How we live now, envisaged in 1969

These are the days! 2009, seen from forty years ago. Mrs Emma Peel spends money at a remote department store, whilst, naturally, hubby pays all her bills. Both grownups spy on the kids all day long, when they’re not swimming. The lounge looks like the backroom at Radio Rentals, and, using a “home post office” you can even message the people next door instantaneously...

It’s amazing how they got so much of the techie bit right, but rather failed to predict fundamental changes in social and cultural attitudes...
major h/t John Halton (Via Twitter)

Grief transformed, prayer answered

Someone recently bereaved was telling me about his first new year alone — bleak and unpromising, nothing doing in an empty house, he wandered slightly aimlessly into town. There on the streets, he met a beggar. “What are you doing here?” the beggar asked him. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you what,” replied my friend. “You’re coming with me. We’re going tenpin bowling, then MacDonalds and New Year together.” They had a memorable evening. And next term, at school, the children sang in assembly love isn’t love unless you give it away. They’re right.

I was reminded of a sappy perhaps, but profoundly true sentiment about prayer from the (rather uneven) Evan Almighty, voiced by Morgan Freeman, who is fast cornering the market in playing the Voice of God:

One (Traditionalist) Road to Recovery

Tim Chesterton bears moving testimony to the ministry of Bishop Ron Ferris, formerly of the North Canadian Yukon diocese, then Algoma. In retirement he has left the Anglican Church of Canada for one of the Canadian Traditionalist networks. I can’t / won’t comment about his choice, not knowing its immediate context; This post is not about his retirement ministry, but what preceded it. Bishop Ron was an early adopter of the internet to stay in touch and guide clergy, and used to post brief weekly notes and ideas, which I came across a few years ago, and thought were solid gold.
I hope they stay somewhere on the web, even though the author has retired...

One of these concerns conflicted Christian communities. Like an immune system attacking its healthy body, Church groups can become oppressed by a soul-sickness that reveals itself in paranoia, bullying, silly (usually ad hominem) touchiness and sick bunny sarcasm. Here is Bishop Ron’s list of characteristic symptoms and treatments...

1. High and habitual anxiety and reactivity which overshadows perspective, opportunity, and differentiated thought.

Remedy: Meet enough security needs to allow calm dialogue and thought. Stabilize the patient.

2. Carefully tended list of grievances is held and recited to negotiate future concessions.

Remedy: Acknowledge and air wounds. Apply reality therapy to exaggerations.

3. Enduring personal animosities override all decisions, all deliberations, all impartiality.

Remedy: Slowly renew, dilute, and broaden the leadership base.

4. Blaming and cyclical, unhealthy relationship patterns will be present and gain strength from anger, revenge, stigmatization, "them and us" thinking, and distancing "ain't it awful".

Remedy: Re-state the problems without personal blame. Envision a new future. Don't be vague.

5. Conflict is magnified through indirect communications such as one person speaking for anonymous others.

Remedy: Create a fair forum for direct communication where people speak for themselves, directly to the whole group, and where the open decisions matter.

6. Hostage taking occurs "unless . . . l'm leaving".

Remedy: "We love you, appreciate what you've done, and don't want you to leave, however . . . "

7. Relationship obsessions abound with unhealthy clinging or distancing. This may lead to endless analysis, therapy, inward scrutiny, and desperate solutions.

Remedy: Focus on the great outward common tasks and purposes.

8. An exhausted few tenuously cling to the wheel as the ship tosses and lunges largely out of control.

Remedy: Leaders must priorize, set boundaries, differentiate tasks, and proceed with faith in God and their own integrity. Reduce the tasks to match the resources and create the space for some enjoyment.

9. Insecurity reactions around books, buildings, the old days, and the past hero will be sentimentalized. People will cling to each other in unhealthy ways: gossip circles, power groups, guard-dog teams, and "ain't it awful" observation teams.

Remedy: Help the community find its security in their primary convictions; God, Christ, the word, the mission, and the love.

10. Often there is a sense of morass and abyss. Poverty thinking will overcome abundance thinking. "We're hurting. We're stuck. We're getting to like our insecurities. We're poor and that insures nothing good can happen. Even if we could change the cost might be too high."

