Photo reblogged from Do we dare dream? with 14 notes
Well, if you can’t beat them…
Source: weheartit.com
Photo with 1 note
The Stand - By Stephen King
My favourite book is Stephen King’s The Stand, the ultimate showdown between good and evil. Never mind C S Lewis, if you want Christian allegory this is the Big Boy - in all ways. My son created a few pictures to illustrate characters and places from the book which my daughter then turned into a moviette. Music is by Singapore Sling and fits as well as anything I can think of…
Paste link below into browser to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPyqAQZ5zwA&context=C3979ebbADOEgsToPDskKodU8Y5bsvgPgsJ7cUcYli
Photo reblogged from Desolate Places with 3 notes
Deserted American Church
Source: desolateplacesphoto
Evangelical Baptism
Went to this mass Baptism at our local Evangelical Church the other evening. Some of my daughters friends were being ‘done’ and the whole thing was a bit of an event. I was pretty keen to film the whole thing for the blog but my wife pointed out that some parents might not appreciate this middle aged guy making an internet movie out of their teenage daughters being dunked, clinging wet T Shirts, etc.
So here is a sneaked mobile phone picture of the empty pool instead. Hot Tub sized, the vicar sits in the water all the way through the service while various preachers, speakers, friends and the Baptismees all speak about how good everything is. I quite liked the Karaoke style screens that enabled one to join in the awful songs - One of them just consisted of the word ‘Everything’ in various combinations, i.e Jesus is Everything, He is Everything, We are Everything, It is Everything, Everything is Everything, until one felt oneself going into a semi-hypnotic trance and passing out. There was also this slightly risque bit were they showed a map of the World to demonstrate how all the decent free, countries were Christian and all the non-democratic ones were, er, Muslim, or at least not Christian.
This might have been the point were I called out Zimbabwe? Russia? America? South America? Us? Are we really that great? But I was still recovering from the Everything Song. Joking aside, this is the future of Christianity in this country. The other denominations will keep a few oldies who like staid tradition and a sense of continuity with earlier kinder times. But the young folks, if they go to church at all, it will be Evangelical. The guitars, amps, TV Screens, dancing, swaying, the personalisation of ones religious experience, all so reminiscent of The X Factor and the busyness of modern life - that’s what the kids want.
God Bless ‘Em.
Deserted mansions of the vanished rich
This was a job we did a while back. A clearance of a huge house in darkest Surrey - one of those rare parts of Surrey that are so remote it could be… Sussex. This place had allegedly been the property of a Turkish Millionaire and his family until they disappeared some 20 odd years ago. Someone said they had made their fortune out of hairbrushes which may have been speculation based on the fact that an outbuilding was filled with hundreds of boxes filled with same. Empty ever since, the house was a mausoleum of damp and decaying DFS style furniture on a grand scale. I’m not sure if the property had reverted to the State or whether some distant relative had turned up to claim it, either way it was all to be demolished. The old Daimler with its 1970s state of the Art TV system had a 3 digit registration that would have been worth £20,000 +: One of the contractors managed to snaffle that. My favourite part was the folly in the garden which did not look as though it had been visited for decades, it was impossible to enter because of the dense brambles inside.
Photo with 3 notes
Christmas 2011
This is the nativity scene at our church at last nights Midnight Mass. It was a relatively quiet night with hardly any drunks and a high proportion of good looking exotic young men with their older partners. I think the showbiz, High Church flavour of St Michaels is a draw. The sermon was something about reading and knowledge being maybe a good thing and then again, maybe a bad thing - Classic C of E in other words. However, not a patch on one previous year when the preacher wondered if the Virgin Birth actually happened.
No such doubts for the Boko Haram sect in Northern Nigeria who today organised a seasonal bloodbath for the Catholics of Abuja. Apparently the local emergency services didn’t have enough ambulances to transport the maimed and the dying after the church there was blown up.
If that is faith with absolute certainty, then the C of E looks pretty good to me. Happy Christmas, everybody.
