Resurgence

Go to Heaven on an Egg
Counting the Hairs on Your Head
Organizing Madness
Moan Therapy
An Elegant Self-sufficiency
An Equal Speaking
Windows of Opportunity
Screwtape's Triumph
Who is Colin Hodgetts?
Without Vision we Die
Vision and the Small School
Sandal Scandal
In the Beginning was the Translation

Go to Heaven on an Egg

I was in the middle of preparing Lent talks on two great Christians of the twentieth century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred for his opposition to Hitler, and Toyohiko Kagawa, the ‘Gandhi’ of Japan, when the post arrived. With a packet of papers for a meeting, a discounted subscription offer to Saga magazine and an ad for hearing aids was a single and singular letter. It was from the chaplain of North Devon College.

‘Dear Colleagues’ it begins – (Ah! the strings of fellowship vibrate gently.) The first paragraph is about Mike, who ‘has vast experience of serving God’ here and in the US and is co-leader of the Christian Union.

The Christian Union ‘would like to do something special to get others to think about Easter’. What the vastly experienced Mike has come up with is distributing over 1,000 Cadbury’s Easter eggs. These will have an appropriate text attached. In this way the good news of Easter will be shared.

Call me a theology duffer – I certainly haven’t got the hang of this post-modernist stuff - but the connection between an empty tomb and a spheroidal casket of milk chocolate encased in foil and encompassing a very sweet white sticky substance surrounding an equally sweet and sticky orange substance eludes me completely.

If such a confection gets me to think about anything it’s the dentist. Is pain the connection? Is my cavity the tomb?
What sort of impact will 1,000 texted eggs make alongside the more than 1.5 million eggs laid daily by the Cadbury’s Creme Egg plant, which, end to end, would stretch all the way from the Bournville factory in Birmingham UK to Sydney Down Under? A rather pointless exercise, sure, but then neither of us is, I assume, a purveyor of candy and au fait with marketing techniques. I’d put the eggs in for the marathon where they can make a mad scramble for the finish.
Returning to the proposal, what of the text? Cadbury’s themselves are using this one: Dip in the goo to unleash your naughty, playful side!   Mm! I’m not sure that will strike a chord with the Mothers’ Union. It suggests something a little more risqué than singing ‘Lord of the Dance’. Nor could previous Cadbury campaigns be said to plug into the Christian message. There was the Shopkeeper campaign of the 70's in which a boy asked for 6000 Cadbury Creme Eggs, which seems at first glance to be more about gluttony. Then the Irresistibly campaign which showed characters prepared to do something unusual for a Cadbury Creme Egg. (Memory failure - rein in the imagination!) Aren’t we supposed to resist temptation?

In 1985 the How Do You Eat Yours? campaign began which, in years following, ‘was achieved through the zodiac signs’, more Glastonbury than Easter festival.  From 1994-1996 Spitting Image characters showed us ‘How To Eat Yours?’ Then there was Shooting Stars followed by the Pointing Finger campaign, and last year The Eggmeister Returns campaign.

Cadburys are not the only ones campaigning. We are being asked to join a Campaign for the "King Size" Creme Egg - a Creme Egg one and a half times bigger than the standard size. ‘If you like the idea and would like to help us lobby Cadbury to develop the product, please show your support by adding your name to the "King Size" petition below.’ Eggscuse me if I don’t. But bigger eggs might be easier to swallow than eggs with texts.

Let’s get to the hard-boiled question: What text will the college boys and girls affix to the eggs? ‘Man does not live by bread alone..’,. ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’.  For further inspiration I consult the concordance, which offers only two examples of the singular egg. Job asks, ‘is there any taste in egg-white?’ and Jesus enquires whether a father, asked by his son for an egg, would give him a scorpion. Or asked by his son for a text would give him an egg. Or asked for an egg would give him a text.

I’ve been hatching a plan. Young people still have egg hunts laid on for them, don’t they? Might not the 1,000 cremes be hidden around Barnstaple? That would certainly widen the text field: ‘Seek and ye shall find’, ‘Nothing is concealed which will not be revealed’, ‘God reveals hidden things’, ‘You hid these things from the wise and revealed them to babes’, ‘My yolk is easy,,,’

I hope the chaplain has undertaken a risk assessment of the project. What if recipients become chocoholics? Or spew up in a public place?

But let’s not be too hard on the chaps and chapesses of the NDCCU. They are not the only ones to be seduced by chocolate. A nearby parish is going to study the film Chocolat, a syrupy confection, the message of which seems to be that through drooling over chocolate one can discover one’s own individuality and a new sense of freedom.  As a reviewer has written, ‘It's like the kind of lesson a schoolteacher might prepare for incredibly sleepy students.’ Would do as a sermon, then!

What is it about chocolate that causes people to lose moral and aesthetic perception? I know from my experience as a teacher that youngsters who indulge in chocolate get hyper. But I had not realised that judgement is also impaired. Which leads me to a free range alternative: these students could apply to be Santa’s little helpers. They’d be a lot happier, I’m sure, assembling Christmas crackers. Replacing jokes that aren’t funny with some ‘goo to unleash your sentimental side’ seems relatively harmless and might even raise a laugh.

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Counting the Hairs on Your Head

A woman on a train was ordering goods in a loud voice, much to the annoyance of fellow travellers, one of whom jotted down her credit card and phone numbers and then text-messaged them back to her with the instruction: SHUT UP! She was highly indignant and tried to discover the culprit. He was pleased to report that no one in the carriage gave him away.

It seems that people are prepared to speak their most intimate thoughts into the palm of the hand in public places. Presumably they imagine that no one can hear them. If otherwise, then obviously they don’t care.

They do seem to care when the government suggests putting a little black box into their car so that satellites can track them and they can be charged for road miles. Don’t they realise that while their mobiles are on they already give away their position? Don’t they realise that their supermarket loyalty card gathers every detail of their spending habits and files them on computer?

These are presumably the same people who oppose the introduction of British identity cards on the grounds that they will contain too much personal information. They have it entirely wrong. My criticism of them is that they won’t contain enough.

I have to admit that I am not much concerned about privacy, and I don’t really understand why others are, unless they are up to no good. In this I differ from my father. No one except his employer and the tax man knew how much my father earned, not even my mother, but that was presumably so that she wouldn’t do an Oliver Twist and ask for more. I, if it were required, would be happy to post my accounts on the internet.

It would be a blessed assurance to know that window double-glazers, purveyors of fine wines, insurance brokers and car salesmen could access details of my income. Then they would stop pestering me with leaflets and phone calls.

Let us run for a couple of paragraphs with the possibilities opened up by a Smart Identity Card (SIC). It could, for instance, hold details of your food preferences.
‘How would you like your egg, sir?’
Say nothing. Hand over your card. The waitress inserts it into a little machine like the one she uses for credit cards. The message is immediately transmitted to the kitchen and the chef has the answer to all his questions: chicken, duck or quail; brown or white; free-range or battery; hard, soft or just slightly runny? He might even discover whether you are going to top it or smash it.

Think how useful it would be in a clothes shop. No longer the pretence of being a 38” when you are really a 44”. The card contains your true measurements. It has these because every time you go for a medical check up or through passport control a scanner obtains the details and updates the card. So you enter the clothes store, insert your identity card into the machine by the door and lights flash over all the items that will fit you. No longer the need to rifle through racks of suits tailored for midgets. And no longer a need for fitting rooms.

As the identity cards will contain eye and hair colour, and could contain skin colour, as well as your age, you can be directed to those things that will look good on you. If, however, you dye your hair – though it is hard to imagine this of Resurgence readers, who, as we know, are committed to truth, beauty etc. – if you dye your hair this could pose a problem. You could be prevented from leaving or entering the country because the scanner wouldn’t recognize you.

