One Virgin, A Sweaty Vicar and the Pursuit of Normal

From 'Cracked Virtue' - another closed blog

Before I start, an apology. Life and its various needs  means that I am scarcely finding time to be a half decent dad, let alone an engaging blogger. I apologise for neglecting you, ever thankful as I am for your continued support. 

Well, the title may have you wondering what is about to emerge before your eyes, but be assured it isn't what you think, so go and wash your minds out with soap and water. 

Several things have come to pass in the last week that have given me cause to consider a line in the sand. Allow me to list those things:

 - Exercise

 - Heat Magazine

 - A kid

There you go; rich blog fodder if there were any. The 'virgin' of the title is the new gymnasium I have joined (Virgin Active Torture Chamber, if you please). Having sold all three of my kidneys to afford to borrow their towels to wipe the sweat from my ontologically changed brow, I can now pootle down there and run a little, sling some iron about, row nowhere and contort my reverential body into to shapes that would amaze you. Do I wish to be some oiled Adonis? Am I the next Iron Man? I am a little overweight, wheezy in the cold, flabby in my cassock and fast approaching 40. What I am pursuing is not excellence - just normality. I am below that standard at the moment, and I will work hard to achieve normal weight and fitness. 

Last week, I languished in a school staff room, not waiting to not be Father Christmas, and taking advantage of the reading material of choice of our educators: Heat Magazine. Scored across the cover of that edition were the semi-clad forms of three Slebs (those younglings who are the love-children of And and Dec, Bruce Forsythe and Obergruppenfuhrer Cowell). That they were half dressed (or half undressed, depending on your perspective) wasn't what drew my eyes (honest), it was that they looked, well, normal. Their 'crime' was that they had stopped dieting. Hold the press, wait a cotton-picking minute, what they are guilty of is enjoying their chow and their penalty is to look, actually, altogether more attractive than Miss Skellington on the next page. Normal shaped women are accused of crimes to femininity these days - shame (and let's face it, normal sized women do more for the feminine curve than a walking rack of ribs). Just saying ...

Then the little lad. After not being Father Christmas at a Christmas Party at the school where I now help out, and after climbing out of the outfit that I wasn't wearing when I wasn't being Father Christmas, I passed a ten year old in the corridor. "I like you", he uttered in passing. "Why is that, fella?" was my interested reply. "You're normal". His mum died a thousand deaths as only the mother of an inveterate heretic could, and apologized for her boy. "No", said I, "his words are a gift to me". And then I cartwheeled home, cock-a-hoop that I had achieved that mystical status after a single assembly.

Normality to some is to be scorned. It speaks, often, of mediocrity and the average. The Gospel, of course, is not one of 'normal', but ministry and life seem often to put some of us behind that line, not ahead of it. Normal? I'll have that!

Palm Sunday and Britney Spears

Today is Palm Sunday, this slightly anomalous blip of joyousness in the midst of Lent and Passiontide. Of course, those of us who creep around churches habitually will know that Palm Sunday recalls the story of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Such is the joy of that occasion that we will hobble around our grounds nursing our newly blessed palm crosses whilst singing 'Ride on Ride on In Majesty' at seven different speeds, losing a verse between the front and back of the procession. It's tradition. It must be done.

The story of Palm Sunday has the implicit taunt of 'how the mighty will fall', and the uncomfortable semi-presence of unseen pedestals upon which we will place the soon-to-be-slain. Of course, we read the Gospel and we inwardly judge the perpetrators, knowing of course that we would never do the same. Oh no, not us, m'lud. 

Palm Sunday, for me, has taken on the tint of modern society and its ways, and dear old Britney Spears seemed always to be the poster girl for that tendency. I have never bought or owned one of her records, have no real desire to either. However, the fortunes of this young woman have always troubled me. She is no saint, and maybe even errs in the opposite direction at times. But we all do. I have to say too, that her fall from grace was painful and upsetting to behold. 

The tendency to which I refer is this psychopathy in all of us to raise people up so that we can enjoy the blood-sport of seeing them fall. Oh how we love to watch people fall into disrepute. Britney Spears, Billie Piper, Charlotte Church, Drew Barrymore, and many others - all relative kids who became idols in one moment, and the meat for the next press sandwich the next. In these cases, it was more to do with too much too young - but we have all enjoyed the parades of their retribution. This picture of Ms Spears summed it all up for me; a talented kid who had lost her way and the world itching to see her fall. Fall she did, watch we did. We bought the press editions too, watching our tellies tutting. 

Palm Sunday feels a little like that for me these days. Those who will eventually crucify the Bethlehemite carpenter will be guilty of not understanding what is really going on with Jesus. They were the ones who were so ready to elevate him to such celebrity in one moment only to haul him down the next. We in our third millennium churches will preach and heap curses upon the Jews of Jerusalem of the fourth decade - mere moments before we return to our newsprint and our internets to bay for the blood of the next hapless celebrity (or, in a fit of decency look away because it has nothing to do with us, of course).