Beautiful Day

There is one thing more likely to erode than a chalk cliff face in Sussex. It is more flexible than the spine of a liturgical dancer (you know, the ones who fling ribbons around). It is often more displaced than a farm full of travellers ...

...the Vicar's day off. 

Today is my first ever Vicar's Day off, which to be sure is manifestly different to Curate's Days Off and only begins to aspire to becoming a Rector's Days Off. Today is that day, ladies and gentlemen, and it is a truly beautiful day. The picture that you see is of my to-be-tamed back yard, soon to be in the full adornment of autumn russets and burnished golds. The Sun she shines in motes of light that dance in the soft-swaying leaves, the planes they fly like planes, the birds they squawk (they are parakeets after all) and the light breeze sends the leaves in little eddies around my to-be-mown grass (as distinct from Paul Eddys - he is a very different animal, and a nice bloke too). Do you get the idea? Can you hear the sound of Dvorak's New World Symphony in the background? Good, me too. 

Well, The Twins Aculae are at school, the wife occupied with the things that Vicar's Wives do (don't ask, or I would have to tell you, then kill you) and the doors and windows have been cast wide to let the scene flood in. Today was the day I was going to do what I had promised myself for the last couple of weeks. So do it I did. I flopped on the settee, and watched You Tube clips on my new very large (very very large) TV. I will be tending the Glebe this afternoon, before you cast aspersions about my wasting a beautiful day. 

I didn't feel guilty about frittering a couple of hours knocking back coffee and surfing through Rock Metal clips on the Large Telly. I work hard, I do all (read 'most') of the cooking, I deserved it. I thought I might feel bad, and indeed I can name ten things that I could usefully do today, but they would be 'work' and I am trying to start as I mean to go on. Every once in a while, a lazy morning is OK. I appear not to have shuffled off my mortal coil, and there have been no calls from the Court of Arches asking me to atone for my sin. I haven't even brushed my hair - that is how slovenly I have been today. 

Well, this was only ever going to be a post about how beautiful today is. Sometimes it really does pay to talk about the weather because in about eight or nine metric seconds it will be Christmas Eve and a foot deep in snow, like every Christmas. Mark my words. 

I hope that having read this (and good luck to you, a Counselling Pack is in the post), that you will have as nice a day as I am having so far. What a beautiful world we inhabit. 

...and for your edification (Paul Eddyfication? Is a theme developing? Should I have gone out today to seek the unchurched testosterone carriers?), a wonderful fusion of two of my favourite songs. It is a remarkable thing ... 

Mystery and Beauty

The most beautiful things in the world are the most mysterious

I heard this saying in the most unlikely of places, yesterday. Such was its effect on me, that at the end of a long day filled with many things, it was still the breaker crashing around in my head as I tried to submit to sleep.

When I heard it, it stuck to me. I knew it to be true without formulating a mitigation or argument. I think that you know it too.

In my world, one of faith and family, this saying has particular valency. Equally, as a priest, I am also one of the people most apt to desecrate the mystery of much beauty. In my sermons, in these blog posts, I try to explain things away - as much for myself as for you, but it is what I do.

The Holy Trinity - surely the most beautiful thing that we can know. That incomprehensible dialogue between the Three who form the Whole - how may centuries have been devoted comprehending that mystery? 

The Blessed Virgin Mary - submission and acceptance of a fate that none of us would have chosen. Beguiling eyes, a pure heart, such perfect love; innocence beyond measure.

The sacraments - overwhelming gifts of grace with nothing less than the fingerprint of God upon them. To receive is to know. The beauty of a man laying down his life that I, my children and their children may live, laid down willingly but not completely gladly. 


Love ....

Children - they embody the white-light of hope and potential, an inspiration to all who look upon them.

These and so many more things are just stunning to me. The natural world and even the inventions of humankind - all have a beauty that is held in place by mystery. In a few moments, I will stand before a small congregation and offer for them things of such beauty, all the while reducing their mystery. To do one is to reduce the other. Some things just don't need to be explained, they just need to be. 

Naked Woman Flesh

I am guessing that this blog will appear in all the wrong lists with a title like this one, but this is the exact subject I wish to discuss.

The picture isn't right, but I am not going to type 'half naked teenagers' into my search-engine - oh no! 

Whilst on holiday mit the family in Newquay, and during a gentle constitutional through the town centre, I was struck by something that made me feel uncomfortable and old all at the same time.

During the mid morning, the entire place seemed to be filled with semi-clad kids, mostly girls. There were tummies, thighs, bottoms, cleavages and more (much more in one case), all on show in the street. One girl was wearing a pair of shorts that were so brief that I could see the imprint of her spleen. Another wore a skirt so short that I was fully informed of the nature of her next-day's dirty laundery. All in all - I felt like I had fallen into the centre-fold of a lad's magazine. 

I am red-blooded and appreciative of the finer aspects of the female form. I am no prude, I am not squeamish and I am, on the whole a 'live and let live' kind of man. But I found myself feeling uncomfortable, and suddenly I realised that I had turned into my own dad. It seems that beach-chic Newquay style, on a hot day in July, involves as little as possible in the clothing department - and why not? Many girls were wandering through in just bikinis, the boys seemingly overdressed in the long-shorts and tshirt culture of surfing dudes male.

I felt myself rebuking them in my thoughts (all the while explaining to my daughter why that girl was showing off her pants, and why those pants were far too small for her [she did the 'why' thing]), then rebuking myself for being a dinosaur. Actually, I reasoned, they are their bodies - they can do what they like with them. My first instinct was to pass judgement on their sense of taste and decency in the inner workings of my own thoughts, though this quickly turned into thought about how much of a hypocrite I was being. I would ordinarily fight for their right to their own expression of who they are. I would preach that they celebrate the gifts that they have been granted in the brief moment of their younger years. They were celebrating their gifts, I was heart-set to want them to conceal them like a dirty secret. They were dressed for their own comfort and convenience and they were at ease. 

Is this the slow descent into genuine old-gitism? I was embarrassed by beauty which, in the end, wasn't cheapened - it wasn't a pornographic show (not that I know what one looks like, you understand). They were being themselves all the while I was wishing that they weren't. It was me who cheapened beauty ....

(For those who reached this Post through a Google Search and didn't get what you expected ... tough!)