Remedy: A new climate, new patterns of relating, abundance thinking, hope kindled

So long, then, John Updike

Since Roger’s Version, back in 1986, with its crazy notion of someone who thinks they can prove God on a college computer, and a sex scene with Tertullian on the side, I’ve been intrigued by John Updike’s playful mix of high theology well hidden, Song of Solomon sex scenes, and down-to-earth honesty about the frustrations of suburban captivity.
John McTavish says Updike was

a Christian, but not a Christian novelist in the sense that his work forces an explicitly Christian message onto the reader. On the contrary, precisely because Updike is a Christian he believes the novelist should portray the human condition with unsparing honesty, expressing his "basic duty to God" in writing "the most truthful and fullest books" he can.

Updike slept with a well-thumbed copy of Karl Barth’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans by his bedside. As you do. Clear Christian conviction, with zero pietism, underlay everything he wrote, like the drums in a jazz group. He produced some genuinely fresh expressions of faith:

if the first article of the Creed stands, the rest follows as water flows downhill. That God, at a remote place and time, took upon Himself the form of a Syrian carpenter and walked the earth willfully healing and abusing and affirming and grieving, appeared to me quite in the character of the Author of the grass..

No time to write a learned essay like the tremendous ones by Ben Myers and, especially, John McTavish, but could we all spare a reflective moment for an Updike poem about resurrection?

Seven Stanzas at Easter


Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Now that’s theology for now! It doesn’t come from tinkering with the crown jewels, or swapping tough diamonds for smooth glass; you cut ’em rough and set ’em playfully where they belong... in the midst of life.

Fallen, frail: Holocaust Memorial Day

I was going to put up fascinating colour footage of Dachau shot by George Stevens in 1945, but could not bear to do it. This material is just too indecent to show, too painful to watch. “How can one human being do this to another human being?” was his question. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is one helpful contemporary take, in a year the focus is on children.

It matters that we remember, because the awful truth is that evil can take root anywhere, any time, given the facts Christians call Fall & Freewill. Political convictions, good intentions, progress, even religion or lack of it, all existed in Central Europe in 1941. They cannot innoculate against evil. Only truthful memory enables us to understand our own moral frailty and, perhaps, make better choices in future.

I can understand lack of belief in God. God does not compel faith, and honest doubt is worth more than feigned belief. I object, however, to lack of belief in evil, including the possibility of anyone being entangled by it, for that really is a pernicious, blinding thing.

Steve Croft, here and there

If I weren’t here I’d be there — but of course. Here is Cardiff; there is York Minster, to share in the episcopal ordination of Steve Croft, who is to be the new Bishop of Sheffield. It has been a great resource to have Steve living in Oxford as leader of Fresh Expressions. He’s been a source of information and inspiration, as well as a hub person in various emergent Church networks springing up around the world.

Among other good memories, I recall his leading a day for Bucks Churchwardens in Winslow, which was extraordinarily down to earth but stimulating and inspiring for a very mixed group from a variety of traditional and improvisatory contexts. To quote the man himself,

We are called... to a dual vocation of sustaining what is and bringing about significant change and transition. This is a complex and demanding task. However, its my conviction that as we make the journey we are not simply imitating our culture or inventing new ways to engage in Christian ministry. Instead we are exploring our global and historic Christian tradition and restoring patterns of ministry which have always been present in a church in mission

Steve enters a new leadership phase of his own special contribution to this process, with much respect, love and payers from his many friends in Oxford.

Church Building and Building Church?

Outsiders often love Church buildings, where insiders often feel more of a love/hate thing about them. Insiders know all the pitfalls and challenges, as well as appreciating their place in the local skyline. It's been fascinating to spend two days with the Ecclesiastical Law Society, contemplating buildings as mission opportunities.

Sir Roy Strong sees no future for parish churches as mere museums or clubhouses, bottled up in formaldehyde. They have to engage everyone who relates to them to have a future; and if this means toilets, then so be it. He is interested in the long-term history of Churches before our eighteenth and nineteenth century forbears turned them into one day a week places. We need to recover a longer perspective; and be slightly careful about amenity societies and others, if they ever exercise power to comment without responsibility.

Charles Mynors and Richard Giles led us through legal and structural possibilities for buildings. I came away from Richard’s talk in particular feeling that where things sometimes go wrong is when congregations themselves lose the script about their worship. It’s a trap to engage architects before you know what you’re trying to achieve and why — results can be disappointingly muddled and incoherent.

