maggi dawn

John Martyn

One of the greats. So unbearably sad.

If Obama were Pope

by Professor Hans Kung 

"President Barack Obama has succeeded in a short time in leading the United States out of a mood of despondency and a back-up of reforms, presenting a credible vision of hope and introducing a strategic shift in the domestic and foreign policy of this great country.

In the Catholic Church things are different. The mood is oppressive, the pile-up of reforms paralysing. After his almost four years in office many people see Pope Benedict XVI as another George W. Bush. It is no coincidence that the Pope celebrated his 81st birthday in the White House. Both Bush and Ratzinger are unteachable in matters of birth control and abortion, disinclined to implement any serious reforms, arrogant and without transparency in the way in which they exercise their office, restricting freedoms and human rights.

Like Bush in his time Pope Benedict, too, is suffering from an increasing lack of trust. Many Catholics no longer expect anything of him... "

read the rest here

Burn out

Burnout comes not primarily from doing too much, but from doing what we don't really want to do - so that one foot is moving forward and the other foot is trying to run away."                

Dennis Linn - Sleeping with Bread, p.13

I likethis interesting quote. I don't think it's always true - sometimes you can burn out from doing one thing you love, but to excess, and without the balance of other things. (Although I suppose then you can start to hate it!) But it is true that if everything is duty and not joy, your soul does shrink up. Everyone's life needs in it a thread of something that brings pure joy.

Don't give up the lessons...

A friend sent me the gen today about a new Internet phenomenon called Microsoft Songsmith. It's a piece of software produced by Microsoft which auto-generates a backing track and chord sequence to a set of vocals sung into a computer.   Too good to be true? Sure is. In fact it's the best argument I've ever seen for just taking the lessons and - yes! - learning to play an instrument. I read somewhere the other day (forgotten where) that new research has demonstrated that to acquire a skill with complete fluency (like learning a language, playing an instrument etc) you need to do it for three hours a day, most days, for ten years. That, I'm thinking, is roughly what I did as a kid.

Still, if you want to check out Microsoft's miraculous means of bypassing all that hard work, go right ahead! But first, you should know that this is what it did to Roxanne. It will make you laugh or cry, or possibly both. 

Burns Night Extravaganza

I have been to a variety of Burns Nights in my time - a dinner for four with Haggis and the full recitation by a Scotsman in a kilt, a Cambridge formal dinner themed for Burns, at least two events I can remember at which I played bass in scottish Ceilidh bands (no I'm not Scottish, but I do play good bass). Last night, however, I attended a Burns night celebration that was in a league of its own.

James MacMillan, composer and musician extraordinaire, curated a night of Scottish music in honour (more or less) of Robbie Burns, whose 250th anniversary it is this weekend. It was part of the UBS Soundscapes: Eclectica series, which is an attempt to cross the false but often impenetrable boundaries between classical music and modern folk. MacMillan is Scottish but very far from insular, and so his choice of performers unsurprisingly pushed the borders not only between classical and folk, but of Scottish sensibilities, which was all to the good in the resulting quality of edgy and surprising music. First we heard Chris Stout and Catriona McKay collaborating on a set of music that while it had its roots in Shetland, Ayrshire and the Borders, also drew influences from jazz, rock, impressionism and Scandinavian folk music, giving a completely fresh and adventurous slant to the familiar sounds of folk instruments.

Following this amazing duo came Salsa Celtica, which on paper sound like a migraine crossed with a nightmare - South American salsa music blended with banjo, tin whistle and bagpipes? (Surely this cannot be happening?) but in real life it absolutely works, a glorious and captivating blend, so much so that I almost forgot to run for the last train home...

Burns was mentioned often and affectionately, though pleasingly tongue-in-cheek. Gone was the stuffiness of tradition, which was all the more pleasant to encounter in a Church that has been gutted and reshaped into a fantastic music venue. "Come let us sing unto the Lord" has been repainted into the gothic arch through which you enter the venue. I did get the sense that while traditionalists might have baulked at a reclaimed Church, or a re-formed Burns night, if by some freak of time travel either Jesus or Robbie had been there, they would both have been dancing in the aisles. 

Emerging from the potting shed

Tom Brackett is Program Officer for Church Planting and Redevelopment for the Episcopal Church. I like his description of being in the "potting shed" for planting.  Discussions of church planting often sound like strategies for growing a multi-national profit making corporations. The potting shed is a much more organic, small scale, personal image; in a potting shed the gardener gives personal attention to the plants, rather than just planting en masse with machines and spraying them to death for a bumper but uniform and relatively tasteless crop. 