So we can expect opposition to my proposal from beauty firms such as L’Oreal, and it will no longer be possible for women to be perfect, even assuming they are worth a huge expenditure on cleansers, colourizers, shampoos and anti-wrinkle cream. They will have to look their age. Don’t laugh, men. Toupees will be out, too.

If you are with me so far then we need to move on to the Really Smart Identity Card (Really SIC). This is the one that collects information as you go.
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘No!’ The card flashes.
‘Well, just a quick one.’ The card flashes again, and so on until the truth is out when the card gives a little ping.

Having nothing to hide is real freedom.

Jesus told us not to be concerned about what we wear or what we eat, and the Really Smart Identity Card takes away that concern:
‘I didn’t ask for the most expensive meal on the menu. The card did.’

Jesus also said that every hair on our head is counted. Nothing is hidden from God. Why should it be hidden from our fellow men and women? So I shall call the Really Smart Identity Card ‘Theos’ (Θεòς).

June 2005

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Organizing Madness

My intention this month was to give an appreciation of the terrible mess that Archbishop Rowan Williams has to sort out in the Church of England, focussing in particular on those un-Christian creatures who threaten to leave the C of E if they don’t get their own way. Their behaviour echoes that of Unionist and Republican politicians in Northern Ireland. Even in political terms it is a bit iffy. In spiritual terms it is many degrees below zero. So if I were the Archi I would politely ignore them until they withdrew their threats.

But I’m not an Arch Bp and I blame my theological college, Ripon Hall, Boar’s Hill, Oxford, for this failure. We were a shrill and savage crew. As, after breakfast, we took our constitutional around the lake the air would be filled with questioning cries and the dreadful sound of the ripping apart of dogmas. Not for us the earthy certainty of Wycliffe Hall or the airy fairiness of St Stephen’s House. One for a joke and a joke for all – that was us.

In my first story, about the afternoon the ceiling fell in, the joke might be said to have been on me. We were in the middle of a Quiet Day. A visiting retreat leader had taken us into the spiritual depths/heights. Lunch had been silent, save for the gentle murmur of unmuffled mastication. As I sat in post-prandial quietude at the desk in my room at the bottom of the tower I was disturbed by certain bumpings and scrapings coming from the room above. A quick crescendo, a loud thump and the ceiling landed on top of me, four inches of powdery plaster together with the lathes that had held it together.

With head sore and hair gritty, as if powdered for a renaissance farce, I rushed upstairs to discover that one of my colleagues, usually a rather reserved fellow, had been demonstrating the correct way to conduct a retreat, a turn that nearly brought the house down!

My room was uninhabitable, my clothes had all to be cleaned, my books to be dusted, but there was a delightful reward. The following term I was given the best room in the place, at the top of the tower, with windows on four sides overlooking the Oxfordshire countryside. My sole neighbour was the one beneath me, and he shared my taste in music.

Another joke at my expense. I had a German girlfriend, Barbara, who, when I visited her in Hamburg, introduced me to an extremely strong-smelling cheese. We plotted a mini prank.

At college our post arrived at breakfast time. She would mail me a cheese. I would sit next to the Principal at breakfast and open it. I would communicate his reaction.

Well, the day came, and the parcel came, and I sat next to the Principal. As we munched our toast and supped our tea I slit open the cardboard box. Instead of an overpowering smell there jumped out of the carton a wind-up mechanical toy which kangarooed all over the table. The other ordinands delighted in my discomforture. For, although the Principal was full of bonhomie and joie de vivre, his stock of humour was somewhat slight. He surely thought that my female acquaintance would never make a parson’s wife, gravitas being in such short supply.

Under his uncomprehending gaze my creative juices evaporated and I never found a way to repay Barbara. I suppose I could have married her.

Although pranks were thin on the ground, I did later have an opportunity to exercise my criminal skills for the benefit of the community. It had been decided to refurbish the rather small chapel. At the time the seats were arranged in rows facing each other in normal college style. The new plan had them all facing the altar.

My friends and I felt this to be a retrograde step: theologically unsound. We preferred to look at each other than at the altar. But we were assured that there was no other way to get more people in. I didn’t believe it. So late at night I broke into the Principal’s study and borrowed the architect’s plans. Having carefully traced them they were replaced.

The next day we were able to produce our alternative seating plan which had benches on three sides, thus emphasising the community nature of the college. The plans were accurate, as well-drawn as the architect’s and, as the staff had no answer to them, were adopted. A real triumph! But this was not the end of our scheming. Puffed up by this success we pushed on.

My friend Ken Bartlett and I were both organists who tried to make the best of a bad box of wheezing whistles. We saw an opportunity to dispose of this asthmatic heap.

We persuaded the Principal that it was inadvisable to leave the precious instrument in situ during the refurbishment because it was in danger of being damaged by dust. We got him really worried. Then we offered him a way out. We would dismantle the organ ourselves and place the bits carefully in the basement. He was so relieved he gave us the go-ahead.

We started work immediately, before he had a chance to change his mind. The organ was laid to rest with due care and ceremony. A piano was installed in the chapel for the time being. The singing improved. The organ never went back. And the motto: people don’t know what they are missing until they get it.

I now believe that these experiences were an appropriate preparation for the task I am at present undertaking. The placement of pews and the way the singing is accompanied are still hot issues here in Hartland so I am the man for the job. But I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if we, like our colleagues at Cuddesdon, had been trained to be bishops.

Colin Hodgetts is an Ireverend with responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the people of Hartland, including the editor.

October 2003

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Moan Therapy

I’m feeling depressed! I think I’ll cheer myself up by having a good old moan. This is a very British thing to do, moaning. So central to our culture is it that anyone seeking to become a British subject ought to be examined in it.

We need to ensure that the intending citizen can moan about a range of issues, and not just the weather; that they enjoy moaning; that after a good old moan they relax into a mood of contentment. The examiner would also seek to establish that the examinee can make a clear distinction between moaning and complaining.

I take this thing extremely seriously. There is a very real danger that the moan will be swallowed up by the complaint, and a very British way of expressing oneself disappear for ever. Media messages are worrying: the British are getting much better at complaining. As a result there is bound to be a downturn in moaning. I blame Which? magazine and TV consumer programmes.
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Before we go any further we need to check that you and I agree on the distinction between these two behaviours. The moaner is passive, the complainer is active. The moaner does not expect anything to change as a result of her (or his, let me quickly add) moaning. The complainer seeks redress of some real or imagined wrong. That is why the plaintiff in certain civil actions is called the complainant.

You may object that someone complaining of a headache is not seeking redress, and I will reply that what they are up to is either, a) using it as an excuse to get out of doing something they don’t feel like doing, and are therefore being active, or b) are in reality moaning, and the word ‘complain’ is being used loosely, just another example of sloppy English. It’s the teachers I blame! And the parents!

‘Ah!’ You may respond, ‘If “a” is the case then there is an intention to be passive.’ ‘Not on your Nelly’, I reply. ‘They may seek to give this impression, but once you have left for the pub/cinema/bingo hall they will be up to all sorts of nefarious activity.’  Never trust anyone who ‘complains’ of headaches is my advice.

As well as being proficient moaners, citizenship-seekers must also be seekers after truth. Perhaps that is a bit strong. At least they should not be tellers of lies, not the sort of people who fabricate headaches. In the past this has not always been the case. Consider the number of politicians, mainly of the blue persuasion, who are the sons of refugees. If we had insisted that their parents be committed to truth-telling before letting them past Immigration would these sons be so economical with the truth? If yes, then it is obvious that the parents are to blame. As we have not insisted on this commitment it is obvious that the parents are equally to blame.

