Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Life, The Universe And Everything...

....not a Holy Week homily - that yet to be carefully scripted for delivery at the Vigil of course - but a reflection on a dear friend now so early dead. (In Heaven too I am sure, though he would have scorned the very existence of the place whilst on Earth.)

DNA - no not that either as life's meaning, but the man's name.

Douglas Noel Adams. You'll know him, though not perhaps the Noel bit. He of 'THHGTTG' - and if I have to spell that one out you'll not be knowing of him and the point of the tale would be lost, so I shan't.

Anyway, cutting to the chase as ever one does, there was - now some thirty years ago God spare us from remembering how long ago - the matter of the meaning of 'LTU&E', that being the Ultimate Question put to Deep Thought, a computer of gargantuan scope that took some several millions of years to come up with the question's answer: '42'

Good answer, if a bit tricky to fathom - as many of the best answers are. So still comes the secondary question - what on Earth was DNA up to? Forty-frigging-two! Some crazed, teasing, madcap genius playing with our sensitivities these thirty years? In many ways yes.

The source of many a learned paper on the matter, with explanations quite as weird and wonderful as the answer itself. Many based on warped misuse of the near-science of numerology: codes within codes revealing a certain truth all dependent on symbolism and affinity. (Quite fun in its way - dear Saint Augustine loved it - but generally that way obsessive compulsive madness lies.)

All wrong in any case of course. Lend or bend - according to taste - an ear, I shall expound all.

DNA and I roomed together at School. When I say 'roomed' I mean rather that we were but two among four hundred or more boyish souls condemned by cruel fate - and harsher parenting - to dwell in the deep discomfort of a boarding school.

Among the many aches and pains of such a life was the very industrial scale of the thing. Nothing was ever really personal, all was en masse from bathing facilities to dormitories to dining halls.

Eating would indeed be at a long double-sided table seating twenty or so pupils, each grabbing what they could from the vast troughs of food 'ere a greedy neighbour had scoffed the last remaining pie.

In such circs. a boy's fantasy would be dining on a totally more domestic scale. As indeed boy turned to youth, hormone infested and deeply charged with - largely - unrequited sexual longings, the perfect ideal would be the a dinner date with a lascivious female as prelude to whatever the virginal youth - as such he was - could most fervently imagine.

From thus came forth the great - and greatly misunderstood - answer to life the universe and everything. Deep Thought - taking on the mantle of its author - did not give a numerical answer, as generally taken, but a verbal. Being, however, a computer not entirely versed in the full idiom of English the words were not uttered entirely as they ought.

Deep Thought thus, in answer to the great mystery of life, spoke of "For tea two" - that wonderful intimate moment of a pair of persons alone with their scones and their Darjeeling - instead of the intended or more correct "Tea for two".

That was the earthly paradise the boarding school boy had yearned for, and the one he wished pronounced. An intimate meal - nothing more, but most certain nothing less.

There is in fact, within the text, a 'second phase' (as these rugger types would say) meaning not to be overlooked.

For the people who heard Deep Thought utter the Great Answer assumed that a computer must give a numerical answer, because computers were but vast 'number crunchers' after all. '42' might be odd and a bit off, but at least it was a logical starting point, they reckoned (applying further the numerical idiom).

And thus from this dual misunderstanding, based on mutual attempt to see the world from the point of view of the other, came complete confusion.

Or chaos.

Which is where DNA really did intend to leave his Universe.

But I do hope - indeed I know - that the man has finally found his proper ordering of the finite world within his now infinite sphere.

Might not be the making of an Easter homily. But then again it might.













Saturday, March 08, 2008

Capering Curates....

Charlie the Curate is a fine fellow, much welcomed around these parts. The parishioners adore him, as well they might being all chubby-cheeked and cheerful and earnest and all. (They like their curates fresh. Somewhat in the manner of Count Dracula sometimes I fear - young blood on which to feast and be forever young.)

I too rather approve of the cove. Keeps me on my toes with a veritable - if occasionally mildly irritating - encyclopaedic knowledge of all things scriptural and eccesial. He never means it of course, but oft-times it's a bit like one of those entertaining yet irksome chappies in public houses who can perform the most astonishing of card tricks, also never failing to chip in with the right answer when there's a pub quiz question the team simply cannot fathom. Smart or what, in a kind of too-good-to-be-true sort of way.

Quote him any line - half-line, word even it sometimes seems - from the Good Book and he'll be back at you with the next Chapter and a Half before you can say "Fine Charlie. Take your point. Now where's that bottle of malt gone?"

Not that there is anything of the showman about the fellow, nor even - far worse - the dour text-book puritan ever on the lookout - and all too swift to shout it out loud - for a soul in peril of perdition for not having the right party line about a particular Biblical matter of God and salvation.

For all that though Charlie can have - as these young chappies must in truth - an eagerness for truth that can set the teeth a-grinding. He's done it before - no doubt will do it again - and has once more done it today.

Comes a story - perhaps no more than that - from you-know-where of a Bishop (male) and a close junior cleric (female) who may - or who may not, though don't put your mortgage on it - have been indulging in "Ugandan discussions" to the detriment of their respective marriages and the shame of the diocese.

Now Charlie may well have a point that no Bishop worth his reputation for sanctity or his stipend should be allowing any such person to be his 'PA', let alone one who is female, young and tolerably sprightly by view of all the many photographs of the woman now filling the Internet. (The one of her gazing with seemingly infinite adoration up at the man from her desk was not a wise move.)

Be all of that as it may, and howsoever it all pans out, I am not best pleased to have had to received six of the hottest telephone calls this late morning from church folk voicing the strongest objections to my Curate's harsh words on the subject, uttered - in a moment of madness it must be - at Mattins of the day.