Andrew Mottram and Paul Bayes then led us through the concept of buildings for mission. It’s mad to start with design, before you know what you’re trying to design. This comes back to the need for clear thinking from the outset. All sorts of people way beyond our conventional constituency are seeking out special, holy places in their lives. Look at those shrines you increasingly see lovingly kept see by the roadside, where people have died. When people oppose change, it’s easy to grumble about them — but what is God saying to us through them about where we need to be? People can be very positive about their parish churches, but not if they are only fitted for gathered communities with high exclusion thresholds various. he gave various examples of different groups relating to buildings in surprising ways, sometimes very positively and creatively.

Tonight? John Mummery, Justice of Appeal and Chairman of Tribunals under the Clergy Discipline Measure. Stern and thrilling stuff awaits, perhaps...

Sir John Mortimer RIP

I was delighted to read the Times account of Sir John Mortimer’s funeral at Turville Church, Buckinghamshire. Among great tributes from his massed friends and admirers, the tip of a huge iceberg, I am glad to know the Vicar did a good job holding things together in Church, and capturing the spirit:

“Sir John called himself an atheist for Christ. He always came to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But he emphatically did not believe in life after death.
My hope,” she added, “is that he has had a wonderful surprise.”

The C of E at its best, I thought. And the Atheism? It sounds as though God views atheism as a harmless eccentricity, which probably doesn’t really exist as much as people think, infinitely better than pretending to believe, which is a ruddy menace...

One (Traditionalist) Road to Ruin

“Catholic?” Part of the mystical body of Christ. You become one by baptism. That’s Christian tradition. Since the 1860’s, however, some extreme Anglo-Catholics have gotten into the questionable habit of using the word “Catholic” almost exclusively as a kind of style descriptor or brand name. The “Catholic Church” in this exclusive sense = “no prots, just me and my chums, the Romans and most of the Orthodox”. And, like the Urban Spaceman, the best thing about this idealized narrowband “Church” is that it doesn’t actually exist; so holding it to be the supreme authority can be a neat way out of accountability to anyone real.

Taken to extremes, this ecclesiology comes over as snotty, gusting towards dotty and even potty. But what lies beyond?

I was reading Ruth Gledhill’s blog yesterday, and came across a clip from Swedish TV of Bishop Richard Williamson. I am grateful to her for carrying this stuff, because however distasteful it is, we mustn’t forget it is out there, and utterly pernicious.

Richard Williamson started out as an ultra traditonalist Anglo-Catholic which he seems to have taken for a flamboyant mix of fantasy, reactionary whining, sarcasm, misogyny, and trivial Father Teddery. This led him into the Roman Catholic Church, but that wasn’t really him, and he ended up in the Lefebvrist schism. Now he’s arrived at... Holocaust denial. No gas chambers, no nothing. Well, 300K dead all right, but... but what?

In the mid-nineties a friend, a canny old cradle Catholic Irish priest, told me over a whiskey he thought one or two of the Anglo-Catholics joining his denomination were “the most dangerous form of convert.” “Dangerous?” I said. “Surely not.” “Oh yes,” he said. “Dangerous. They’ve made a complete Horlicks of living within their own tradition, no obedience, and now they think they’re bl**dy experts and entitled to come and play merry hell in the Church. Kids taking over the school. Dangerous.”

With all forms of crazy fundamentalism, if people choose to apply their often considerable intelligence to going round and round the circle line, they end up in la-la land. They need to get off the train, consider the possibility that they might not have everything sewn up, grow up and join the rest of the human race up on the surface.

But my Irish friend was correct. This stuff is Dangerous. Beyond all the Restricted Views, Snotty, Dotty and Potty, the outlook is Obscene.

Great analysus of this interview’s rather steamy origins and political context, from Andrew Brown here.

One (Traditionalist) Road to Recovery is not about this particular narrow issue, but may be of interest.