Photo with 1 note
Dogs in a Car
A new record for a customer visiting us - 6 dogs in a reasonably priced family hatchback. Look out for the nearly invisible caged black Labrador behind the Westie. The little Yorkie on the right trembled the whole time; but then they seem to do that a lot. The lady owner wanted to take away 4 chapel chairs but this just wasn’t going to happen…
Maria Bambina
At Farnborough Abbey there is a small waiting room for visitors which is mostly taken up with what seems to be a glass coffin containing a waxen baby corpse. This is in fact a model of the Virgin Mary… as a baby. This is quite a specialised niche devotion for those who are not satisfied with statues of the adult Mary. The Mother Lode (as it were) of this particular worship originated in Milan at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity, a Franciscan order. They were the first ones to have a lifesize wax baby of Mary and over the last 300 years their baby has been in turn hidden, venerated, neglected and worshipped.
Its great heyday was at the end of the 19th Century when the infant was given to sick nuns on an overnight basis. I wasn’t there, but I would imagine it was prayed to, cared for, cuddled even. Several nuns miraculously recovered from debilitating illnesses as a result of this regime and somewhat spookily the baby itself began to regenerate, transforming from a rather beat up discoloured object to the hale and hearty specimen which can be visited to this day.
September 8th, which is the Nativity of Mary, is obviously the best time to visit the convent. You may be able to obtain a small sacramental piece of cotton which has been touched to the baby by the nuns. Miniature Baby Mary’s are also considered an excellent gift for newly weds.
Farnborough Abbey
We recently have been doing some business with Farnborough Abbey which is one of those places which would be a fantastic find for any movie location scout. Subterranean passageways, secret basement tomb chapels, ancient and priceless treasures; Harry Potter could have done stuff here. Ditto, the appalling Da Vinci Code. Only a stones throw from Farnborough Town Centre (twinned with Snoozeville) the commuters who populate this deeply inoffensive townlet would largely never guess what a remarkable gothic anachronism the Abbey is.
Set in acres of secluded real estate, worth who knows what, with flocks of trained tame sheep, a handful of Benedictine Monks and the tombs of the last Emperor Napoleon of France, his Empress wife and his Prince son. Allegedly, the French want the Emperor’s body back but the monks won’t let them. Yes, I know, it is bonkers.
Napoleon the Third, of Farnborough, whilst disparaged by some historians, is nonetheless a significant figure. If his schemes had gone differently, Mexico would have been a vassal state of France, slavery would have endured in the USA, Russia would have crumbled into nothingness and Germany as we know it (along with World War 1 and 2) would not have happened. However, pretty much everything he tried to do with his army failed. However, he did create modern France and re-design the whole of Paris. Exiled after losing the Franco Prussian War he died during a botched experimental kidney stone operation. His only child, Prince Louis Napoleon died soon after, speared 16 times whilst fighting for the British in the Zulu wars. Mum, the Empress, built the Abbey as a mausoleum in which to grieve for her dead menfolk and as a uber French home-from-home. She outlived her son by 41 years, which isn’t what you want. The last of the imported French monks, Dom Zerr, died in 1956.
Photoset with 1 note
Bonfire Night in Lewes
Come the 5th November every year, me and my family march with the Cliffe Bonfire Society. This is a side effect of my wife being a fifth generation Lewesian and a pragmatic sense of You wont beat Them, so you might as well join Them.
The whole thing is often portrayed as a big anti-Catholic shindig. The No Popery banners and exploding Pope effigies don’t help. Having grown up in Scotland with a certain amount of that The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Orange, this used to make me feel uncomfortable, but nowadays I’m OK. For a start I haven’t found anyone who can definitely confirm for sure whether it’s Pope Paul IV that’s being burned in effigy, or Pope Paul V. (Number five was in charge when Guy Fawkes was caught and Number four was boss when the 17 Lewes Martyrs were burned.) And from what I can see, what motivates people to march isn’t so much religious bigotry, more a sense of whimsical Englishness, tradition, socialising and drink.
