'Junk' for Jesus
"NO JUNK MAIL." But can the possessors of four separate
doorbells genuinely be all of one mind in an house? And, if so,
would it be God who had made them so?
I have my doubts, standing on the doorstep in a London street
that is more than 50 per cent more gentrified than it was ten years
ago, holding two Christmas Services fliers in my hand, and
wrestling with a twinge of conscience before pushing them through
the letterbox.
Yes, it is that time of year again: when we are tempted to
entertain uncharitable thoughts about the recycling organisation
that provides people with these stickers that seize the
environmentalist high ground while seeking to deter unsolicited
communications. Door after door now sports them.
To be fair, however, they are not quite as unequivocally hostile
as "Posted items only". That must be the work of the devil or
Professor Dawkins.
Before I have time to think what our Lord would do, a cheerful
leafleteer for a pizza-delivery firm arrives at the next house, and
greets me, laughing, over the fence with a comradely "No junk
mail!" before shoving a whole fistful of menus through.
I smile and make a sociable remark about being from "the Parish
Church", and he repeats "The Parish Church" in a tone that might be
one of appreciation and reverence, but may equally be perplexity as
he tries to work out what that is in Portuguese.
Nevertheless, it seems such a good line that I use it again,
further along the street, when a parishioner emerges from her home
and wafts my offer of a leaflet abruptly away. "It's from the
Parish Church," I say, as if that settled the matter; and,
surprisingly, it is accepted. Perhaps the C of E's real mistake has
been to give up the self-confidence game.
But some people are hard cases, for which the only prescription,
probably, is to send round the Vicar, or preferably Archbishop
Garbett. At one address, a notice proclaims that only
communications personally addressed to "Mr [N. or M.]" are
to be admitted into the sanctity of his hallway.
I search my pockets for a pen, to turn his flier into a personal
invitation to church; but I haven't got one, and so, not being made
of the stern missionary stuff that would actually ring any of these
doorbells, I shake off the dust from my sandals and go on my
way.
Winter warmers
DOUBLE GLAZING is a blessing not as widely enjoyed as you might
think, judging by an unscientific survey that I made recently from
the upper deck of a London bus.
On a separate journey, I was engaged in conversation by a
passenger who clearly wanted to get a great deal off her chest
about the coldness of her flat in one of those large Victorian
houses that were divided up after the war. I had no difficulty in
sympathising.
The first winter that I spent in London was so cold, the flat
was so draughty, and the electric heaters were so ineffectual, that
I gave up trying to heat the living room one Sunday afternoon and
transferred myself to an unpleasantly smoke-filled pub for half an
hour before taking refuge in a pleasantly smoke-filled church for a
great deal longer.
Solemn evensong and Benediction with sermon was a liturgical
combination so conveniently time-consuming and yet varied that, if
it were not for covered shopping centres and Sunday trading, the
cost of fuel could bring it back into fashion - as an alternative
to staying warm at home at one's own expense.
This is all a prelude to pointing out, as one of my colleagues
kindly has, that the 2011 Census provides useful information about
the percentage of the adherents of different faiths who do not have
central heating.
Top came the Buddhists, at 3.85 per cent; then no religion, 2.89
per cent; 2.54 per cent of Christians; and 2.15 per cent of
Muslims. The Sikhs were the most centrally heated, only 1.18 per
not having it; then Hindus, 1.67 per cent; and 1.84 per cent of
Jews.
What this tells us about each faith is, no doubt, an opportunity
for wild speculation in submissions to our comment and letters
pages, in the spirit of Alan Bennett's vicar's wife's husband, who
attended an undenominational conference on the role of the Church
"in a hitherto uncolonised department of life, underfloor central
heating possibly".
Sadly, I don't know what heating this small percentage of people
of all faiths and none have, if any, nor whether they embrace the
Ready Brek faith, how many of them employ a housemaid to make up
the fires, or whether they keep their coal in the bath; but perhaps
it doesn't matter in the end. They could turn out to be warmer than
the people who have a central-heating system but can no longer
afford to switch it on.
Fulge, Jesu, fulge
THE life-changing impact of the now apparently venerable "Shine,
Jesus, shine", to which I cannot testify, may be one thing (News, 6
December), but the story of its adaptation at England's Nazareth as
"Shrine, Mary's Shrine" is quite another.
The Revd Geoffrey Squire, a Church Times reader for 61
years and, therefore, a person of self-evident discernment, tells
us that it cannot have been official. He recalls hearing this song
sung to the original Kendrick words at Walsingham's "National" one
year, and found it "very fitting and sung with great joy". It isn't
in the least low-church or Protestant, he says, though he does
criticise the tune as, though jolly, "not very musical, especially
with those long-held notes".
It is certainly, to my mind, a difficult item to sing, although
I may be biased by having heard it completely slaughtered on the
organ at a Brownies' Thinking Day service, when "Daisies are our
silver" (always popular with little girls when I was at primary
school) might have been a better fit.
But, to return to Fr Squire's letter, he reminds us that
changing the words to make a point about your rival form of
churchmanship is a competitor sport. He once heard Evangelicals
sing "Come, ye faithful, raise the anthem" with the altered line
"Bring your harps but leave your incense."
My Latin heading comes froma version of "Shine, Jesus,shine"
which you can still find in the Anglo-Catholic blogosphere at
warwickensis.blogspot.co.uk.
Pensions point
CANON Roger Humphreys, of Bampton, in Oxfordshire, is usually
irritated by "hold" music on the phone, but when he phoned Church
House, Westminster, recently, it made him laugh out loud.
"While waiting for someone to answer I listened to a choir
singing something rousing. I think it was 'Thine be the glory'.
However, I shall never forget the hymn being sung while my call was
being transferred to the Pensions Board. It was 'The day thou
gavest, Lord, is ended.' As if I needed reminding!'"