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I live a short train ride from my favourite city in the world. And from there you can hop on another train and be in Paris in a couple of hours.
One of my daily blog reads is Eric's Paris daily photo. Today's pic is an absolute stunner. Go see.
There are plenty of pancake recipes about, so I don't really feel I shall add much to Shrove Tuesday by adding mine. Delia Smith's is absolutely perfect and utterly foolproof. But I do LOVE the utter simplicity of the recipe posted up by Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow. He lists his ingredients, followed by these instructions: seive, whizz, fry. Now that even makes Nigel Slater look complicated...
I have left it rather late this year to do the ashes, so before we eat pancakes this evening I shall be making ashes for tomorrow. If you want to know why we have pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and why tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, go here, or better still pre-order the forthcoming Lent book so that this time next year you will be a complete expert.
The BBC has an article about handwriting. I remember being taught a particular way to write at primary school, and then as soon as I changed schools at 11, we were taught a new way of writing. I struggled and struggled with this new way of forming letters; my writing looked angular and ugly for weeks and weeks until suddenly - like changing up a gear - everything slipped into place and I could cover a page with an elegant, modern looking script.
I still write with a fountain pen nearly every day of my life. I have a beautiful pen that never leaves the house; it glides smoothly over the page, and I buy journals with good paper just for the joy of writing well. I have a second, cheaper and replaceable fountain pen that I carry about with me, and a little pile of Moleskines or similar, so that I can always write and sketch en route.
Of course much of my writing is done on screen, but I always print a script two or three times during the process of writing and edit with a pen, sometimes literally cutting (with scissors) and pasting a text together before going back to the screen. There's something about handling the text physically that makes me 'see' it more clearly.
Do you ever write with a pen?
Adam Gopnik, author of the wonderful Paris to the Moon, writes in The New Yorker about the late John Updike:
'...perfectly tuned prose—typo-free, full of cunning synopsis, serene judgment, big news (a generation got educated on Borges and Nabokov alongside him), bite without tooth marks, and always at the end a permanent turn of phrase or a metaphor, not a witticism merely but a benediction, a blessing, an insight that lifted it far above mere reviewing and into a form of witty personal poetry.'
Jonny Baker re-wrote Psalm 50 for his own community, "Grace". The words are put into God's mouth, and Jonny has replaced the agricultural imagery of the original with computer technology and modern art
"Grace, listen...
I have no complaint about your sacrifices -
you certainly put the creative effort in to your worship.
But I do not need your art installations, stations, movie loops, ambient tunes, apple macs, ipods
gas masks, photography, font selection, stories, good taste, creative liturgies and new technologies.
All the silicon in the valley is mine
I know all the art in the whole world
The creation is my gallery
I made imagination!
Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God
out of friendship and not obligation
That's what it's about..."
read the rest of jonny's post here
here's an English translation of the original Psalm 50, with its agricultural images:
‘Hear, O my people, and I will speak...
Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
your burnt-offerings are continually before me.
I will not accept a bull from your house,
or goats from your folds.
For every wild animal of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the air,
and all that moves in the field is mine...
...Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honour me;
to those who go the right way
I will show the salvation of God.’
Lately I've been teaching my son a lot of maths. They don't teach him much maths at school. Everyone knows (though we just get used to living with it) that once numbers get above a certain level it's incredibly hard to visualise what they mean. I remember once going on a field trip across the centre of Iceland, and being struck that it seemed unreal to listen to a twenty-four year old lecturer sitting on a rock talking about what had happened there billions of years earlier, with an air of confidence that almost suggested he'd been there and seen it.
I read today that a billion seconds ago it was 1978. The Bee Gees were the top of the charts. Superman was in the movies. I was a first year undergraduate, and went to see Star Wars on its first tour round UK cinemas. Shoulder pads and big hair hadn't been thought of yet, nor Wham or Grunge. Email didn't exist, nor mobile phones, nor twenty four hour licensing. The ordination of women was only a dream. And so was my son, who is now trying to visualise a billion.
It's only my impression, but it seems that people are quite strongly divided on whether they love the Chronicles of Narnia or hate them. Some readers are sufficiently entranced by the magical way Lewis portrays the Christian myth that they are entirely willing to overlook the anachronistic attitudes - such as racism and sexism - that are threaded through the stories. Other readers are quite put off Narnia precisely because it is so beloved of Christianity. Some of my colleagues at work absolutely spit teeth about the sexism, and can't get past that to appreciate the other threads of the story.