Copying and Pasting ever so slightly, here’s a quick resume of some of the grim details of the Marian Persecution… Basically, Derek Carver was burned alive in a barrel for the crime of reading a Bible in English.
On 22 July 1555, Derek Carver, was taken by his Catholic persecutors, to Lewes town centre to be burned outside of the Old Star Inn, where the Town Hall currently stands. His Bible was taken from him and thrown into a barrel on the pyre. The crowd called to him, pleading God to strengthen his resolve and his faith. He knelt down and prayed, but was then forced to climb into the barrel too.
Carver took his Bible and threw it into the surrounding crowd. His final words were: “Lord have mercy upon me, for unto thee I commend my spirit and my soul doth rejoice in thee!” His Bible was preserved and is on display in Lewes Museum today. Clear evidence of his blood splattered on the pages of Judges, Zephaniah and Ruth is a graphic reminder of his physical ordeal.
After four more burnings the Bishop of London was still not convinced that heretics were being persuaded back to the Roman faith. So he arranged the largest bonfire of humans the town or indeed the country had seen. The ten hapless Protestants were: Richard Woodman, George Stevens, Alexander Hosman, William Mainard, Thomasina Wood, Margery Morris, James Morris, Denis Burges, Ann Ashdon and Mary Groves.
These, and the other seven victims of the Auto de Fe are commemorated by the Five bonfire societies carrying 17 barrels of burning tar and 17 flaming crosses. Below is the ‘Pope’ part of the song we all sing.
A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’cheese to choke him
A pint of beer to rinse it down
A faggot of sticks to burn him
Burn him in a tub of tar
Burn him like a blazing star
Burn his body from his head
Then we’ll say old Pope is dead
Hip Hip Hoorah!
Hip Hip Hoorah!
Hip Hip Hoorah!
Haven’t heard it on X Factor yet. Of course after Mary Tudor was executed the boot was on the other foot and then it was Protestants killing Catholics. No-one commemorates them. This might be an idea for one of the other societies, maybe Southover, whose younger members over-compensate for having liberal, Guardian reading parents by throwing lots of bangers around.
And if you want a taste of what it’s like marching in a Bonfire Society, click/paste this link:
Photo with 6 notes
Berlin
We were in Berlin a few days ago, my mothers home town. Always enjoyed going there although it is impossible to get food which hasn’t been made with the contents of an entire salt cellar. One of the things that makes the place interesting is that sense of bad history, destruction and schism. This is reflected somewhat in the architecture which is is either Euro Bland Nothingness or Great Big Dark Edifices which look as though they were designed primarily to frighten children. The Reichstag, TV Tower, Cathedral and pretty much any museum are the most notable examples, but the style can be found city wide. This sinister looking church is in the unremarkable area of GuntzelStrasse. I would have loved to have had a camera good enough to show the bats circling the tower at dusk.
Photoset with 5 notes
Convent / Monastery at Le Bec Hellouin, Normandy
These are a few views from around the convent. The Op Art shot is actually the sun setting over the nuns garden. Whilst the Abbey (where the monks live) is quite ancient the Monastery (where the nuns live) only dates from the 1950s; nothing particular has ever happened here. When I asked our vicar, Father Andrew, why Bec was a popular destination for English pilgrims he told me that it was very handy for road and ferry links and that it was an easy drive from the South East.
Photoset with 6 notes
Wivelsfield Church, Sussex
Queenie , my wife used to have a good friend that lived in Wivelsfield, now one of those Sussex villages where the old junior school is now a £1 million plus Grand Designs type home. The friend, who has been dead for many years, was not a big fan of organised religion but used to enjoy the quiet of the local church. We wandered around there the other day and all those subtle English cadences are still in place. So, now the graveyard is strimmed rather than tended and the old benches that used to support the old ladies have now collapsed themselves and been pushed to the side, but, the quiet is still there (probably more now that all the neighbours are rich) and so are the views.
Page 1 of 6
