Just discovered this website, courtesy of Le Monde's daily e-mail summary. A good way into French music.
We watched Tony Blair's last Prime Minister's Question Time at noon today and then his departure from 10 Downing Street. As I type this, our new Prime Minister Gordon Brown is being driven down the Mall away from Buckingham Palace.
What kept him so long at Buckingham Palace? Did Her Majesty raise questions about her role as Head of the Church of England? (During Prime Minister's Questions earlier, one MP asked about Gordon Brown's intention ‘to disestablish the Church of England’. Tony Blair refused to respond to the question.) Disestablishment would certainly be one way to make early headlines - and Rowan Williams is an archbishop who expressed his enthusiasm for disestablishment before becoming Archbishop.
I shall miss Tony Blair - for all his faults, I've always thought him the most human and ‘ordinary’ of any Prime Minister in my lifetime. Of course no one who has the ambition and ability to become Prime Minister is ‘ordinary’. But the other Prime Ministers in my lifetime always seemed rather strange human beings (James Callaghan is perhaps an exception).
There's been little time so far this week to record what I've been doing, except for our visit on my day off to the Hayward Gallery.
But I've met quite a lot of people this week. On Monday evening, our Church Council reviewed the all-age service we've held since February and gave it the thumbs up. We also set up a Committee to manage our halls lettings and discussed how to put prayer at the centre of our church's life.
On Tuesday I went to the Pembroke Square Garden Party, which ended up being held at the school because of the unreliable weather forecasts. A good chance to meet some of our neighbours. I especially enjoyed meeting the Belgian M. Bonvoison - such a good name for someone attending a Square Garden Party - who had recently been studying the philosophy of religion at Heythrop College. Later on Tuesday evening our Stewardship Working Group got much closer towards wrapping up its plans for our giving campaign in the autumn.
Wednesday was the Annual General Meeting of the Kensington Council of Churches. The most interesting contribution in this meeting was from the Coptic Orthodox Church, concerned that the start of the spring term next year on 7 January coincided with the Coptic Christmas.
On Thursday morning the Bishop of Kensington came to St Mary Abbots to lead a eucharist for the deacons about to be priested ahead of their ordination retreat. We had lunch afterwards in the Vicarage Garden - an extraordinary space right in the heart of Kensington, which would fetch millions if it were ever sold. On Thursday evening we were invited to the Marlborough Court Garden Party. Marlborough Court is a rather splendid 1930s block of flats on the other side of Pembroke Road. I enjoy Garden Parties, and being a Vicar is a rather good way to get talking to people. It's also surprising how many people have some history of interest in religion or involvement in the church and how easily it appears to be rekindled even by a conversation with a priest.
Saturday saw the St Mary Abbots Summer Fete. For the second time this week we won a prize. At the Marlborough Court Garden Pary we won a bottle of champagne. At the St Mary Abbots Summer Fete I won the top prize - a basket of goodies from Whole Foods Market, the huge new organic food store in Kensington which I visited on the day it opened.
Today St Mary Abbots held the ordination of priests for the Kensington area of the London Diocese. I was responsible for looking after visiting priests, whose role was to present the deacons for ordination as priests; to take part in the consecration itself; and to help administer the Communion.
Somehow in the middle of this rather busy week I managed to persuade the Bishop of London to preach and preside at a eucharist on the 150th anniversary of the consecration of St Philip's in 1858; and to get our Archdeacon to visit us in September during our giving campaign.
The one thing I didn't mention above was a phone call from my Dad on Thursday afternoon. I wrote on Monday afternoon about the fiftieth anniversary of his meeting my Mum. Two days later he was told by a consultant that he had secondary cancer of the bone.
It's hard to write any more at this stage, except that I was - understandably - rather shaken by the news.
Carys and I went to see ‘Blind Light’, Antony Gormley's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery this afternoon.
We both felt disorientated by the works, especially Blind Light itself and Space Station. I preferred Space Station - although the experience of Blind Light was powerful, it didn't display the same kind of sculptural craft as Space Station did.
Space Station looked as if it had been inspired by one of the huge spaceships from a film like Star Wars. This massive structure leant at an angle so it was hard to work out how it stayed stable. It looked different from every angle, and this is what I liked most about it - the experience of the piece changed so much depending on where we stood.
I've just come across a note I made to myself some time ago to look at this website. It could be a very useful resource as I prepare sermons.
For some reason, I missed the news of Richard Rorty's death and only found out when I caught the tail-end of a profile on a Radio Four programme - Last Word - I later found out was dedicated to obituaries.
