, as Richard Dawkins alleged love of Carols suggests.

In my time in Newcastle which had begun with a headline in the local paper announcing, Pin back yer lug holes Tyneside, here comes the Revd Punk! I worked with a group of local musicians to put on a show in Church that we called 'Rocking the Cradle'.

On Christmas Eve before they closed I pinched all the decorations from Habitat and hung them in Church, big silver baubles, giant snowflakes and a Santa Claus.

The whole band was plugged via extension cables into one 13 amp socket, Mikes, Guitars, Drums, Vocals, Keyboard and lights.

After two hours the evening ended with John Lennon's Imagine and the stage lights went down and the Church Lights were switched on and I heard a wistful sigh from one of the congraudience.

 'Oh! It's a boring old church again'.

Again the narrative was deconstructed.

From the Christmas card showing a radiant Mary announcing to a bewildered Joseph 'It's a Girl' to the jokes about wise men and their gifts and the difference if they had been wise women, the gifts would have been useful and they wouldn't have gotten lost on the way, Christmas needs to be deconstructed if only to remind us that this story of the Babe at Bethlehem is the story of the unconditional surrender of power and the triumph of the unconditional power of the story to change hearts and lives.

17th December 2014

According to my Dictionary compiled by Samuel Johnson and dated 1870:

Oats are 'generally given to horses'.

Under Porridge, which Johnson notes derives, 'from porrum, Latin for Leek, porridge is food made from boiling meat in water; broth'.

According to Baroness Jenkins porridge costs 4p and is 21p cheaper than sugary cereals.

Apparently in an earlier edition of my Dictionary Samuel Johnson completed his entry for oats by adding after the reference to horses, 'and which in Scotland supports the people.

Well now, after the Eton educated Archbishop of Canterbury's committee reported its findings on food poverty in the UK, it is apparently now recommended that oats also support the people in England.

It seems that if you had porridge every day of the week it would cost only marginally more than if you ate Cereal on one day.

In fact if you ate porridge every day instead of breaking your fast in the Cereal Cafe you might save even more.

This morning I made porridge.

The oats cost 39p and there were enough Oats in the packet to make porridge for myself and the indoor critic for five days which confirms the Baronesses view that a serving  costs 4p (although I confess to cheating by adding cream to my porridge which almost doubled the cost for my bowl).

Possibly the Archbishop and the Baroness being knowledgeable in Latin would be able to calculate what it might cost a poor family to boil their meat in water in order to create porrum or meaty broth.

I have in a previous blog retaled the story of the WEA Class held in a working class part of the North East.

As the lecturer arrived for his talk he noticed that there was a cookery class in session entitled 'Fish Head Soup'.

He immediately changed the title of his own talk to 'Who got the rest of the fish?'.

Dr Johnson not withstanding it seems to me that the real question here is not: Is a 4p bowl of porridge cheaper than a bowl of sugary cereal at 25p? But rather, how is that in this country to day hundreds if not thousands of families are reliant on food banks in order to feed themselves?

In his book Political Order and Political Decay, Frances Fukuyama poses the question: 'How do we get to Denmark?'.

Well if that is the Question then to quote another well known writer, today it seems: 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'.

The national conversation to which amongst others, bloggers seek to contribute, is currently confused by a major public aversion to politicians and political life and debate.

What is called 'pantomime politics' and which can be seen as evidence of the political decay that Fukuyama points toward.

But in addition to this the waters are muddied by a political false way which is opening up and which the leadership of can, in all seriousness, describe the problems experienced on a journey on the M4 as arising because of 'immigration'.

But it seems that a large swathe of the public are of the opinion that the only alternative to the major parties is a party that has no possibility of being elected to form a Government, no Programme to offer and no obvious way of financing its contradictory policies.

Austerity, which has proven to be a major tax on the poorest in our society but which it seems barely touches the wealthy is it seems to me almost directly responsible for the rise in food poverty and it is to the credit not only of customers in stores which hold collections for food for redistribution but also for churches and congregations which collect food and support food banks in their communities that the food is there, whether it is porridge for 4p or sugary cereals for a treat.