& North Korean Civil Liberties for all

Team Huddle. Diary Room. The Government, concerned about the waning popularity of Big Brother, is bringing the experience into all our homes. It’s proposing a new super database, to enable it to read all our emails, phone calls, and internet searches. And for added fun and expense, it’s proposing to farm out the job to some private company. That way, when the disks are left in a briefcase on the train, it’s somebody else’s fault. Only £12Bn, and Big Brother really will be tagging all our private conversations and outings on the internet. It’s all about terrorism, see? If the terrorists won, they’d take away our civil liberties, and we’d have a government that spied on us all the time...

But hang on,

1. It’s not easy for crimefighters to process and use the information they have now. Can you imagine how misleading and useless the proposed mass of unfocussed information could possibly be? Right now, the authorities need warrants, and, more importantly, some sense of direction, when they rifle our digital dustbins. It’s quality information, not sheer quantity, that aids detection. Beyond a certain point, excessive useless information actually misleads. Fascinating trails can lead nowhere, but be followed anyway. That’s how false convictions happen. And, take it from me, the real crooks will soon find ways to play this thing like a violin.
   
2. Collecting this mass of 99·999% useless information will be hell. So will sorting it, storing it, accessing it, and interpreting it. But all those activities can be guaranteed to be a Sunday School outing, compared to the joy of straightening out the mess when misperceptions occur. You can bet your bottom dollar that this activity will be solidly exempted from any data protection legislation. When the billions of cockups we can anticipate start piling up and impinging on our private lives, don’t think it’ll be easy to do anything about it.
3. Pub Licensing hours came in during the first world war to hasten the downfall of Kaiser Bill. Within four years, Kaiser Bill went and done an Untergang. Eighty years on, all we had was Kaiser Chiefs. But we still had our World War 1 licensing laws.
   Funny, isn’t it, how panic measures for one purpose stick around and find others?

I’m struggling with this whole hare-brained thang. But tell you what, we can all try this out for a day. There’s a group on Facebook called “cc all your private emails to Jacqui Smith Day.” Let’s all share our private information with the Home Secretary by blind copying everything to public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk. The Facebook group will say which day to do it, because we mustn’t overwhelm out poor hardworking Home Secretary with useless titbits, spam, and garbage. That would be a terrible waste of time, wouldn’t it? We can then measure how much Crime, War and International Terrorism fell that day, and, armed with that hard knowledge, we can all calculate whether this obvious erosion of our basic human rights is worth the candle. If we decide not to go ahead, anyone missing the scheme can move to North Korea, where nobody would bat an eyelid at this police method, and there’s a constant stream of Norman Wisdom movies on TV to keep them cheerful.

Milton-Obama; liberty, faction, faith

How can nations founded on liberty and difference hold together and get anything done? Or churches, for that matter? Is what you need centralised nutcrunching authority? Head Office? Your own Mikado?

Absolutely not, says John Milton. Preparing an address for his 400th birthday bash I was struck by the power of Milton’s broad vision for England, at a time it lay in ruins after the civil war. His recipe was not repression, but liberty. Rulers should release the inherent strength of people, rather than holding them down, censoring, or suppressing their energies. Thus his Address to the Lords and Commons of England (1644):

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it self of heavenly radiance.

It is the duty of the Lords and Commons to nurture free private citizens, not slavish conformists, in a way Milton associated with Roman Catholic countries. This develops people’s capacities, rather than treating them like naughty children and enforcing servitude.

Consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to...

He talks of sectarianism, and the energy faction induces, and the seeming weakness of Liberty, that actually encourages difference to flourish; seemingly a weakness... In fact the broad dispersing of authority is a strength, not a weakness:

For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great Prophet may sit in heav'n rejoycing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfill'd, when not only our sev'nty Elders, but all the Lords people are become Prophets. No marvell then though some men, and some good men too perhaps, but young in goodnesse, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own weaknes are in agony, lest these divisions and subdivisions will undoe us. The adversarie again applauds, and waits the hour, when they have brancht themselves out, saith he, small anough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches: nor will be ware untill he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill united and unweildy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms, and that we shall not need that solicitude honest perhaps though over timorous of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end, at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to perswade me...

True leadership is not about suppressing dissent, but helping free people frame smaller issues in their bigger context. Intractable issues are usually based on false antithesis; ask a silly question and you get a silly answer. Worrying away at intractables in their own terms is what gums up the works. Of course there are people in any organisation who thrive on gridlock and frustration, because it provides an arena within which they can posture and bully their way, indulging ego, building their own significance.