It seems to be only at moments like this that I delve into my book collection and start re-engaging with contemporary thought. I have a copy of Rorty's essay Pragmatism, Davidson and Truth; I also have John McDowell's Mind and World, in which he engages at some length with Rorty's essay (Afterword, Part I, sections 6 - 8, pp. 146-156).
It's not an unusual for a philosophical dispute between two philosophers to be conducted in terms of how to interpret a third philosopher. In this case, Rorty and McDowell are arguing over how to interpret Donald Davidson. Could I possibly find the time to read both essays? We'll see.
I've added one quote by Rorty to my commonplace book to mark the occasion.
Sign and Sight is the English version of the German online cultural magazine Perlentaucher. It describes itself as providing "a lively and informative view of cultural and intellectual life in Germany."
I stumbled across it because it is the source - here - for Jurgen Habermas's obituary for Richard Rorty.
This blog seems to me at last to be taking off. I started an online journal many years ago. But the entries were long and reflective and I ended up writing them only sporadically.
These blog entries are shorter and they seem to reflect far better my day to day preoccupations. I'm also getting more disciplined at making them.
What's been lacking up till today is any kind of index. Today I've made an index for the 2007 blog entries. Hopefully the rest will follow.
My Mum and Dad have just phoned to remind me that they first met fifty years ago today. In fact, it's almost exactly fifty years ago to this minute.
Obviously without that meeting I wouldn't be here. Neither would this website. So I guess it's a rather important anniversary for me also.
We didn't return to Kensington Gardens for the White Stripes. But walking Ollie in Hyde Park this evening, we heard Every Day I Love You Less and Less and realised we were listening to the Kaiser Chiefs.
I was at my desk this afternoon writing my sermon for Evensong at St Mary Abbots when the sky above us was suddenly full of jets. It was the fly-past marking the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War. I find it hard to imagine it was 25 years ago.
At the time I was an ordinand in Nottingham. The father of a fellow ordinand on my corridor was the Chief Legal Advisor to the Foreign Office and so was attending War Cabinet meetings.
I can still remember the day victory was announced: I had been to a ball in Cambridge the night before, and as I walked through the empty streets of Cambridge early the next morning to make my way to the railway station, I saw the news headlines outside newsagents.
Four times a year I give spiritual direction to a woman who loves singing in choirs. She told me this morning about how much she enjoyed singing a solo in Charpentier's Te Deum. When she sang me the opening line of the Prelude, I realised I knew it, without ever having known who had written it.
It's used as the signature tune for the European Broadcasting Union, and so played at the start of the Eurovision Song Contest. I suspect I've also heard it at weddings.
Walking Ollie in Kensington Gardens this morning, we heard groups rehearsing in Hyde Park for this weekend's O2 Wireless Festival. The White Stripes are playing this evening, so we may take Ollie to Kensington Gardens again this evening whilst they're playing.
Carys often has the Steve Wright show on in the background when she's cooking. Today my attention was grabbed by a remix by the Parisian DJ Pilooski of the Franki Valli song ‘Beggin'’. Probably the easiest way to hear it is on Pilooski's My Space page here.
Today is my Vicar's birthday, and yesterday evening Carys and I went to a rather splendid dinner party to help him celebrate. Sitting around the table were a professional singer, an Australian artist who now lives and works in Manhattan, a foreign news editor of one of our national papers, the literary editor of another, and an architect. And then of course there was us. We had a great evening.
This last weekend was Open Garden Squares weekend in London. We are of course surrounded by garden squares in Kensington and I would have loved to have seen inside some of them. But I just didn't have time. Carys and I did, however, get inside the Royal Hospital, Chelsea for the first time, for the Borough's annual Garden Party. There is an extraordinary statue as you enter the Hospital of King Charles II, dressed rather like a Roman emperor. Yesterday was a fine summer afternoon and the statue seemed to shine quite brilliantly: apparently it was regilded in 2002.
Preparing for yesterday's sermon, I discovered new things about the presentation of John the Baptist in Luke's Gospel.
What I already knew was this. In Mark's Gospel, and even more explicitly in Matthew, Jesus understands John as having been Elijah: in Mark 9: 13, Jesus says:,
."I tell you that Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him."
Matthew follows Mark here and adds:
."Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist." (Mt 17:13)
Matthew has another such saying:
"all the law and the prophets prophesied until John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come." (Mt 11: 13-14)
In John's Gospel, by contrast, John the Baptist himself denies that he is Elijah:
"And they asked him, ‘What then?’ Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not’." (Jn 1:21)
What I hadn't noticed before was Luke's ambivalence on the subject. Luke has no parallel for Mark 9:13, in other words has deliberately missed out the passage. And Luke alone includes two passages in which it is Jesus - rather than John - who is compared to Elijah.
