What we see here is actual words in an actual blogpost - the shock! The general craziness of life has subsided, but it's been a good time to take stock, reassess, and all the rest of it (to say nothing of note just how many ways the Chancellor has developed to extract my assets....).
When I first started this blog, last year, there was a manifesto of sorts to go poking around in the sort of places that people overlook - to say that actually there are wonderful places right here under our nose, and that to pass them up for a safari holiday, for example, is nothing so much as an abject failure of imagination. However, it quickly developed into much more of a meditation on Englishness, rather than England per se, and I wonder if that doesn't need to take more of a back seat in the future - I'm pretty sure that my just about three figures readership has worked out where I stand and it doesn't do to become a one trick pony. I think it's going to be a more rich seam to mine for the growing short story output to be honest - watch this space; there's a novel coming in the next year or so too! It's only taken me seven years - now just got to find a publisher....
However, in the hope that the audience haven't quietly drifted away, seduced by shinier things in the slightly-longer-than-expected pause; coming in the next week:
What we need from the next Archbishop of Canterbury
Carrier Aircraft U-Turn?
and
The Biggest Bang you've never heard of (or heard)......
Matt
Showing posts with label CofE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CofE. Show all posts
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Monday, 19 December 2011
9 Lessons and Carols
Last night we braved the increasingly icy B roads of East Oxfordshire to attend the service of 9 lessons and carols at the village church. Apart from starting slightly late, it all proceeded pretty quickly (the fastest rendition in recent history of Silent Night being a particular highlight...), but the church was full, and the singing enthusiastic, so perhaps there's hope for the dear old CofE after all.
Sometimes it can feel rather like the world is moving on without us out here in the countryside. Working so close to London I often hear colleagues talking about the latest restaurant that they have been to, and wonder for a moment if I'm missing out. I''m not sure we are all that badly off out here though, you just have to work harder to pass the time.
I think the key to it all is evolution, not revolution. In the same way that we've found ways to cope within the Hunting Act 2004, so too we have to cope with the changing needs of people for entertainment.
9 Lessons and Carols is actually an important symbol of this particularly English genius for evolution. The CofE has since Cranmer's adaptation of the Daily Offices found time for Evensong, but the whole idea of going to church at night is not so very Anglican. Neither is the presence of candles in church, now taken for granted, something that would have happened before the late 19th century. The service was designed by Edward White Benson OE (an interesting chap who I may return to) during his time as first Bishop of Truro, and would have been dismissed, rather like Midnight Mass, as overly Roman had it not spoken to a deep need of the English people. Today it seems as natural, timeless, and organically English as Cranmer's prose.
Happy Christmas
Sometimes it can feel rather like the world is moving on without us out here in the countryside. Working so close to London I often hear colleagues talking about the latest restaurant that they have been to, and wonder for a moment if I'm missing out. I''m not sure we are all that badly off out here though, you just have to work harder to pass the time.
I think the key to it all is evolution, not revolution. In the same way that we've found ways to cope within the Hunting Act 2004, so too we have to cope with the changing needs of people for entertainment.
9 Lessons and Carols is actually an important symbol of this particularly English genius for evolution. The CofE has since Cranmer's adaptation of the Daily Offices found time for Evensong, but the whole idea of going to church at night is not so very Anglican. Neither is the presence of candles in church, now taken for granted, something that would have happened before the late 19th century. The service was designed by Edward White Benson OE (an interesting chap who I may return to) during his time as first Bishop of Truro, and would have been dismissed, rather like Midnight Mass, as overly Roman had it not spoken to a deep need of the English people. Today it seems as natural, timeless, and organically English as Cranmer's prose.
Happy Christmas
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