Had he merely rushed to judgement, as these young sorts will do, I could have let that pass. Not entirely in the loving spirit of the Lord I would have advised him, yet not condemned the man the more for having fallen short in the mercy of God department.

But does he do that alone? No, sadly not. He cannot merely content himself with some pertinent if prejudicial ranting. He has to take the angle that a man in a position of power should not be dabbling in any improper exercise of that power over a subordinate.

Don't get me wrong. Although such a notion is, for me, too far into the deathly realm of sexual politics from which fell domain no person may return unscathed, I would not refute Charlie's central notion that men in power should learn to keep their hands to themselves. No Sir - or Madam - me.

Charlie's fault lies not in the subject itself - howsoever tangential to the main matter of Peace on Earth and all that - as in the chosen expression of his thinking. For Charlie, you must understand, came forth from the mournful land of 'meejah' to become the burgeoning cleric he is. And it is from that place his metaphor arose to the consternation of the Mattins masses.

It goes thus I am told: "Are we not minded when we hear of this possible great scandal of that sad motto from the world of television - the PA made the tea and the Producer made the PA?"

Well, no they were not so minded of course! Not one of them knows a jot or a tittle about the dark world of television and who does what to whom for what indulgent, sensual purpose. This is The Wolds and not the White City, or wheresoever television is made these days.

Charlie's perky remark might have played well among people for whom such matters are daily food and drink. Out here though they have caused a right stink, as well they might.

Silly boy - as Captain Mainwairing would have said!


Saturday, March 01, 2008

Lenten Fare Too...

...oddly enough, having driven through the desperate winds of last night to spend a restful day en famille one finds oneself tonight completely sans same famille.

H and her sister - the latter only a direct descendant of Count Vlad I swear - having taken their mutual mother for a slap-up pre-Mother's Day outing and meal ("We're driving mum into the country for the day." "And bringing her back too?" "Oh so funny.") E and I could have been spending a jolly parent-bonds-with-child evening together, the latter pouring out the ten-year matured malt for the former in a dedicated if sympathetic manner whilst the thus soothed parent pours forth the equally distilled wisdom of even greater age.

But 'tis not to be, for E is off with her cronies to celebrate her seventeenth - no less - birthday, leaving Papa with but a single malt taken in solitude and some certain sad reflections on the rapid passing of the years. Gone forever the jellies and the ice-creams for twenty of one's best nursery chums, to be replaced by malibus and cokes all round.

One says 'cronies' though in truth one must add that a first and seemingly quite special 'boyfriend' is among that number of the birthday gang. Seems a pleasant enough sort of young cove. Clearly utterly smitten by E - which is reasonable one has to say - and is known for undertaking Duke of Edinburgh Awards rather than partaking in crack cocaine - which these days has to be a massive bonus.

Nonetheless the morphing from central male figure in a daughter's life into that of but a bit-part player (still handy for the wads of cash needed to maintain a teenager in the life to which she wishes to become accustomed, but no longer needed for the drives to town as T 'has wheels' - as they say) takes more swallowing than the third malt that somehow, by God's good grace, has found its way into my glass.

Thank goodness Curate Charlie is taking First Mass of Sunday this evening.

Lenten Fare...

Have you missed me?

Of course you have! A Lenten posting to the frozen North - a fine Minster city you'll immediately guess - robs me of Internet access during the week. Much good no doubt comes of this abstinence, not least as it was not on the self-selected list of not-to-dos this fasting season.

Dear Robin would always say that it was the unexpected - unwished for - trial that would put one to the test and not the "I'll do without the malt for a spell. Save some money, shed a bit of weight and lose the morning hangover" type of essentially selfish approach.

I'm not actually accusing the Bearded Bard of taking his revenge for some overheard remarks of mine concerning the central idiocy of the man, by sending me North to cover some 'much needed' (his words and no one else's!) administrative function for the duration. But if ripping a man away from his post and place in order to complete an audit of clerical equalities training needs for the coming decade is his idea of a 'vital role', then it is not mine!

There is some blessing in leaving the dear Curate in charge of said Woldean post and place at present, for it is not the least of the irritants of the job, as lived where one is, that one has to endure the perennial 'Grumpier Than Thou' faces of the penitential parishioners, too many of whom seem to see Lenten observance as nothing but an Olympic event: faster (more fasting than her), higher (more holy than him) and stronger (more rank from less personal hygiene).

I admit that I too have had my days in youth, when the endurance angle of Lent was to the fore; when thoughts of the early desert Fathers - saints on stilts some of them truly - atop their stylites and seeming to exist on nothing but fresh air and piety - did capture the imagination of the burgeoning cleric.

One has though - and not over-setting the significance of commitment to self-denial seen through to an end or rather to a purpose - largely let slip this 'No pain no gain' view of pre-Easter training of the soul.

'Tis even about the only occasion on which one has welcomed a change to the Liturgy. The old 'Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return' for Ash Wednesday has been replaced with the more positive spin 'Repent and believe in the Gospel'.

Yes indeed, the motif of dust was apt for the day, but one can become a bit too fixated on the bitter gloom of death - a form of self-indulgence really and no more - and not enough minded of the truly awful - as in awe-inspiring - glory of the Easter to come.

What was it Saint Paul said when asked by one of his numerous correspondents what was one to do whilst waiting on the Lord? "Rejoice and be glad" was his simple, startling and wonderful reply.

So on with the Lenten 'glad rags'. Let sinners all not mourn their shame by sanctimonious show of sadness, but let their delight shine forth rather in the great redemptive feast hoving into view.