In the first, Luke adds the following words to his account of Jesus's visit to his home synagogue:
."in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow." (Lk 4: 25-26)
This story of the widow of Zarephath is alluded to later in another uniquely Lukan passage, the story of the the widow's son at Nain (Luke 7: 11-17). In this extract from my sermon, I drew attention to the following parallels, which are listed in Christopher (C. F.) Evans' commentary on Luke:
"In both stories, there is a widow whose son dies. In both stories, our first encounter with the widow is at the gate of the city. In both stories, the son revives. In both stories, the son is described as being ‘given back’ to his mother. In both stories, people respond by recognising the presence of God."
This would seem to add up to quite a strong case that, for Luke, it was Jesus rather than John the Baptist who was Elijah. But there is at least one complication. At the start of Luke's gospel, an angel appears to Zecharaiah, John's father, and says:
"With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." (Lk 1: 17)
So the most I think it's possible to say is that Luke is more ambivalent than Mark (and so certainly more than Matthew).
In an entry last month, I linked to a video of Richard Turnbull talking about hell. Today I met him, as he was the guest preacher at St Mary Abbots. An unlikely occurence on a normal Sunday, but he was the guest preacher at the Annual Civic Service, and the new Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea is the Treasurer of Wycliffe Hall, where he is Principal.
The Civic Service was a rather grand affair. Our local MP, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, was present; we sang the setting of Psalm 150 by Stanford, who used to live in Holland Street in Kensington; and we sang two verses of the National Anthem!
Afterwards we went to a reception at the Town Hall, where I had a potentially useful conversation with our Ward Councillor about St Philip's 150th anniversary next year.
This morning I attended the memorial service for Father Bishoy Bushra, former priest at our neighours, St Mark's Coptic Orthodox Church. Back in May, I read a lesson at his funeral on behalf of the Kensington Council of Churches.
I never knew Father Bishoy, but it's obvious from the vitality of the Coptic Church in Kensington and the affection with which he is remembered, that he was a remarkable man and priest.
I've just watched a live TV broadcast of Darcy Bussell's last performance at the Royal Opera House: Mahler's Song of the Earth. Such a great combination. I've always hugely admired Bussell. And I love Mahler. At the very end, Darcy, the self-confessed control freak, appeared completely overcome with emotion. Stirring stuff.
I've just come across this video of Tim Buckley singing his great ‘Song of the Siren’ (via this page on the French current affairs website 20 Minutes). Great song, though what ‘I am puzzled as the oyster’ means I have no idea.
(I'm so struck by this line that I've done a few minutes research on the Web. Apparently Buckley himself was teased by a friend for this very line and took it to heart so much that he stopped performing the song for some time, only later doing so with revised lyrics.)
I'm used to the beautiful version by ‘This Mortal Coil’ which drops the ‘oyster’ line, but whose lyrics are anyhow quite incomprehensible at times.
Great excitement yesterday in Kensington, with the opening of the huge new Whole Foods Market. Of course I saw it as my duty to check the place out on day one. It is very impressive and was heaving with people. The prices explain why the company chose Kensington for their first UK branch.
I resisted the temptation to buy anything, but I'm sure I'll succumb in future. They have a great cheese shop, which might persuade me to be more adventurous.
I've never been a huge fan of the art critic Brian Sewell, but his documentary ‘Dirty Dali: A Private View’ was a fascinating insight into his encounter with the great surrealist painter.
For a year when I was a curate in Greenwich, there was no Vicar in place. When I felt the pressure getting on top of me, I would hastily beat a retreat to St Columba's House in Woking, where they usually had a bed I could use for the night.
I hadn't been there for some time before yesterday evening, when I went to pick up the car from Carys, who is Selection Secretary on a Bishop's Advisory Panel for the ordained ministry happening there this week.
I find places can affect me almost physically, and seeing again this place which had been a refuge for me was surprisingly evocative and affected my mood.
St Columba's has one of the best-ordered chapels I have ever been in: an inspiration and an example of how a fairly ordinary-looking space can be transformed by imagination.
This evening Carys is giving an address at St Columba's House on the gospel passage set for Evening Prayer today, Luke 10: 38 - end.
When we looked at this passage over the weekend, Carys commented on how intimate a story it was. Jesus goes into someone's house, not for a public meal but clearly on a private visit. And then, as Carys pointed out, the story becomes even more intimate, showing us inside the private worlds of Mary and Martha, and their very individual responses to Jesus.
It reminded Carys of the intimacy of a Dutch interior. And of course there is a Dutch interior depicting just this scene: Vermeer's Christ in the House of Mary and Martha. Except that this isn't one of Vermeer's intimate small-scale paintings. Compared to the rest of his existing paintings, it's huge. I think I've seen it twice: once in Edinburgh, at the National Galleries of Scotland; and once in The Hague. In 1996 Carys and I travelled to the Hague to see an extraordinary Vermeer exhibition, the best exhibition I've seen anywhere.
