Category: blog

The first memory was stirred by the dappled light softening the sharp angles of the building. Then the archway, framing stairs and illuminated trees. The whoosh of the door as we entered the cooled space, then a quick clatter across the courtyard. Down the stairs, second door. Seats chosen for sight lines and likely encounters with significant mentors.

But the excitement really began when I smelled the grease paint. Did you know you can smell the grease paint from the back of the orchestra? No, I’d not have thought so either, but there it was, signaling the ‘places’ had been called though they had entered silently enough for us not to hear.

By the time the orchestra began and the curtain rose, we were 17 again, full of all the excitement of opening night. The choice of show hadn’t much excited me: No, No Nannette. But the director and choreographer always did have a penchant for the 20’s, so we knew it would be nicely over the top.

And it was all I could have hoped for.

A cast of thirty cleanly tapping through the second and third act finales. Soft shoe, Charleston; a male lead who was ballet trained, had a strong clear Broadway tenor, and who knew how to play the ukulele. Role after role offering a space to shine. Such a good show for a talented cast: no one part to stir envy and resentment; but song and dance enough for all. And as always: the real star of the show wasn’t the pretty young thing who got the lead (though she was splendid), but the larger less-beautiful woman whose acting held us captive as she moved the show from frivolity to deeply embodied loss.

I loved every minute of tonight. The music, the dance, the people we saw. Even silly things like the grain of the carpet, the colour of the walls and the shadow of the wire chairs on the tile floor.

There may be nothing the feels quite like a Midnight Eucharist that opens up the numinous, but that moment of hush backstage as the curtain falls comes awfully close.

And in truth, I suspect most of what I know about liturgy began here, amidst dreams and greasepaint, before a thousand goodbyes.

Here’s a little something for those of you easily led to procrastination.

At synod, I will be leading a lunch time session on how blogs can serve the church.   One of my tasks over the next few days is to come up with ideas and examples.  So, I’d like you to search your memories, and other people’s blogs.   What blog-posts (from any vaguely churchy blog — SEC or otherwise) have made a difference to you?  Do particular conversation threads stick in your memory?  Has a blog post or discussion ever helped you make sense of your faith, feel more connected with the church, given you hope, etc.?

I’m looking for good communicable examples.

Comments on good and bad practice and blog strategy are also welcome.  If I find I’m preaching to the converted, then we’ll skip the ‘this is a blog’ phase and go straight to blogging-as-tool.

And I will of course say ‘one of the good things about blogging is that the blogging community will often do your work for you…’

The great weights and measures controversy continues in the comments. But one comment needs to come to the fore. Graham asks if I know what a glub is, in relation to a cord of wood.

Well, no. But I happen to be at home with the best ever Christmas present which I bought for my father the first year I had a salary. So, care of the OED:

glub — obs. a mass or heap. First used: 1382, Wyclif Num xvi.11:

8 And eft Moises seide to Chore, Ye sones of Leuy, here.
9 Whether it is litil to you, that God of Israel departide you fro al the puple, and ioynede you to hym silf, that ye schulden serue hym in the seruyce of tabernacle, and that ye schulden stonde bifor the multitude of puple, and schulden serue hym?
10 Made he therfor thee and alle thi bretheren the sones of Leuy to neiy to hym silf, that ye chalenge to you also preesthod,
11 and al thi glubbe stoonde ayens the Lord? For whi what is Aaron, that ye grutchen ayens hym?

[actually, I’ve had to tinker with this. Glubbe only appears in the 1382 version, whereas only the 1395 version in online. Oh, and glubbe is a varient of glub, also obsolete. Glub iteself appears in the less interesting 2 Kings.17]

For those of you who have forgotten your Middle English, that says:

8 Then Moses said to Korah, ‘Hear now, you Levites! 9 Is it too little for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to allow you to approach him in order to perform the duties of the Lord’s tabernacle, and to stand before the congregation and serve them? 10 He has allowed you to approach him, and all your brother Levites with you; yet you seek the priesthood as well! 11Therefore you and all your company have gathered together against the Lord. What is Aaron that you rail against him?’

So, it seems a glub is a mess of proto-pesky-piskies seeking ordination and plotting against their existing priest. Very worrying.

On a brighter note, glub led me to the earlier entry of gloze:

gloze (v.) rare intrans. to look earnestly and fixedly; to gaze with pleasure, to peer.

gloze (v.) rare. intrans. to shine brightly, to gleam. trans. to cause to shine.

I sense a gold star glozing for the one who comes up with the best example sentence.

And you see, Graham, why theology is called the Queen of Sciences? Even a glub of wood leads to God.

Words later perhaps. But for now, another photo from Cambridge.

The friend I was visiting lives in an old neighborhood of East Cambridge where never a holiday goes by without dressing the house and ‘yard’. One of the most earnest decorators lives two doors down. She spent her working life as a lunch lady, and in retirement turned her quite considerable skills of persuasion towards wrapping the media around her little finger. She’s had front page spreads, follow up articles, and a media led rescue mission when her larger-than-life-sized Frankenstein got stolen last Halloween.