Initiating the Initiations

 A very important part of parish life is our celebration of the Sacraments of I nitiation - Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist.  We'll leave Confimation fo rthe moment. as that involves the Bishop - or does usually!   Baptisms and First Communions ahev been on hold since lockdown in March, and here in our 3 Churches we are feeling it's time to catch up. There are about a dozen or more Baptisms in the queue and we have of course our annual First Confessions and Communions too - usually about 40.

So we now have to try and accommodate all these, and within the Covid restrictions. Saturday mornings are going to become busier!  So say a little prayer as we try to juggle dates and times to try and get as much done before Christmas as possible.

Path to Allegri

 I think I recommended "New Pilgrim Path" before. Coming from Ireland, it's a resource site for religious poetry, history and music.  Very well put together, it's a great place to browse if you have a moment. A good feature is that many of the ingredients are constantly being updated or changed, like "Poem of the Week"   Click here to visit it.

On the site at the moment is a stunning performance of the famous "Miserere" by Allegri, originally broadcast on TV. It is sung by the Sixteen under Harry Christopher.  If you have never heard it, please do. If you know it, take time to enjoy.

 

 

"The Repair House"

 

This is now two TV reviews in a  row - both from BBC 1.  After the excellent new "Us" I'd like to say how much I Iike the recently discovered (for me) "Repair Shop".  Idea is simple - people bring items old, damaged, worn out, but with a personal story behind them, for a team of experts to repair and restore.

This evening they ranged from bagpipes from WWI belonging to someone's grandfather, to a 17th century dining chair damaged apparently beyond repair, most recently by a teething puppy, to a crown from an Urdd Eisteddfod won by someone's grandmother when a teenager.  A bit like "Houses Under the Hammer" (yes, sad, I know) there is a beginning, middle and end. The item is brought in, its story told. Then we observe the expert doing the work, and then there is the "reveal" when the owner returns to claim the shiny, whole item anew. And this is often accompanied by tears as the owner is often taken back to a particular time, or a particular person, usually deceased. Excellent format, with so many ingredients hitting the target. Part of it is the joy of watching top people doing their job - I particularly like the clockwork guy (above) and Will the furniture man (below).

There's something maybe a little deeper going on as well. Is it too much to see these stories of restoration as capturing all our wishes for renewal - of ourselves, our world, our Church? The BBC blurb describes the programme as "an antidote to throwaway culture". Pope Francis asked for the Church to be a field hospital.  Do these women and men in their barn in Kent or Sussex hint at a God who can and will remake, repair, refresh us, if we put ourselves into His hands... 

 

"Us"

Just watched "Us" on TV, which got good previews, and in particular because Tom Hollander is in it. I think he's a great actor, ever since "Rev" through "The Night Manager" to the present.  Take the scene this evening, when having been told  by his wife that the marriage is over, he goes to take stuff to the dump, cries in his car and kicks a cardboard box to death.  Though I'm not sure about the whole premise that a couple would go on holiday with their son in these circumstances, I was glued...  Great stuff.

We all moan about what's on the telly, but in fact there is indeed great stuff out there. And even the perhaps not-so-good is good for relaxing with having my supper after an evening Mass or whatever. And hqving spent time in Spain, Italy and Canada/USA, we could do a lot worse!

Here are the stars of "Us" visiting the Louvre... 

 

Our own Tabghas

We are strange beings aren't we, us human beings? Take for example a visit to a consultant, like I did today.  Half of us wants to know what the situation is, the other half doesn't, in case the news is not so good.  And then, either way, afterwards we feel much better just to know the answer - whatever that answer was!  Ho hum. Well my news was basically good, I was given good advice, I was helped to understand what is going on, and had any questions answered. So Andy bought fish and chips for us for lunch...

Another thing that's interesting to me when going to see a specialist in the medical world, is to remember that some of the thoughts and feelings I have going there might well be similar to what people experience coming to see us clergy. And that might be especially true for me when folks come for a potentially difficult meeting to discuss a possible annulment. That nervousness, that uncertainty, sometimes hidden behind nonchalance - after 42 years of priesthood I am familiar with all of these and many other reactions in God's people. So why should it be any different when the shoe is on the other foot?  As always, we are all sisters and brothers in this life aren't we, all with our own joys and sorrows - and slight wobble as we await the expert's answer...

Below, one of my very favourite places of peace and beauty - the breaking of bread at Mass at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee, site of the "breakfast on the beach", with Jesus lifting up Peter in the background.

 

Life and energy

This coming weekend we return to our full schedule of Masses in our 3 Churches. This is very heart-warming, as it shows both the faith of the communities and the determination of the communities. It's not easy to jump through all the hoops to achieve this, and we are hugely indebted to the individuals who have planned and carried out the re-openings and those who maintain it, especially the stewards. All wonderful people! 

On this upbeat theme - a while ago I posted the original video of "Jerusalema", the song that has swept a lot of the world this year. It has given rise to the "Jerusalema Challenge" - basically to do a particular dance, (part of which was to dance eating food!) that has now spawned endless varieties and endless videos on YouTube, all of which you can see if you just put "Jerusalema" into the search box.  So here are two of them - first a priest and servers dancing the original dance in Montreal (seriously)  and secondly a group, from South Africa doing a more creative version.  With people getting anxious about the virus, just enjoy the energy...

 

HS2 to be

A video today that's very "niche", as they say.  I've always been fascinated by maps since I was a boy.  A more recent fascination has been those engineering programmes you spot on obscure TV channels - "Abandoned Engineering" etc. So I found a video which is a "fly-through" of the HS2 project from Birmingham to London. It's a computer generated image of what it will look like when (if?) finished, its effect on the environment and the landscaping etc that it will require. Among those I learnt a new phrase - a balancing pond, of which there are many involved in HS". It's a means of controlling excess rain water when there's a downpour, which then releases it slowly.  You live and learn...  So take a trip from Birmingham Curzon Street to London Euston!

Magnificat

                                          

Time for some  choral music.  

When I was in the cathedral choir in Cardiff, this was one of our favourite pieces - a setting of the Magnificat by Charles Villiers Stanford. This version is sung by the choir of St John's College Cambridge, one of the great choirs of the city.   

Whoever put it on Youtube has teamed it with some tasteful and appropriate visuals, including a painting of the Visitation, when according to St Luke Our Lady first proclaimed the great prayer, and Rembrandt's famous "Return of the Prodigal Son" in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. This is placed at the end of the prayer, when it speaks of God's mercy to all generations.

The setting is for solo soprano/treble and choir. I'm afraid I was not chosen for the solo, but we all enjoyed this beautiful piece, and I still do.