That I have spent many of my years as a teacher colours not one whit my conviction that parents are to blame. High Anglicans and low evangelicals may assert that original sin is sexually transmitted. The more liberal of us are on the nurture side of the debate. But whichever side you take, it must be blindingly obvious that the parents are to blame, and it requires more than the baptism of infants to put this right.

Another distinction between ‘moan’ and ‘complaint’ is that the former is often accompanied by a sound: ‘a prolonged low inarticulate murmur indicative of mental or physical suffering’ (OED). Says it all, doesn’t it? And Shakespeare appreciated its therapeutic value: ‘Let there bechance him pitifull mischances, To make him mone.’

To be beneficial the true British moan must be pre- or succeeded by such a murmur. Moaning requires a low voice as it is a kind of lamentation. Care needs to be taken to ensure that moaning never descends into whining.

Complaining, on the other hand, is done in a shrill, loud, voice, usually accompanied by some physical action such as finger-jabbing or counter-banging. Blood pressure rises and this can be a threat to health. For your health’s sake you must turn from complaining back to moaning.

Now is a chance to try it for yourself. I shall ask the Editor to leave a space here for you to jot down a moan or two. Not that he ever listens to me! I bet he tells me he has to be economical with the space.

Once you have committed your thoughts to paper then you must articulate them with the full force of a lamentation.

Feel better? Well I’m sure we are all glad we’ve got these things off our chests!

P.S. Contributors to this journal receive no financial remuneration. However, if I have given you cause to moan about Resurgence or its editor then that is reward enough.

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An Elegant Self-Sufficiency

In what now seems like a previous life I spent days/weeks in Pembrokeshire trying to help John Seymour sort out his desk. His life was a complicated juggling act: book- writng, small-holding and speaking; inside, outside and away.

John, the great guru of the back-to-the-landers, many of them armchairers or week-enders, who fed their dreams of exiting the ratrace. They read Practical Self-Sufficiency, watched The Good Life and fantasized about escaping from the tax man, the mortgage man, door-to-door salesmen, traffic queues and the clock to a far-off field where they could sit under their vine and fig tree with a tankard of home brew, a slice of home-baked wholemeal and a hunk of cheese made from the milk of the house Jersey; the children out of sight and mind, building treehouses or searching the stream for little living creatures whose names neither the children nor their parents were quite sure of (and if this could endure long enough the parents would probably become uncertain about the children’s names, too.) In their hands coin of the realm would come to have only historic value.
‘In the old days, before you were born, Daffodil, people used to exchange these little bits of metal for food and clothes. It was called “money” and some people hoarded it but most people borrowed it, large quantities of it.’
‘Did they keep it in sacks or boxes or chests?’
‘No, they never actually saw it. They got a piece of paper from the bank, or loan shark, or mortgage company, telling them it was theirs, but they were never sent it or saw it. When spending money one parted with nothing but a signature.’

But back to John. He came to mind as I was planning our Lent Course, ‘Thought for Food’, for which I was recruiting Satish Kumar who, by the time you read this, will have delivered himself of ‘Slow Food’ to Hartlanders whom he has addressed only once before in the twenty-five years he has lived here. It is no wonder some of them regard him with a dessertspoonful of suspicion and a teaspoon of apprehension.

‘I don’t know about that Satish Kumar’, a local farmer said to me a while ago. ‘He might be a bit of a terrorist. Arter all, he does edit a journal called Insurgence.’ The fact that for many years he milked his Jersey house cow these farmers probably appreciate as cunning cover. Let’s face it, he also started a small school with the likely intention of training recruits for the Badermeinhof. That, or the cultivation of magic mushrooms.

But back to John. I had some weeks previous to the desk-sorting been approached by Canon Norman Motley to become chaplain/warden of the Othona Community centre at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex. Kate and I viewed the place on an inhospitable winter’s day, a collection of nissen and wooden military huts huddled on the edge of the marshes by the Blackwater river. The One Redeeming Feature was the chapel of St Cedd, built in AD 654. The invitation to live here all-the-year round with a small group of likeminded crazies we placed on the back burner. But it was not flammable.

Sitting one day at John’s desk (a phrase that Sullivan might have set) I opened the top drawer on the right and what caught my eye? A postcard of St Cedd’s chapel, a place that was as far Eastward from West Wales as you could get without needing a boat. It was a sign.

So, to cut a short story even shorter, we found ourselves planting trees – the poplars are now over 30 feet tall, the orchard ‘mature’ – milking a Jersey, collecting hen and duck eggs and turning pigs into bacon. We should have given John the design for our smoker to include in one of his books. The dining hut was heated by a woodburning stove. I fitted a metal cupboard over the chimney on the roof and in this we hung our hog hams. We also held competitions to see who could grind the most wheat, from the local farm, in three minutes.

We also fished. The life was caught in words of St Columba, which I turned into a song to sing in the chapel:

Lord, bless us that we bless you,
creator and conservor
of heaven and all its orders,
of land and strand and waters;

that we may search the writings
that give the soul renewal;
that we may read around us
such beauty as will feed us:

That we may find within us
the letters of your loving;
that we may have such living
as any soul will freshen.

At times we kneel to heaven,
at times the psalms are singing,
at times are contemplating
our King, our holy leader.

At times we are delighting
in work that lacks compulsion;
at times we gather seaweed,
at times we go out fishing;

at times we seed and harvest,
at times we feed your creatures,
and feed the poor, our brothers;
at times we sit in silence.

St Columba lived in a community. We were living in community. And that is the only way one can be truly self-sufficient.

February 2004

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An Equal Speaking

Beyond our small patch of pasture and the newly-planted cider apple orchard can be seen the tower of St. Nectan’s, Stoke, the highest in Devon, that of our parish church. It was built as a thank offering and a landmark by Countess Gytha for the preservation of her husband’s life in a tempest at sea. Sometimes called the ‘cathedral of North Devon’, the church is large and quite disproportionate to the number of people who live in the parish.

I enjoy preaching here even though the front pews are so uncomfortable hardly anyone sits in the first nine rows. What I particularly treasure is the absence of a public address system. Mikes are anathema to me. When I was at St. John-at-Hackney and St. Martin-in-the-Fields they were amplification-free, and I like to think they remain so. I suspect that, as even our modest Methodist church has a microphone at the minister’s desk, they will have succumbed.

We took a Japanese visitor to Midnight Mass at Wells Cathedral. Preacher, celebrant, and even lesser luminaries, sported radio mikes. The juxtaposition of medieval masonry and contemporary gizmo was surreal. In my modest anarchic way I saw a window of opportunity for latter-day George Foxes and John Wesleys: bring your own mike, break in on the waveband and present the congregation with an alternative theology. With a bit of technological wizardry we could operate from a central studio and sabotage dozens, nay hundreds, of sermons. If this seems too complicated one could at the least generate feedback.

Foundations poorer than a cathedral and with audio electronic ambitions may have to make do with only one radio mike. Here the congregation is likely to be treated to a novel addition to ritual: Transference of the Mike, a delicate and arcane rite involving pins, wires and straps. It won’t be long before clerical catalogues are offering albs with transmitter pockets, ‘double lined and neatly concealed so that only you will know you are carrying one.’

Why consign the mike to Room 101 you may well ask? I am no Shylock, who can give no reason ‘More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing’ for, unlike him, I can contain my urine ‘when the bagpipe sings i’th’ nose’ and I know why I like cats. I do have my reason.