Anyway, today Mr Brackett writes about the language of emerging and emergent - it's worth alook if you are interested in such things.  I am dying for Mr Brackett to employ Rev'd Hinge as his partner. (see here for Hinge and Bracket)

Hat tip: Johnny

women's clerical shirts

Occasionally I go and read my site-meter. Not often these days; it's one of those gadgets like ice cream makers and that is really fun when you first get it and then gets a bit tedious. But from time to time I check in, and the thing that is most interesting is to see what people were looking for when they found this site. One of the most popular google links, it seems, is "Fashionable women's clerical shirts" - which is kind of an oxymoron really, but gets people directed to this post.

One weekend recently I wore full clerical garb all weekend, as we had services in Chapel and two outings with the Choir.  In the middle of the Saturday afternoon I stood outside shaking hands and chatting with one of the congregations, and suddenly realised that I was getting seriously cold. I sent my sacristan off to get my cloak, a huge, all-enveloping, hooded and double lined wool melton that I bought just before I was ordained. My first Parish was in the Fens, and the only small pimple of a hill in the area was the graveyard, where the winter winds came whipping over direct from Siberia. I learned to dress for funerals so that I could still speak at a January graveside without my teeth chattering. There is something about the more formal and sombre Church occasions that (IMHO) requires the Priest to be efficiently at ease with all her duties. You shouldn't melt into the background, but you really don't want to become the focus of attention because of personal quirks, anxieties and awkwardness. Chattering teeth at the graveside? Not helpful.

Anyway, back to that weekend - I was amazed at how many comments I got from passing students on how fantastic the cloak was. I think it's very gothic and a bit odd. They thought it was extremely desirable, and someone even asked if they could borrow it to go out on the town. (I said no, by the way.)  So - all commenters on this post - a new solution to the problem of the shirt may be to wear the cloak over the top...

Happy Birthday, Cambridge

Saturday night was the first saturday of Term in the 800th anniversary year of the University of Cambridge. There was a special peal of bells composed and rung for the event, a light show projected onto Senate House, and the crowd spontaneously sang "Happy Birthday" to Cambridge. 

Streetlights all over Cambridge have been decorated with banners celebrating the 800 years, and one banner has a list of dates on it, each one a significant publication. There's a quiz to see if you can identify the significance of the dates. Hmm. 1381 was the Peasant's Revolt, and John Ball's sermon, and 1584 was the foundation of Emmanuel College to train protestant preachers, but I don't know what publications came out those years. 1687 is bound to be Newton. 1859 must be there for Darwin's Origin of Species. And I'll hazard a guess that 1988 was Hawking's Brief history of Time - though I may be out on that one. Anyone else like to take a stab?

Cambridge is a settlement that goes way back beyond Roman times, and also sees, this year, the 900th Anniversary of the Diocese of Ely, which will be launched this Saturday. Back in the day, Ely was a more significant city than Cambridge; the history of the two cities has been dramatically affected by that seemingly small decision by the rebels from Oxford to stop in Cambridge. 

Meantime, celebrations have just concluded for Anglia Ruskin University's 150th birthday. It's my son's birthday next week, and a couple of months after that I have a Significant Birthday of my own. (No, I'm not 800 years old, although I feel about 124 at the moment.)

All these birthdays. When do we get cake, then? 

britain's first woman bishop takes office today

Martin Beckford reports

Quiet Day

I'm leading a "quiet day" in November on the theme of waiting and listening.

Monday 16 November 2009

Theme: Angels and Announcements: how do we listen to God?

Venue: Bishop Woodford house, Ely, Cambridgeshire

Speaker: Maggi Dawn

Cost: £25

"Advent is a time of waiting - waiting for Christmas, waiting for the future hope of Christ's coming. This day will explore themes of waiting and listening to God through the Advent stories in the Bible."

If the manic planners among you want to book ahead, the link is here or phone/email direct to BRF Quiet Days 018865 319700  events@brf.org.uk

If you book five places with your friends, the fifth one goes free. Bargain, eh?

blog-lite

several of you lovely readers have emailed to see if I'm OK because I haven't blogged for ages. How kind and lovely you are. I am fine, but tired out and have nothing much to say right now.

I seem not to be the only one starting the New Year already tired. A colleague suggested to me the other day that this is because the variable dates of Easter last year and this year meant that our Christmas break was shorter than usual. I hadn't noticed this until she pointed it out, but in fact she seems to be right. 

I also have nothing to say because, having finished the draft of my latest manuscript (and awaiting the dread moment when chunks of it will arrive back for rewrites) I really seem to have nothing to say. It is a devotional book, similar to Beginnings and Endings, a style of writing that combines knowledge with personal application  and although it's a style I enjoy creating, it takes quite a lot of digging into the self to produce it. Consequently I'm glad to be working on two writing projects right now that depend mostly on knowledge and expertise rather than stories and soul stuff. One of these is an essay about Augustine which will be published - hmmm, when? - the end of this year i think?

I'll resume blogging when my empty soul recovers itself. Meantime, Happy New Year, one and all. I hope 2009 is filled with good things.