Un-Holy Smoke and Brass Handbags

It is the thing more likely to precipitate a response in church life - one way or the other! I speak not of wearing my underpants over my trousers in a family service, and I speak not of my pious red socks. Having previously mentioned vases of flowers, you can surely set them aside in favour of this red-hot potato. Nothing more than this causes either a sigh of pleasure or the tooth-gritted snarls of Beelzebub and all the Imps of Hades, normally transmitted through the bodies and expressions of good Christian men and women!

I speak of course of incense, the prayerful odours of none less than the smoking handbag - the beloved thurible. 

Be it in theological college, or in parish life - if you lob some flavoured frankincense on a hot charcoal, you get a reaction. There is no middle ground here, but rather two extreme poles of feeling, passing from deep spiritual rapture through the wonderlands of allergy and asthma and all the way to irritating skin conditions. Those who love it, love it a lot. Those who hate, loathe with menaces and blame it for just about every condition known to the medical profession. 

And I don't know why.

It is but one part of worship, like bells, like robes, like hymns, like readings, like flowers, like Gift Aid envelopes - just one small part of the greater whole. You may not be surprised to learn that I am fond of holy smoke, but that isn't to say that I am in mourning when it does not billow. 

What confuses me more and more is the reaction of the 'against' lobby. It borders on (which is to say that it is well past border-control) the irrational. I think there is a part of some human brains that associates incense with some voodoo or child-sacrifice. The reaction is rarely slight - but bombastic and fully vehement. When I am witness to this irrational response, I challenge it - inquiring what kind of hocus-pocus they are afraid of, and the simple fact is that although they HATE it (as distinct from 'dislike', 'not fond', 'marginally irritated by ...'), they don't know why. Ten millenia old it might be; mentioned in the Bible as representing prayer it could be, but when people hate the stuff, it is a formless hatred born of nothing more than silliness, or so it seems. 

Now child-sacrifice; there's a thought!

Not in My Back Yard

Once upon a time, if someone asked you a question, one of the first responses would have been:

'What can I do for you?'

In 2010, it seems that this statement is changed, archived, redundant. We appear, at certain times, to be an increasingly inhospitable world where the urge to resist or destroy overides any instinct to encourage and create. 

The most notable case this week was the abhorrent case of Mr Terry Jones (he calls himself 'Pastor', but I don't recognise his right), a minister of a small baptist church in America. Upon the impending anniversary of 9/11, a day in history when pure hatred killed the innocent, rather than having  day of prayer for the witnesses, he guided his flock to another place of hatred. 'Burn the Koran Day', proclaimed his website and church. Words fail me (and that takes some doing). Arguably the most toxic and inflammatory act of the year, had it gone ahead, Mr Jones would not have just offended the religion blamed for 9/11, but every Muslim in the world, and also every person who hold scripture as special and sacred. Potentially, the act he proposed could have resulted in a greater mortality, and would certainly have been considerably injurious to innocent people. Hate responding to Hate - the sum of that can only be 'hate'.

We also have a case in New York where an Islamic Cultural Centre is being built in proximity to Ground Zero, much to the resistance of so many. I can understand the concerns of those who are protesting, but it is (a perhaps inevitable) emotional reaction, not a thought-out one. Once upon a time, one Mr A Hitler authorised the killing of millions, and he once started to train as a priest. Does that mean, by implication, that churches should not be built anywhere near the homes of Jewish people? Of course not, because the actions of Mr Hitler were not the fault of Christians, any more than the action of 9/11 were the fault of ordinary Muslims. If we start to make normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill people pay for the crimes of an extreme minority, it is our very civilisation that suffers. I will be making all the people from Yorkshire pay the price for the Ripper next, and that would be absurd.

We need to learn how to allow things to heal. They heal only when we let them, and by our efforts. Territorialism creates little islands of isolated individuals - we need, I think, to return to that old saying, wherever it is from:

'Love thy neighbour as thyself'

The Curate's Egg II

Egg of the Day: Devilled

Isn't it a funny topsy-turvy world that we live in. I am young yet feel so old in the face of things that happen around me. My world-weariness is getting cramp these days!

1. Television Programmes: Why is it that the people who make our programme viewing offer us an implicit judgement on the people of our country. For example, if you are a worker from the 'City', then you can afford to be seen on Relocation Relocation Relocation. If you are a poor estate hound (I am from such a background myself), then you are only invited to be televised if your kids are obese and their teeth are rotten to the stumps. If you are mintikins (which is to say, wealthy in money if not in personality), you get filmed converting your derelict barn into flats for other mintikins folk. If you are IQ disadvataged, you get your wives swapped, or your kids put in a boot camp. Still, let us not ignore the zeal of the recycler's heart in TV land these days: we make Slebs out of those who are odd enough to make ratings and then recycle them as Slebs in all other programmes later. 

2. Haters of Race Hate: Question: What do you get when you meet hate with hate? Answer: Hate. Question: What do you get when you meet hate with a poster with a design that looks for all the world like a blood stain? Answer: An implicit statement of what might happen, if you catch my drift. You may remember that I commented on the planned arrival of the EDL into our town. Well, this is now well documented and the EDL publicity machine is working a dream - however, it is not their people doing the leg-work, it is the haters of race hate. I have learned most and heard most from the 'good guys' - if were left ot the EDlL themselves, half of the town would be none the wiser. At a meeting in Aylesbury where the love-music-militants of Oxford told the people of Aylesbury how we were going to orchestrate our reaction to our problem (with one such starlet toddling off to the ivory tower of University on Saturday, so can't be there on the day, sorry guys) - we were greeted with the comment that the EDL are somehow 'ignorant and stupid'. Meh, no organisation that can get so many huffing and puffing militants around a table of an evening can be that stupid. Is the tail wagging the dog or the dog wagging the tale - answers on a postcard. Hate is wrong in any form - be that in dungarees or a hoodie.

3. Compensation Culture: Question: What do you get when you mix the exhaust from one volcano with a jet-stream and the engines of jet engines? Answer: Carnage, blood, guts, planes hitting floors like darts, that's what. Consequence: Cancel flights to save life and limb. Excellent. A TV interviewer spoke to a disgruntled traveller who wanted to know who was going to compensate him for his missed business meeting. What?! I know, let's do a Billy Connelly and sue God for the volcano. Celestial compensation is bound to be heavenly. Let's subpoena Jesus as a material witness and the Blessed Virgin and advocate for the Defence. I know, I am going to form a group called Love Music Mildly Irritated By Volcanoes that Knacker My Meeting Plans - then I can issue a poster showing a B52 bombing said magma-funnel before scuttling off back to my Ivory Tower. Meh ....

4. Curate's Conference: That should be good. Off to pack ... l8rs.

(PS - if like me your boat isn't floated by Lorry-Trailer bands, DJ's (I prefer morning suits anyway) and Live PAs (well dead ones can't do the filing after all), then meet me in the pub on the Bicester Road - we can grumble together about them young'ns)