In primo, it is that, despite manufacturers’ claims, the mike and loudspeakers distort the voice. They may be ultra high frequency but they incorporate filters. When we listen to someone speaking we subconsciously pick up subtleties that tell far more than the words, raw and written, or even read to a mike, do. It is no accident that most classical actors and musicians eschew artificial amplification. Projection is a necessary and prized technique. The effort required to speak to the back row of the balcony energizes the communication.

Secundo, the microphone is anti-democratic. He who holds the talk stick holds power and sway. Hitler could not have harangued hundreds of thousands without artificial aid. You don’t stand a chance on a TV show unless someone hands you the mike. The troublesome voice can easily be switched off. Didn’t John Wesley’s preaching touch many more hearts and lives than that of Billy Graham? Smaller crowds but better communication.

Tertio, it encourages a false tone of intimacy, a schmaltzy wooing and cooing. (‘Input gain control for optimum modulation.’) It has dealt, if not a death blow to oratory, at least a life-threatening one. And I suspect it of being behind the dead prose of modern translations of the bible.

It is a commonplace that The King James version was written to be read aloud, and so its phrases roll off the tongue. I have been reminded of the power of its prose in the reading of a biography of William Tyndale, whose own translation makes up 84% of the King James. Simple phrases such as ‘Axe and it shal be given you. Seke and ye shall fynd. Knocke and it shal be opened unto you’ are clear, a joy to proclaim and a pleasure to remember.

So, for its part in the blanding of biblical prose alone, the mike must go.

You may care to argue, for the other side, that the need to fill large empty spaces led to the development of the clerical voice, the voice that Alan Bennett sent up in his Beyond the Fringe sermon sketch, in which the mountaineer climbs higher and higher, vomiting at the peak. It may well be so, and that is a price to pay. But the need probably led also to the development of plainsong and the intoning of prayers, so gain outweighs loss.

We do not need to make a noise to be listened to. It is in the still small voice that the truth is to be heard. I was reminded of this by an interview with a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet. When they started they were playing to audiences that were noisy and rude. Instead of turning up their own volume, as most other groups did, they turned it down: people had to make an effort to hear. It worked.

The same goes for school. Shouting at unruly kids only adds to the general mayhem. Asking questions in a quiet voice brings down the excitement far more quickly than barking orders like a sergeant-major from a brigade of guards.

Before WW II, French was the language of diplomats, business was conducted in Spanish and any half-decent philosopher, scientist or theologian needed to read German. Now English dominates all these fields, thanks to its promotion by the BBC World Service and Voice of America with their mikes and radio masts. This may seem like progress to native English-speakers but the French (and many others) fear their mother tongue may go the way of Cumbric, Cornish, Manx and Norn.

English is not yet the perfect vehicle for diplomacy. A Russian government official told the BBC that his boss and Tony Blair would be having a ‘brainwashing session’ at the President’s hunting lodge.

The mike has a lot to answer for.

September 2002

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Windows of Opportunity

I do not think of my youth as being that far away. But when I share with today’s students stories of yesterday’s student life they look over my shoulder for a sighting of the Ark. Resurgence readers, I believe, will understand that forty years can pass in the twinkling of an eye, in the squeak of a bat, with the scent of honeysuckle, as yesterday. I feel I still belong to the same world as twenty-year-olds. It is a pity they do not return the compliment.

Though, in many aspects of university life, change has marched faster than progress, few would want to return to a time when, because independence did not come until one was twenty-one, the authorities were in loco parentis and exercised their care with a zeal and strictness that William Blake would have understood.

My reaction to a control/punishment regime may have been unusual. Otherwise more people would have understood why I ran the Small School on completely different principles. On the other hand, few eighteen-year-olds today would tolerate the limits imposed on us. But what form would their reaction take?

We were expected to live in college in our first and third years. It was not long before I was courted by the rebellious and the rakish. I soon appreciated why. I had a ground-floor room. The bars on its window were of wood. The bars on its windows could be removed. Curfew breakers were calling constantly, and as is their nature, in quite unsocial hours.

College doors were locked at 11pm. Female visitors could only be entertained on college premises at the weekend with written permission. Pubs were off-limits. Gowns had to be worn in town. The standard fine for a breach of the rules was £5, two-and-a-half weeks of my spending money. The committed rebel could be sent down. I was prepared to sail close to the wind. I didn’t mind the night visitors, so long as their footprints weren’t left in the flower bed. Rules have always been a challenge to my creative instincts and subversive nature.

Authority puts great trust in the locked door. Sometimes it ignores the unlatched window…
Our lecture rooms were only locked on the night before exams. On one such occasion we got in and removed all the chairs. On another, we took all the cutlery from the dining hall save the teaspoons. These were minor skirmishes, a mild reaction to not being trusted. There was some fun to be had from them, but what really began to fascinate me was the lack of imagination or subtlety in the response.

Though I preferred pranks that were not directed against particular individuals, there were occasional exceptions. One such victim was the Professor of English. As well as his teaching duties he had charge of the library. In the library were several life-size statues. Prof. B. often disappeared at weekends to London, it was assumed for dirty purposes. His room was on the first floor of Canterbury Building, which was a quad and some two hundred yards from the library.

One Sunday I noticed that his bathroom window was not quite shut – a window of opportunity! We lifted a statue from the library, let it into his flat via the front door, and tucked it up in bed. Before we left we shut the bathroom window. The real giggle came not from his shouts of agonized surprise in the early hours of the next morn but in the assumption made by the Authorities that students had acquired a set of college keys. All the locks were changed.

This reaction of the Authorities surprised and intrigued me. I did not expect a knee-jerk from a body of intelligent men. It was obvious that no one had thought through what had happened. They had a hypothesis but they never tested it. The removal of the college bell provided much more material to be mulled over.

Chapel had to be attended three mornings and evenings a week, plus Sundays. Dinner was formal and had to be taken every day. To summon us to these, and to lectures, the college bell was rung. It therefore symbolised the daily round and grind. We would spike it.

So it was that one moonlit night a shadowy, hand-picked crew made their careful way across the roof to the bell-tower. There the bronze beast was liberated from its fastenings, shunted across the slates, lowered to the ground and hidden in the rhododendrons.

Early the next morning the chapel clerk fell into a heap when he pulled the rope. The blood vessels of Authority began to burst. We spread a rumour that the bell had been pinched by students from another place. For a short while it prevailed - until Authority realised that the students in question were not bright enough to undertake such a prank.

Authority upped the stakes and threatened to share the cost of a replacement bell between all the students. Panic among the monetarily challenged, and a witch-hunt began. The comrades kept their cool. A tape recording of the hand-bell that was substituting for its great grandparent was made and played at all times of day and night.

After a suspenseful forty-eight hours a scrappy map went up on the notice board, an X indicating that ‘hear lyeth the treshoor’. Was it true or was it a lie? Authority hesitated: if they sent out an exploratory expedition on a wild bell hunt they would look foolish. It took half-a-day for them to risk it. And lo and behold, there lay the bell!

I was one of those who volunteered to manhandle the beast back to its lair, and thus I heard the Principal opine that it was one of the better pranks played during his time as either a student or a member of staff. Were all their threats a bluff, then? No, the anger had been real enough. This was the bonhomie of relief. As he spoke I was running a different scenario through my mind: What if Authority had completely ignored the loss of the bell?

It was certainly funnier than locking the staff in the library, which I believe was only done because the key was in the door. A lost opportunity: I don’t think any of the demands that could have been made, were made. Unfortunately one lecturer was late and he released his colleagues. The Censor rushed furious into the quad and fined the first five people he saw. This was a travesty of justice. I was on the organ for Evensong. As the staff left the chapel I played the Dead March in Saul and for that I lost my organ exhibition.