What the impossible issues need is reframing in some context within which people can get traction, discover and release their inner energy, and come gather, persuaded, around a bigger vision. Release that energy, and all the Lord’s people become prophets...

Obama, transition, leadership, hope

The US limbers up for its 1997 Blair moment; The staging may be Busby Berkeley, but the emotion is real, and the sense of release, and hope. Non-trivial moments in history are catured by images that become, to use a much abused word, iconic.

Icons are windows into the divine providence; Iconic images mark out the turning points in our story. Soldiers on Iwo Jima (US) or St Paul’s in the Blitz (UK) spoke of struggle and hope, the child being shot in Vietnam spoke of victimhood and futility of the war, the twin towers of the end of progressive secular dreamland. The next two days will throw up several images, one or two of which will surely become iconic.

But only if the promise is given substance, fulfilled. We shall have to wait and see how that happens, or doesn’t. Obama is Lincoln-theming his inauguration; a noble cross-party gesture, especially if like the President-elect, you are a competent constitutional lawyer who actually knows the first thing about Lincoln. Obama's epic struggle to get there, involved transcending a name which was hardly designed for the hour by Madison Avenue. Lincoln was dismissed as “a fourth-rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar,” whose speeches wcomposer of “illiterate compositions... interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes.” Nastier things have no doubt been said about Obama. The Tribune said of Lincoln that his shrewd course through the contraditctory torrents heading for the rocks at the Chicago Convention of 1860 was not trimming, “the result of ambition which measures words or regulates acts” but “the natural consequence of an equable nature and a mental constitution that is never off its balance.” So obscure was he that half the press were undertain as to whether his Christian name was “Abraham” or “Abram.” Lincoln came to his inauguration as a man who knew his own name, made public property.

Now Obama is on that spot, how is he supposed to do it? How do we all manage our expectations? Here are a couple of quotes to ponder about Leadership and future-making from the head of the best new West Coast religion to emerge in the past thirty years, Steve Jobs:

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

and, speaking of the kind of attitude he wants to grow in his colleagues,

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

Slumdog Millionaire: Rags to Rajah

Danny Boyle’s Mumbai makes Danny Boyle’s Edinburgh look like a Sunday School outing. If you’ve had enough Trainspotting, you can try bizarre beggars’ initiation rituals, outdoor jakes, riots in the streets, and beggar boys blinded to increase their sympathy scores. There’s something Dickensian about Mumbai in this film — A bright new world built on exploitation, poverty and low criminality that Fagin could only dream about — Curiously globalised rookeries, Oliver Twist in the hottest Vindaloo sauce.

Doesn’t sound like much fun But it is. The poorest of the poor is catapulted to riches by a game show. Did he cheat, strike lucky, or what? Is it destiny, and if so, what do we mean by that word and how much luck do you need to fulfil your destiny?

If love is a constant, what kind of a constant? Actually the plot plays two or three fairytale trump suits simultaneously — rags to riches, good guy gets the girl, hidden hero whose constancy wins through, fate playing the joker but having an even bigger joker played back on it.

Visually, this movie is beautiful, on every level, down to subtitles that complete rather than clutter the visual language of each shot.

How realistic? I really don’t know. It’s full of harsh gritty realism, and feels like a story told from the inside out, but driven by almost surreal twists of fate and fortune. Really it doesn’t matter — this isn’t an advert for tours or an NGO. You get drawn irresistibly into the characters straight away, and from the heart of stinking grime, nastiness, poverty and violence grows a beautiful flower.
Six and half stars out of five.

Atheist Secrets and Lies...

Secret Tweet is fascinating — people can post their inner secret thoughts for all to see, anonymously. Recent examples include “I’m alone in life and I hate it” and “I’m an an atheist, yet in times of desperation I plead with God.” That’s confession. There’s a screen for anonymous reactions. Is that absolution? ’fraid not. Many, but not all Comments are sympathetic. This second tweet drew fury from one ranting atheist:

I don’t wanna be anonymous! I’m @MissJia and I think you’re full of shit. You can’t call yourself an atheist, denouncing God but then reaching out to him in your time of need! That’s some ole selfish bullshit. Either you’re an atheist who doesn’t practice or believe or you don’t. But don't be wishy washy with God b/c that shit aint right.”