I generally avoid alumni gatherings and I am not an Eton Alumni but I imagine that both the Archbishop and The Prime Minister might possibly be, but whether or not I imagine that they afford each other opportunities to meet.

It would be hard to imagine what might be said on such occasions?

Maybe the conversation might start with breakfast.

I have in a previous life, had two invitations to breakfast at 10 Downing Street, on the first, the PM of the day instead of being there to greet his guests, sent a video message, so I breakfasted on fruit kebabs with a hologram rather than porridge and I imagine the fruit kebabs cost more than 4p?

Whatever might or might not be said, it is possible to hope that the Archbishop might just ask, given the commitment to austerity with tax cuts:

 Who benefits?

6th December 2014

I recently had occasion to drive down the A23 from the Elephant and Castle to Brighton.

The contrast with the quiet country roads of Cumbria could not be greater.

As I drive out of the street where I live onto the A69, I only rarely pause to let  traffic by.

As an American friend of mine once characterised his town in New Hampshire 'We only have one stop light'.

The drive down the A23 was the drive through hell.

Sally Sat-Nav tells me when there is a speed camera ahead, she practically dinged herself hoarse poor thing.

Additionally, about every 100 to 200 yards overhead cameras hovered watchfully to be sure that you didn't inadvertently stray into a bus lane.

Big Brother was watching us closely the whole way along the tortured route.

But the Bus Lanes were cunningly marked with confusing messages and contradictory signage, so for a hundred yards or so, you could enter the bus lane at the time we were travelling, then suddenly you were forbidden, 1 00pm until 7 00pm became 1 00pm until 4 00pm or 10 until 1 00pm or whenever, whenever.

It became clear that this was a no win situation.

We were going to get a ticket for something whatever we did no  matter how much care we took.

I am still watching the postman anxiously as he delivers my letters.

I was reminded of this journey during the Chancellor's autumn statement.

Not so much because of Bus Lanes and Speed Cameras and general surveillance but because every few minutes the Economic version of Sally Sat-Nav somewhere at the back of my tired seventy year old brain told me, hey! that's not true!

Then of course there was Mr Cable saying basically that whether you are the Chancellor or not you cannot have your cake and eat it.

There will either, be deep and savage cuts in public services or there will be tax rises, it's pretty simple really.

After all we know that the most of the jobs created have been low paid, temporary, zero hours contracts or self employment.

This is why tax receipts are down and no amount of jiggling the books will obscure the fact that the economy is not working in the interests of the majority of people who if they don't see that in the run up to Christmas will almost certainly notice when the credit card bills arrive early in the New Year.

Mr Cable sings from a different hymn sheet than his colleagues Mr Alexander, a fully signed up Tory-Lite Chief Secretary and Mr Clegg who appears to have gone AWOL.

So the Chancellor makes his statement, all that hardworking people stuff, all that our plan is working stuff, all that politicking over the Mansion Tax by fiddling around with Stamp Duty stuff.

But underlying all that, the great truth of it, we are being taken back to the future.

The Tory's with the support of the Lib-Dems are taking us back to a time when public investment was at its lowest as a share of GDP.

Back to the future.

Back to the thirties, back to the menfolk 'on the stones' and the womenfolk holding things together as best they can.

My father who remembered those times well used to tell a story, one of his many stories, about the man who, unable to afford to feed his dog, trained it to manage without food, just as he succeeded with the training, the dog died!

I imagine that if I tried in my imagination to drive backwards up the A23 from Brighton to the Elephant and Castle unwinding time as I did so, I might manage to unravel the complex nightmare that we have created for ourselves.

All that street furniture, all that Orwellian watching, all that imposing taxation in the form of fines for failing to understand the complex instructions give.

What I do not imagine will happen is that as the Chancellor and his Chief Secretary drive us backwards to the 1930"s that we will find ourselves in a kinder, more generous, more human place.

Rather we will find ourselves in a country we no longer recognise.

A country in which, it will become very clear, we have no desire to live.