I did have female visitors in my room, as my sister reminded me just the other day. She and her friend Theresa came down for the summer ball and I gave them dinner in my room. The meal was interrupted by the entrance of the Censor, who announced that for this breach I would be sent down. The pleadings of my sister were a joy to hear. It was about ten minutes before it was revealed that the ‘Censor’ was a fellow-student.

So perhaps I fool myself when I try to justify antisocial behaviour as a reaction to tight control. Perhaps I am just nasty. No, I prefer the more generous interpretation.
Control and too detailed organization stifle the spirit. I was at a conference where participants were herded like cattle. Before one session I put down my blanket outside the door and two or three others sat down with me to talk. The organizers were irritated: ‘The meeting is about to start, the meeting is started.’ ‘The meeting has already begun’, I replied.

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Screwtape’s Triumph

To mark the 10th anniversary of Tony Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party, Anthony Seldon, a political historian, presented a portrait of the Prime Minister on Channel 4. He identified the two big commitments in Tony’s life: to his wife, Cherie, and to God. The Prime Minister has a passion for social justice that derives from his Christian faith. He is described as a genuinely religious man who has thought deeply about the responsibilities of a Christian in terms of political leadership.

How, then, does this square with the war in Iraq? It squares because he believes the end justifies the means. And that is a misreading of Christianity. Tony Blair is not alone in making this mistake: many have made it before and will again. And because, sometimes, the end is achieved people allow the means to slip from their minds.

Jesus opens his ministry with a ringing declaration, taken from the prophet Isaiah.

‘The spirit of the Lord is on me,
for he has anointed me
to bring the good news to the afflicted.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives,
sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.’

That sounds like a political programme. It is not. As the Catholic theologian Hans Kung has written, ‘(Jesus) does not give the signal to storm the repressive structures, he does not work from either right or left for the fall of government. He waits for God to bring about the cataclysm and proclaims as already decisive the unrestricted, direct world dominion of God himself, to be awaited without violence.’ (On Being a Christian p. 187).

The end does not justify the means for two reasons. Firstly, the end may not be achieved and one is left with only the means. Secondly, even when the end is achieved, the means remain as part of that end. Case 1: The Intelligence agency tortures the prisoner to elicit information. They get nothing useful. There is only the torture. Case 2: The Intelligence agency tortures the prisoner to get information. They are told of an arms cache. They get the arms, but the torture has not gone away.
The removal of Sadam Hussein from power is not a justification for killing anyone. In fact, going to war in Iraq helps justify the terrorists’ use of force. How can you say with a straight face, My killing is justified because it is for a good Christian end; your killing is not justified because it is to promote Islamic fundamentalism?

I do not argue against resisting evil actions, but with moral, not physical force. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are the leaders who most convincingly apply the teachings of Jesus to the social and political spheres. They, like Jesus, do not hesitate to criticise those who wield power ruthlessly. But they do not call for the violent overthrow of such tyrants. Their call is to service and to dialogue, so that there is always the possibility that the tyrant’s heart will be touched. Do not resist the evildoer, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse, pray for those who persecute.

To bring about the transformation of an evil situation we have to take the suffering on ourselves. And we have to use our imaginations. One of the great things about Gandhi was his inventiveness. Who else would have realised that the making of salt from seawater could be such a threat to the British occupiers? We also have to have moral authority. Then we can ask protesters to march, unarmed, on a salt works defended by armed troops. And when these protesters were beaten to the ground then the British, as an American reporter declared, lost all moral authority, just as any moral authority the occupying forces had in Iraq was undermined by the torture of prisoners.

This raises the question, Is it possible to be a politician and true to the teachings of Christ? I cannot say that it is totally impossible but it is certainly extremely difficult.

The Gospel requires an unswerving commitment to truth. That does not accord with secrecy. In their resistance to transparency and openness governments show themselves willing to trade in limited truth when it suits them. ‘I did not tell a lie’, claims the politician. No, but neither did you tell the whole truth.

To progress as a politician requires a certain ruthlessness. You cannot get to the top except on the backs of others. Again you claim that the end justifies the means. Maybe it does. But not in terms of Christian values.
Tony Blair may or may not be a good Prime Minister. Compared with his predecessors he may well be. I am sure he is sincere in religious and spiritual commitment. He is not, however a good advertisement for Christianity. He is one of Screwtape’s triumphs.

June 2004  

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Without Vision We Die

An Ofsted inspector spent a January day at the Small School doing what inspectors presumably always do. In tow he had a civil servant from the Darlington office of the DfES on a ‘see how the other half lives’ exercise. The inspector, a contemporary version of Mr. Jaggers as he appears in David Lean’s film version of Great Expectations, sat in on assembly. By way of introducing him I related an incident concerning Jean Vanier.

I expect that for most Resurgence readers ‘Communauté de L’Arche’ calls to mind the one founded by the great Gandhi disciple, Lanzo del Vasto, situated in the deep south of France. But there is another L’Arche, that of Jean Vanier,the son of a former Governor General of Canada. The community he founded in 1964 for the mentally handicapped and helpers is now a worldwide network of such houses.

Well, the incident in question was a call to Jean Vanier from a sociology student. She and other students wanted to make an appointment to visit the community to find out about the sexual problems of the mentally handicapped. That would be marvellous, replied Jean, because we are very interested in the sexual problems of sociology students.

Unfortunately, like Mr. Jaggers, our inspector ignored the hint and gave nothing away, save the fact that he lived in Somerset and shared a dislike of large schools that try to serve a scattered rural population. So we never met the whole person, only the professional persona. And that reminded me of an essential difference between teaching in a large institution and at the Small School, for in the latter there is nowhere to hide. The teacher who is not prepared to be known as they are will either be ineffective or not last long.

Which is not to say that those whose warts are on display find it easy. But Jean Vanier draws our attention to those among the mentally and physically handicapped who shame us by their openness, by their trust and by their affection. And he reinforces my point:

It is important for people in authority to reveal themselves as they are and share their difficulties and weaknesses. If they hide these, people may see them as an unattainable model. They have to be seen as fallible and human, but at the same time trusting and trying to grow. (‘Community and Growth’ 1979)

There are other wise things that Jean Vanier says that are pertinent to my present situation. One is of the need for leaders to let go at the appropriate time. I have been part of organisations where the leaders hung on for too long. Canon L. John Collins’ inability to distance himself from Christian Action when he resigned as chairman led to its slow demise. Canon Norman Motley, the founder of the Othona Community, nearly committed infanticide. The Rev.George MacLeod was shattered when the community he established on the isle of Iona dispensed with his leadership. But they did and thrived.

So I have always tried to let go of organisations that I’ve set up and/or led. It was therefore with some reluctance that I allowed myself to be sucked back into the Small School. Now that I’m here I hold the fort while others plan the future. It is their future, not mine. I see them reinventing the wheel and worry that they are ignorant or dismissive of tradition.
These traditions remind us that a community didn’t just happen, but was born at a specific moment, that it has perhaps been through some hard times and that what we are living today is the fruit of the work of those who came before us…
We are links in the chain between the past and the future. That future must be part of a wider vision:
…each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the huge and glorious final humanity. (‘Community and Growth’ 1979)

I am saddened to discover an absence of vision, which I believe goes with a general lack of understanding of the spiritual nature of the school. If there is no sense that the school is making a small contribution to something much greater than itself then the school becomes an end in itself. A dead end! My hope is that a teacher or teachers will come forward who, understanding the spiritual foundation, will be willing and able to plug into the past and re-vision the project. Will also be willing to take risks, for without risk there is only sterility and a slow death.