Last week Carys and I went to Packet Boat Marina near Uxbridge to see the narrow boat our friends Simon and Juliet have bought. They've now set out on a tour of England's canals with their dog Lloyd, one of Ollie's best friends. Their blog is here.
I've started sorting through six boxes of papers which have been lying untouched in my study since we moved here to Kensington ten months ago.
Much of the paper is rubbish which I should have thrown out at the time. Some of it would have been useful or interesting once, but has passed its sell-by date.
And then there is the interesting stuff that I simply never got around to paying enough attention. I've just come across a leaflet for the 2003 Tate Modern photography exhibition ‘Cruel and Tender’. I remember going, but suspect I'd get far more out of the exhibition if I went now.
Presumably I hung on to the leaflet in the vain hope I'd find time to follow up some of the photographers I'd come across. There is a detail from a great photograph by Walker Evans of a West Virgina Coal Miner's House, which I've just discovered is reproduced in the Tate magazine here.
This leaflet, sitting untouched and in random order in a packing box, is of little help until I happen to stumble across it, wading through piles of uninteresting debris. Yet rediscovering the Walker Evans photo, and being reminded of my visit to the exhibition, are the kind of evocation of the past which I love. And this is exactly what my website provides for me in a far more structured way. I already have a webpage dedicated to the ‘Cruel and Tender’ exhibition, with links to the Tate's own pages for the exhibition, and a record of the date I visited it: Thursday 10 July 2003. This is exactly one reason why I put so much work into this website: to be able to have access to my past without my present becoming too jumbled or overcrowded.
Yesterday's entry on John Macquarrie, written when I was quite tired and also distracted by the England vs Brazil match, ends rather lamely I think.
The reality is I have an intuitive sense of the role of scripture in my preaching, which is probably evolving, and I rarely give myself time to be explicit about it. So how is that implicit view different from my understanding of Macquarrie? And how is it different from the view of evangelicals, who would see scripture as far more than our starting point?
I am no expert on Macquarrie, but I've just dug out three of his books on my shelves: ‘Principles of Christian Theology’; ‘In Search of Humanity’; and ‘An Existentialist Theology’. (I may have more, but after ten months in this new house, my books are still scattered fairly randomly.) What do those books suggest is Macquarrie's attitude towards Scripture?
In his preface to ‘An Existentialist Theology’, Bultmann (here) finds "a certain kinship" between existentialist philosophy and what is implicit in the New Testament, hence justifying Bultmann's interpretation of the New Testament. But is the role of philosophy to provide a tool to interpret the scriptures? Or is Bultmann's discovery simply to recognise a kinship and hence build a bridge between scripture and contemporary (or what was then contemporary) culture?
Macquarrie begins ‘An Existentialist Theology’ by appealing to a distinguished cast of Christian apologists and defending their role, whilst pointing out the dangers of apologetics (here). And it seems clear from another passage - see here - that he doesn't see the role of Christian theology as being merely to endorse the findings of the empirical sciences.
On the other hand, using an image with which I'm very comfortable, he says that ‘empirical studies reveal the raw materials, so to speak, out of which humanity must be constructed’.
It's for this reason that when I preach on a text which could easily be interpreted in the kind of utopian way criticised by Macquarrie, I assume the text is addressing the human situation as I understand it, and not some unrealistic fantasy of what it means to be human.
I discovered, only today from the Church Times obituary, that John Macquarrie has died. I saw Macquarrie just once, preaching at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford in the 1980s. But his writings had a huge influence on me in the early 1980s.
Macquarrie's style of doing theology is rather out of fashion these days. What I took from Macquarrie, 25 years ago, was the idea that the Christian gospel had to take seriously the human condition. In practice, these days in ministry, I look for sources of illumination on the human condition from scripture and tradition, yet ruling out interpretations which make no sense to me in terms of what we do know about ourselves and our condition.
A follow-up to yesterday's entry about watching the BBC's Imagine documentary about Scott Walker. According to the Wikipedia Scott Walker entry, some of the interviews in the Imagine programme were lifted from a film called Scott Walker: 30th Century Man. David Bowie was executive producer of the film, which was premiered at the 50th London Film Festival and chosen as one of the Independent's 10 ‘must-see’ films at that Festival.
I commented to Carys yesterday how good some of the film editing was: what I probably meant was how good it was for a TV documentary, and I assume I've now found out why.
I wrote also yesterday about downloading music from the web for the first time via the web radio station Last Fm. It was only later in the day that I read this article in the Guardian, announcing that the website was being brought by CBS.