Remember Maurice Bendrix (in Graham Greene’s End of the Affair): “Oh God, I hate you so much. It’s as bad as if you existed.” Plainly atheists count among their number rabid fundamentalist bigots every bit as fiery and intolerant as the ones you get among Christians, Druids, Branch Dravidians and Druze. It’s one in the eye for the demonstrably false notion that it’s religion causes crazy fundamentalism, rather than human folly and wickedness.

Secret Tweet is the ultimte Twitter stream for nosy people. It’s definitely going into my talk on prayer next week in Chesham. This morning I noticed “I don't want to lose weight. I just want to find someone who loves me as I am.” Food for thought...

But finding someone ain’t the end of yo’ troubles. Steve and Leigh Buttell from Sydney, got married recently. Eighteen months and several thousand dollars later they experienced a dream wedding, followed by a A$3,850 wedding night in what turned out to be Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom:

By the time the group left three days later, the newlyweds had allegedly found maggots described by the groom as "the size of chocolate bullets'' in their wedding bed and a dead bat, covered in maggots, above their bedhead.

One guest awoke at 1.30am with a reaction to what he believed were insect bites and spent the night on a couch. Other guests fled their room in the middle of the night when a bat emerged from the fireplace and "flapped around the room''.

The newlyweds abandoned their suite on the wedding night after allegedly pulling back the sheets to find maggots in their bed, believed to have come from the dead bat on a shelf above their bed. The couple sought refuge on a blow-up mattress on the floor of a cottage occupied by Mrs Buttell's father and grandparents...

The cottages' owner, Sam Haymes, waived the outstanding $1850 and gave a bottle of sparkling wine as an apology, but Mr Mason was not satisfied with the offer. The family said the complaint was not about money. Mr Mason said: "Mr Haymes was apologetic and polite and removed the dead bat, but in my view it shouldn't have happened.'

Quite. Finally for this morning, Marcus Warren twitters the dumbest Inaugural line ever uttered by a US President, before the 43rd President (43rd dimmest, as well) invented the Bushism, from one Richard Milhous Nixon in 1969:

The American Dream does not come to those who fall asleep.

And, of course, a dead bat above the bedhead is one way to stay awake after hours. That’s how Aussies do it.

Fashion-conscious Clergy? Hmm...

Vot does a Vooman Vont? Big Issue, of course, for Sigmund Freud. I wondered myself as I appeared fleetingly, but long enough for people to notice, on Trinny and Susannah a couple of days ago. The main subject was my vicar, chaplain and colleague, Rosie Harper, (previous on ths blog here) trying out new alternatives to conventional “Dibley” dog collars with them. And yes, I confess, I did ask Susannah Constantine whether she thought my bum looked big in this. Was (weak) joke, not necessarily intended for primetime national TV... and perhaps it was unfortunate the clip made the trailer as well as the show.

On a rather Female show, I realised how blokey and ignorant I am about Fashion and all its works. It wasn’t quite like Father Ted and colleagues in the lingerie department, but I realised how little I know about that stuff. The TV crew and Susannah Constantine were delightful, and easy to have around. There’s an idiot response to fashion which just sees it as inherently superficial. I disagree, now. I understand that many don’t have much choice about their appearance, but how they look is not inherently egotistical, just part of their real humanity. I was amazed by the dignity and care about appearance of families in Indian Villages last year. Dismissing appearances says, on one level, that people don’t matter, and I think that’s as questionable a notion, for an incarnational religion, as airhead obsession down the mall. OK, ironside Puritans, what’s wrong with people being creative about themseves, and feeling more confident?

Looking around clergy colleagues milling around with Susannah and TV crew, they struck me as a varied, enterprising, original group of people. Actually there wasn't a single look among them you could label “County Lady” or whatever. Some are more appearance conscious than others, and doubtless some more adept than others at the dark arts of knowing and managing how they come over; all, however, very engaged in role, and wonderfully interactive.

Wondering about makeover options for bishops, I came across two interesting image statements from the good old days when bishops really looked like bishops, both Cosmo Gordon Lang.

I fear neither is quite me. The one on the Right especially gives me the creeps. How scary is that? My bum would definitely look big like that...