Let me not be misunderstood. By ‘spirituality’ I don’t mean joss sticks and techniques for divining the future. I mean a willingness to be led by the Spirit and a commitment to the Beatitudes or the Eightfold Path or a similar Way. A person thus committed won’t be put off by the low salary, won’t want to get rid of ‘difficult’ pupils, will be open and able to touch the hearts of others.

This description of Wisdom might also be that of the teacher:

For in her there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy,
unique, manifold, subtle,
active, incisive, unpolluted,
lucid, invulnerable, loving the good, keen,
irresistible, beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, free from anxiety,
all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetrating through all spirits
that are intelligent and pure and most subtle.
(Wisdom 7, 22-23.)

Where do we find such a person? If what we are doing is right then such a person will come. Satish and I believe that. However, we have to acknowledge that it is not a faith that is widely shared.

February 2002

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Who is Colin Hodgetts?

This week ‘Concerned of Hartland’ tendered sympathy because I have had to officiate at two cremations and a memorial service ‘when you are supposed to be retired.’ I don’t know where this ‘retirement’ perception has come from. Perhaps a spy has been at our post: my brother-in-law gave me a subscription to The Oldie for Christmas. That must have done it. Then there seems to be the rather odd implication that retirement is a full-time occupation. Colin Hodgetts is a retirement executive. He is too busy being retired that he has little time for anything else.

My publicity machine has been pumping out the message that I have not retired from the race but changed horses and my major activity now is writing music. Perhaps the composition of music comes across as a pleasurable indulgence earned by a life devoted to teaching and various other activities with which I won’t bore you. And this week, instead of doodling on a page of lines grouped in fives with a glass of claret at my elbow and a log fire at my feet, I have had to venture along twenty-five miles of icy road to take my place in the crematorium queue. Real work!

There is the further implication that being a priest is a job. I, a long-time believer in worker-priests, resent that. That aside, why has Satish never described me as a C of E cleric? Perhaps, in the light of the doddery state of the old girl, he feels he is doing me a favour.

Well all this mirror gazing brings me to a favourite story told by my friend Keith Walker, whose wedding I have just conducted, in assembly. For eight years he worked on primary health care projects in India. In order to return home on a visit he arranged for money to be transferred to the State Bank of India. There was one small problem. The money order was made out to the Bombay, not the nearby Madurai branch. There is 1,000 miles between them.

The bank manager had to authorize payment. He examined Keith’s passport and the money order: ‘How do I know that you are the same Keith Walker as named on the money order?’ The passport photo was not enough. Keith explained that he had been working with leprosy sufferers and needed to buy a plane ticket, but to no avail.

‘Is there anyone here in Madurai who knows you and who could come to the bank and identify you?’ Keith was sure he could find someone to vouch for him. Brother James Kimpton, with whom he was working, had also set up a project called Boys’ Town where orphan boys trained in metal and woodwork. They had a shop in Madurai. Brother John, the shop manager, agreed to go with Keith to the bank.

He introduced himself to the manager and said, ‘This is Mr. Keith Walker. He has been doing very valuable health care work in India for many years and I can vouch for him.’
An exasperated bank manager exclaimed to Keith, ‘You don’t seem to understand my problem. I don’t know this man either’’ He indicated that they should leave.
Keith was at a complete loss as to what to do next. He might have to abandon thoughts of returning home. Then, as they walked through the main hall of the bank one of the tellers, a friend of Brother John, called him over. They chatted and explained why they were there. “Give the money order to me. I’ll cash it.” And within five minutes Keith was leaving the bank with the wherewithal to fly home.

Something similar happened to me at Madras airport. To pay for some duty free I handed over my credit card and signed the chit. The assistant looked at the card. ‘This isn’t your signature,’ he challenged. I have had enough to do with Indians to know that there is nothing they love more than to get into high-flown philosophical and theological debates, but this was neither the time nor the place. I walked away with my identity intact and his whisky on the counter.

Such experiences as these have a long history. Keith reminded me that Nasruddhin Hodja had been similarly challenged. The Hodja went into a bank to draw out some money. ‘Can you identify yourself?’ demanded the manager.
The Hodja pulled a mirror out of his pocket and examined the image carefully.
‘That’s me alright!’ he said.

And here is another.

The Hodja was travelling with a caravan on a long journey. So as not to get lost he tied an aubergine to his belt. In that way he would easily be recognized. One night, however, when they were all asleep in the caravanserai, a practical joker removed the aubergine and fixed it to his own belt.
When the Hodja woke up the first thing he saw was this man with the aubergine on his belt. It puzzled him.
‘That is me there,’ he exclaimed. ‘But…who am I, here?’

I know a warning when I see one. Anyone trying to remove my aubergine had better watch out!

Colin Hodgetts is 6’2” and asserts his right to be identified as the Colin Hodgetts who is author of this work in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

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‘Vision’ and the Small School

The issue of ‘Vision’ came up again at yesterday’s meeting of the Small School trustees (21.6.02). A remark of Tina’s, that at the heart of the Small School had been two couples, set me thinking.

For the first few years of the school’s life Satish and I always denied there was a particular philosophy to the Small School. We did this to avoid the endless debates that would have ensued had we decided to write something down and because the philosophy of a school comes from outside the school. The nature of Steiner/Waldorf schools would seem to contradict this. However, if we look closely at Steiner we discover that it is the Christian Community (also founded by Steiner) that is the guardian of the philosophy/vision.

For Inventing a School (1991) something had to be written down, and it was something I concocted. Much of what I wrote has to do with aims and objectives. The philosophical element is supplied by Fritz Schumacher, Vinoba Bhave and an inter-faith working group, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the parents. In any case, what one finds over the years is that parents come and go and therefore the make-up of the parent group is constantly changing. It is the teachers who provide continuity and therefore the teachers who have held the vision.

At the heart of what I had to say was the simple statement that ‘The school exists for its students’. This may seem too obvious to need stating until one realises that in many, if not most, schools decisions are made for the convenience of the teachers or to implement a government policy or to meet some parental requirement, governors’ interest or society goal. So one has to keep reminding staff, parents and trustees that ‘the students always come first’.

The second point is that there is ‘a commitment to the development of the whole person, body, mind and spirit, in all its aspects, creative, practical, intellectual, ethical and emotional.’ This, again, may seem unexceptional were it not that most schools don’t take seriously what it means to address the spirit. This is not something that can be taught. It is something that is caught, and that led to a third important statement: ‘The person of the teacher is more important than the matter taught or the methods used.’ Because no one can inspire others to be better than they are themselves, it is not possible to lay down a vision and expect others to follow it. They have to share it.

Keith and Caroline responded to an advert in Resurgence when working in India. There was no possibility of interviewing them and I appointed them on the basis of their letter which showed quite clearly that they shared our core values. Later Caroline wrote in Inventing a School:
 ‘In the course of our work and our studies connected with it, we began to discern a global perspective to the problems around us. We were convinced that change was necessary, but it became more obvious as time went on that housing the homeless, treating the sick, and other activities directly involved in the relief of suffering, although personally satisfying, were only partial solutions to the problem. We saw that without change in national and global political and economic structures, poverty and inequality continue to exist, and yet as foreigners we had no part to play in political activity in India. The underlying ambivalence of our situation became apparent and we realised that only in our own country did we have a chance of being effective workers for change; and it was at this point that we saw the vacancy at the Small School.’

So we have arrived at another principle: ‘Think global, act local’. In its small way the school is an agent of global change.

