Virtual Methodist

We have recently moved house and in talking to neighbours we are assured that we are unlikely to have  hoards of marauding trick or treaters to come banging on our door tonight.  Halloween is  a celebration that has always left me somewhat cold, not because of any fear of sinister forces behind it, but because it wasn't really part of our growing up, which was much more focussed on Guy Fawkes and the much more wholesome, child friendly business of throwing an effigy of a Catholic plotter on a bonfire! Whilst some rail at Halloween being an American import, which of course it largely is, in many ways it is largely just re-importing old Irish Catholic  traditions around "All Hallows Eve" and its pagan antecedents.  But even in the most staunchly Protestant families of my youth, there was rarely reference on this day to the fact that the 31st of October was the day that Martin Luther allegedly nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints Church at Wittenberg Cast...

Haven't been posting much, here or anywhere else recently, as my head and diary has been filled with stuff to do with my new appointment. But at the beginning of this month Sally and I got away for a long weekend to meet up in an old country house outside Ludlow with a large group of old friends from our Edinburgh University theatre days, in order to celebrate the 60th birthdays of some of our number. Due to the fabulous organisational and catering skills of a small core group we had an amazing time including a hilarious awards dinner on the Saturday night for which we were encouraged to "dress up". A number of the men baulked at it being a "black tie" affair, with one noting that black tie us strictly "work-wear" for him. Some of those at the weekend had reconnected with the wider group because of a 40th Anniversary of the opening of the Bedlam Theatre, just before the onset of covid, and in advance of that I unearthed a couple of my old Bedlam fringe...

I was slightly traumatised last week when I discovered that "Now That's What I Call Music 124" has been released in the UK. I remember buying the first one as a Christmas present (on vinyl) back in 1983... So to discover there have been 123 further editions since then makes me feel very old, and prompts all kinds of whistfulness about the past. I'm from Northern Ireland, and because of the peculiarities of my accent some of my friends who do not hail from this part of the world mock my pronunciation of the word "now", in the same way that I mock my Ayrshire wife's pronunciation of the word "poem." But not only can I not pronounce the word "now" normally (according to some people), I also have difficulty in appreciating it and living in it... Not only can I get stuck in periods of nostalgic mooning over the past, I can also descend into unhelpful rumination over various regrets. Or else I can spend so much time planning for...

Not many of my pieces can be said to be 24 years in development, but I actually started this the year after the 9/11 attacks, when it was already clear that the solidarity caused by the horror of that dreadful day was dissolving and spawning potentially greater horror. I used a much earlier version in a service on an anniversary years ago, but in preceded this blog and have tinkered with it every year since. The particular milestone that 25 years throws up seemed an appropriate point to revise it again and post it, but I didn't post it on the actual day, first because I was officiating at a family funeral yesterday and couldn't face returning to the computer afterwards, and second because, like most observers of this tragedy I was not directly affected by the events of that day itself, and felt that yesterday should have been a day for the bereaved and survivors. But there is no doubt the whole world has been indirectly affected by that day. Many sensed that that wo...

Today Sally and I begin the long journey home from Pembrokeshire via her mother's in Ayr. It's been a lovely short break and a definite highlight was visiting  St David's Cathedral, both for worship and a guided tour. It's a place I have wanted to visit for a long time given my name, but never managed it until now. I know very little about Saint David/Dewi Sant, but then again, nobody does. That which we do know suggests that he is ill represented by those little embroidered  Christmas decorations that portray him in red bishop's regalia with a bushy white "Santa" beard. He was almost certainly a more modestly garbed individual, coming from the more ascetic Celtic monastic tradition, in fact I suspect that even the depicted icon recently installed on his shrine in the cathedral is too colourful.  Famously on his deathbed he is claimed to have said "Do the little things" which is sometimes expressed as "Do small, build big." ...

After a long, dry period my brain is working overtime again, some thoughts flowing from a good place, others less so. This piece is, just as it says, a product of a disturbed night's sleep, prompted by rumination over recent events and the experience of a couple of friends, both in the past and currently. But following on from some reading and writing I started during my sabbatical, I woke to read dome notes I made when reading Paula Gooder's "Journalling the Psalms", and particularly Psalms 23 and 40. There are numerous Psalms that seem to owe their origins to the times when David was unjustly on the run because of others' betrayal, either being hunted by Saul's forces, or during his son's rebellion. We don't know whether they were written by David or inspired by his story, but they have continued to speak into others' stories, including my own, right down to the present day, even though few of us (thankfully) have experienced the exis...