Me, I'm more inclined to love it than hate it. Even though I would hate to be one of Lewis's women, I like the mythical creatures and the battles between good and evil; I like the way that the story encapsulates in pure simplicity some of the great human dilemmas of moral choice, goodness and evil, forgiveness and restoration. I don't much get into fantasy worlds like Lord of the Rings, but Narnia seems to straddle the real world with a parallel one, and that seems to work for me. I find it impossible to talk in the literalist language of Christianity; I don't believe in God quite literally guiding the miniature details of my life (there are much better theological ways of thinking about life than that) but I often use the phrase "Aslan is on the move" as shorthand for that sense that the time is right for things to change. Mythical language works better to describe that curious mix of human responsibility and the realisation that something beyond us is at work in and around us.
Image Journal highlights someone who loves Narnia despite its Christian associations, and has written a whole book to explain why.
An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1948
Honesty, such a waste of energy... You don't have to lie to me, just give me some tenderness beneath your honesty. Paul Simon, 1973
"...honest doubt is worth more than feigned belief." Bishop Alan Wilson, 2009
I am entirely used to being sent books to review, and sometimes albums too. But this week I received an unusual package through the post: a clergy shirt to review!
Butler and Butler are two brothers, one of whom is ordained. They couldn't believe it when they discovered it was impossible to buy a clergy shirt that was guaranteed fair trade, so they went into business together to do something about it. I was impressed by their principles when I read about their venture, but (to be completely honest) I was initially sceptical. You may think I'm shallow, but I really like to look smart when I go to work, and most clergy gear makes you look like a rag bag. What hope would there be if it was fair trade as well?
Well. I stand corrected. This shirt is not only easy on the conscience, it is also undoubtedly the nicest clergy shirt I've ever worn. The fabric is 100% cotton, very soft and fine, not crispy or shiny like many clergy shirts, and the styling is - yes!! - quite simply a classic cut woman's business shirt. Not a semi-adapted baggy blokey shirt, nor a confection of dated frills or puffy sleeves or flowers. Just a really smart, well-fitting woman's shirt. Hooray. It comes in black, grey, white and two shades of blue. They are promising to add pink ones (allegedly for women), and tonsure collar shirts to the range very soon. Retailing at just under £29.35 it's fantastic value. What's not to like?
Here's the fine detail: I'm five foot five and a British size ten (USA 6). The shirt is fly front, the collar is neat without strangling you, with a 1" slip in collar. The length comes exactly to the hip bone, and has a curved hem. The fitting (on me at least) is snug but not tight round the bust and the sleeves are classic, not baggy, with no puffs. The sleeve length is perfect, a little give but not too long, and there are two buttons on each cuff so if, like me, you have a mere 6" wrist you can use the narrow one. I cannot yet comment on how it washes, but will add that later.
Any improvements? The only thing I would change on this shirt would be nicer buttons on the cuffs, where they show. (Obviously the fly front ones don't show). The existing buttons are a kind of transparent charcoal colour. Whether this is because they are made from recycled tyres or something, I couldn't say, but black ones would be nice. One other thing. I know it's a lot to ask, and this cotton really is nice and soft, but if Butler and Butler want to make women clergy really happy, they could try and source some fairly traded silk for their women's shirts. I would be first in the queue for half a dozen, even if they were double this price. (My top choice for a clergy shirt is still to buy a classic silk shirt, unpick the collar and re-stitch it with the channel open for a slip-in collar.) But meantime, whenever I buy a cotton shirt, I shall definitely be buying it from Butler and Butler, as they are absolutely the best I've tried so far.
or busy, happy and prosperous? (HT Seth Godin; attrib: Jessica Hagy)
There is a fresh blanket of snow on the ground this morning. It's a rare thing for us in England to have deep, settled snow like this. Most years we don't get any snow. And when we do it's usually only for one or two days in a year. Consequently we don't have the infrastructure to deal with it when it happens. Someone commented in the paper on Monday that the closures of businesses that day would cost the country maybe a billion pounds. It would cost a lot more than that to equip ourselves Scandinavian style to deal with snow - and for what? To ensure that we could go to work on the one day every other year that it snows?
By yesterday afternoon most of Monday and Tuesday's snow had melted; only a few frozen puddles remained. When my son wakes in an hour he will be thrilled to discover that overnight it's all happened again. I expect half the world will be moaning by 10 am, just as they did on Monday, that the planes and trains and schools aren't functioning. But the smart ones will be out there early, relishing the thin, pink quality of light and the crisp, still sound that comes with snow. Later they will build a snowman, drink hot chocolate and feel glad that every now and then the circumstances of life give you an enforced day away from the grindstone.
G K Chesterton captures the childlike quality of sheer, unadulterated joy when something good happens. Never mind restraint, never mind whether you have stuff to do. If it's fun, pleasurable, life giving - there's only one response a child will give: "Do it again!"
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
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