‘Our work in India also taught us the importance of the personal dimension: that change is only effected by individuals who have changed. It seems that education offers the best chance of working towards transformation on the personal as well as the global level, in a school which questions accepted norms, especially concerning relationships between its members and the importance of a practical and spiritual dimension in daily life.
‘We were particularly attracted to a school where all are on first-name terms. This convention reminds us of the shared nature of teaching and learning: our experiences in grass-roots training of community workers had showed us the truth of the saying “How can I teach, but to a friend?”’

That is the key to how Caroline and Keith and Julia and I operated. Our homes were always open and pupils were our friends. We remain very close to a number of former pupils. During the time I was Head I did very few things outside the school. When we went to the theatre, opera, a concert or even on holiday, there were usually students with us. Students had first call on our time.

If we come to our teaching ‘as a friend’ then we can be Tolstoy’s teacher:

‘Tolstoy’s teacher is not merely expected to transmit knowledge deemed traditionally worthy, nor even to convey the values of contemporary society. He is not merely a filter for purifying and simplifying a dominant strain of culture. He is rather, a remarkably independent and creative artist who…stimulates the pupil to understand those aspects of culture that he as a teacher deems valuable. The teacher is, then, given and extraordinary degree of independence. It is his judgement that is final and crucial. His freedom is checked, or rather defined by several claims...the claims made by the actual world in which the pupil finds himself and which he must live in successfully after his schooling has ended. His studies must prepare him for the realities of that world. They need not prepare him for a specific vocation or dictate a limited role for him; nor need they provide him with only utilitarian skills which would enable him to cope with the practical problems of life.’

Schumacher also focuses attention on the teacher. He points out that in schools there is an irresolvable tension between ‘freedom’ and ‘discipline and obedience.’ There is no solution, ‘and yet some educators are better than others.’ The problem is transcended by ‘love, empathy, participation mystique, understanding, compassion – these are faculties of a higher order than those required for the implementation of any policy of discipline or of freedom. To mobilise these higher faculties or forces, to have them available not simply as occasional impulses but permanently: that requires a high level of self-awareness, and that makes a great educator.’

Vinoba Bhave, Satish’s teacher, wrote: ‘The goal of education must be freedom from fear…Fearlessness means that we should neither fear anything nor inflict fear on others…The only sufficient basis for such fearlessness is knowledge of the self. This self-knowledge is the foundation of education.’

The vision that the core team, and a small group of parents, shared is a global vision. It is a vision of the world as it could be and the steps that need to be taken to confront poverty and injustice and to live in harmony with nature. It is a commitment, for instance, to reducing consumption. (And that is why low pay wasn’t really a problem.) It is a vision of those who know that unless we look to ourselves and our own lifestyle we can have no influence.

At any one time the majority of parents probably did not share our vision, and certainly not all pupils took it on board, for we were not in the brainwashing business. And that is the way it has to be. For I believe that any attempt to reach consensus is likely to result in a lowest common denominator rather than the highest common factor.

June 2002

Sandal Scandal

After one such sortie into blue-rinse land I was called in by the head of PR and Fundraising to be told that the local group in question had filed a complaint about my visit. I had addressed them wearing sandals! Emma Nicholson (of Nicholson’s gin) the director in question, was herself always impeccably and expensively turned out. My sartorial inelegance was to miff her even more.

I arrived in the SCF office one morning to be asked why I wasn’t at the Royal Festival Hall for the annual backslapping ceremony. Nobody had told me I was required there. An hour later Emma was presenting me to Princess Anne. Not only was I sporting sandals but also jeans and a sweater, and Emma couldn’t hide the sort of face one makes on discovering something nasty in the woodshed. To add injury to insult, I joked with the Princess for twice the time allocated on the clipboard, and Emma’s foot and pencil tapped out her impatience. I have a photo of the encounter somewhere in a box under the bed. Royalty and I face each other smiling, our hands clasped in front of our genitals. Odd!

Emma later became our Conservative MP and with her husband visited the Small School. Whether it was his influence or close-up encounters with party bigwigs that did it – probably both – but she transferred her affections to the Liberal Democrats, a party wedded not only to sandals but also to muesli. There was some soft chuckling here at Cheristow.

I must put in a good word for the now elevated lady. She has since done mighty good work on behalf of the Kurds and others.

I had had another run-in with a Conservative minister over sandals. From time to time the curates of St. Martin-in-the-Fields took services at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. After I had celebrated communion there the Rev. Austen Williams, our Vicar, received a call from the Hon. Quentin Hogg, MP, instructing him not to send them that sandal-wearing priest again.

Many people seem quite bothered by exposed feet. They ask why I don’t wear socks and I usually say that it is because they are unhealthy, which they are. I also reassure them that my feet are not cold, and a few of the more heroic ones accept my invitation to feel their temperature and are surprised.

In a land of shoes and socks the naked foot expresses vulnerability. ‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace’ sings the prophet Isaiah. The naked foot is my constant reminder that I am a witness to the Good News, that I am committed to nonviolence and to peacemaking. The naked foot expresses humility, contact with the earth, with frost, with dew.

When I decided to wear sandals it was as a protection from a tendency to gravitate upwards, towards respectability, towards fame and fortune and to remind me that the place of a witness to the Good News is alongside the poor, the dispossessed, the hungry and the lame.

Life is so generous that it is a constant struggle to live simply. The Greens exhort us to cut down on consumption for the sake of the planet and the future but that is not why I seek simplicity. Nor is it because there is beauty to be found in it, though there is, as those who treasure Shaker furniture know. It is because we are of real use to others only if they have more than we have. It is out of voluntary poverty that the true word is spoken.

Of course it is solely within our shoe shuffling society that socklessness can carry such a meaning. In India and Japan, for instance, sandals pass without remark. In a country where East and West meet there can be an interesting confusion in interpretation. I once was one of a group of clergy who attended a peace conference in Moscow (the British government tried to discourage us and wrote us off as victims of Soviet propaganda). With my long hair, beard and sandals I spelt Western hippy, not a species of which the Soviet authorities were enamoured, and even some of my black and grey clad companions may have been slightly embarrassed by my appearance.

Towards the end of our stay we were invited to dine at the monastery of Zagorsk as guests of the Orthodox Church. I donned the only respectable garment I had, my cassock. Instant transformation! I now looked like a Russian monk, my sandals no problem. The white plastic collars and black stocks and socks of the rest of our party were far more alien to our clerical hosts. However, as the Orthodox Church was merely tolerated I was still a persona hardly grata as far as the conference organisers were concerned.

Somehow I seem to have strayed from footwear to clerical dress. When I was at theological college there was a general reaction against collars and stocks. More appealing was the black shirt and white tie introduced by the Rev. Dr. Alec Vidler, Dean of King’s College, Cambridge. However, after a year in a parish I went back and told my former ordinand colleagues that we should wear dog collars and, by doing so, change the public’s perception of them. But when I experienced shopkeepers serving the clergyman before others in the queue I did a Vicar of Bray-like about turn and opted for incognito. Now when I officiate I wear a white polo neck sweater.  I wear a black one when I play music.

Dress cannot avoid being a public statement. Gandhi’s dhoti of self-spun cotton was a political calling card. I remember the impression Lanza del Vasto (Shantidas) made when he came to the London School of Nonviolence wearing long white woollen robes that he had woven himself from yarn he had spun in Gandhian fashion from the fleece of the community’s sheep that fed on the pastures of La Borie Noble. There was a universality about his appearance. He could have come from almost any country and any past age.

I once shared a workshop with a nicely turned-out voice coach who complemented me on my skills, then complained that I dressed like a deck-chair attendant. I took it as a compliment.

Ultimately, though it is always a statement, dress is unimportant. ‘Do not worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor your body and how you are to clothe it. Surely life means more than food, and the body more than clothing!…And why worry about clothing? Think of the flowers growing in the fields; they do not work or spin; yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his regalia was robed like one of these.’ That is how Matthew reports it in the Sermon on the Mount.

Nevertheless, though I wish it otherwise, it seems that it will always be my feet, with their bits of flaking pink skin, cracked heels and veined ankles, which excite attention and provoke comment. On the rare occasions when I wear socks, in my organ shoes, for instance, that too is remarked on. Is all the world a foot fetishist? Possibly not, for no one yet has tried to kiss them, socked, sandaled or bare.

May 2002

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In the Beginning was the Translation

Dear Reader,

If this column ends up shorter than Nelson’s it’s because I am feeling besieged. Next week I shall be licensed to the parish, see from the service sheet that I am to be presented with a Bible and a Prayer Book and want to make sure that the version of the Bible I’m given is one I want and not another copy of the King James’. So I’m up to my knees in Bibles.

Let me not be misunderstood. I am fond of the King James’ translation. Not so fond of the band of scholar-midwives who pinched most of their material from Tyndale without acknowledgement and who purposely chose what was even then an archaic style. However, it’s not their fault that words have changed their meaning, more reliable texts have been discovered and scholarship has made better sense of some of the obscurer passages.

On the school bookshelf is a large volume entitled ‘The Bible to be Read as Literature’. I am in full favour of it because in English we require the source from which later writers have drawn. But in church, study and at the bedside we need a version that is accurate and can be understood by ordinary pewfodder, one that lay readers won’t stumble over. One that puts sense before sound.

And this is no new requirement. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dozens of new translations appeared. None of them displaced the Authorized Version, a revision of which sold a million copies on its first day in 1885.

But what to go for now? AB, ASV, BBE, CEV, D-RB, ESV, GNB, GSB, JB, Knox, NJB, JBP (NT), KJV, NKJV, 21st Cent. KJV, Mof, NAB, NASB, NEB, NIV, NOAB, Reader’s Digest Bible, REB, RV, RSV, NRSV, Worldwide English, Wycliffe or Young’s Literal Translation?

Even North of the border one is spoilt for choice. Here is the opening paragraph of the Prodigal Son in three versions. Which would you choose (and why)?

1. This, tae, he said tae them: ‘There wis aince a man hed twa sons; and ae day the yung son said til him, “Faither, hie me the faa-shae o your haudin at I hae a richt til.” Sae the faither haufed his haudin atweesh his twa sons.’
2. And he spak: There dwalt a chiel that had twa sons. And the young ane said til his faither, ‘Gie me the bairns’ pairt o gear that will be my due.’ And he bunced aa that he aucht atween them.
3. Aince mair he said til them: ‘There war a chiel had twa sons; and the young ane said til’s faither, “Faither, gie me that pairt o the family walth that sud faa tae me”. Sae noo the faither pairted his guids and gear atween them.

If none of these is easily appreciated without a struggle then let me lighten your load and offer you the ‘Black Vernacular Bible’ of Wolfram and Fasold:
So Jesus tell him, say, ‘This ain’t no jive, this the truth. The onliest way a man gonna get to know God, he got to get born regular and he got to get born from the Holy Spirit…This one got rhythm, man.

I have to admit that ‘sense before sound’ can result in some abysmals, for there are translators who have been cursed with cloth ears. Here is a sample:
The kingdom of heaven is like what happened when a king gave a wedding banquet for his son. (Mt 22.2 CEV) ‘Like what happened’? The KJV has: The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son…an elegant rhythm. But I can live happily with: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding. (NJB)

As an example of a change of meaning, how about this: The Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people (Deut.26.18). In Paul’s letter to Titus we read that Jesus purified unto himself a peculiar people. So there it is, faxed from heaven by God: Jews and Christians are oddballs, crazies, peculiar people. (I certainly never wanted to be thought run-of-the-mill ordinary, but I do prefer ‘extraordinary’ to ‘peculiar’.) Imagine my disappointment on learning that all Paul was telling Titus was that Jesus gave himself to purify a people to be his very own.

 I have some sympathy with the conservatives. They had the AV in school assembly, in Sunday school and in church. It is part of them. But I’m afraid they are not serious traditionalists. Why stop at 1611 when we can go back to 1380? Sothely as a man goynge fer in pilgrimage, clepide his seruauntis, and bitoke to hem his goodis. Puzzled? It is Mat.25.14, and the awful truth is that the Authorised Version makes as much sense to the average teenager as this makes to you, for the daily bible reading in schools was phased out many years ago and half-a-dozen is the most you’ll find in many Sunday schools 

The consequence of all this heart-searching is that I have bought for myself a ‘New Jerusalem Bible’, which is not one that takes the New Jerusalem as its starting point but is a revision of the ‘Jerusalem Bible’. You will find that most of the ‘N’s and ‘R’s in my translation list stand for ‘New’ and ‘Revised’.

Just after the last century’s midpoint one imagines scholarly cells meeting in insalubrious cellars and tackling the text. They emerge clasping their translations tightly to their chests until the work is printed. Every publisher and every denomination has a finger in this profitable pie. The Bible has, after all, been the world’s bestseller (though Harry Potter is probably giving it a run for its money.) They conjure their rabbits from their mortar boards, Canterbury caps, or those book pockets that hang from the sleeves of MA gowns, at roughly the same time. And lo and behold in 1960 we have J.B. Phillips’ New Testament – a personal favourite – and the year after, the ‘New English Bible’. This is followed by the ‘Good News’ and ‘Jerusalem’ bibles in 1966. The ‘New International Version’ appears in 1973 & 8.

Scholars start peeking at their rivals’ work. And they read the reviews. And lo! There came upon them a yearning to fashion an even greater work, and they were like unto the hart that panteth after water brooks (hunted deer seeking refreshing streams). So they returned to the dim gloom of their scholarly hideouts and refashioned the work that was set before them. And all those who had taken to themselves the New English Bible were sorely tempted by the Presses to take unto themselves the Revised English Bible. And the Presses profited greatly. And God saw that by the end of the Millennium his good book had multiplied an thousandfold. And, behold, it was all a right mess and who knoweth what to choose.

In the end I could easily settle for ‘The Bible in 50 Words’. It must be the cheapest option. Might even go for a leather binding.

God made,
Adam bit,
Noah arked,
Abraham split,
Joseph ruled,
Jacob fooled,
bush talked,
Moses balked,
Pharaoh plagued,
people walked,
sea divided,
tablets guided,
promise landed,
Saul freaked,
David peeked,
prophets warned,
Jesus born,
God walked,
love talked,
anger crucified,
hope died.

Love rose,
Spirit flamed,
Word spread,
God remained.

Two more words and we have a one word a week. Just the ticket in this text message age.

June 2003

In the last Resurgence I plagued you with a variety of Bible translations. Sorting through the parish files I have come across another that I have to pass on. It is the Gospel translated into ‘Western English as spoken in Devonshire’ by Henry Baird and published in 1863. It is one of many dialect versions sponsored by Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, nephew of the Emperor.

“An thare voller’d min a girt multetud a peeple vrim Gallilee, an vrim Decapalis, an vrim Juruzlim, an vrim Judaya, an vrim beyind Jaurdin.
An zeein tha multetuds, ha went up intu a mowntin : an wen ha wiz zot, ez daysipuls com’d ontu min :
An ha haupen’d ez mowthe, an tort min, zayin,…”

Well, what did he say? I’ll give you a clue. Eleven verses on we get:

“Ye ur tha zalt a tha aith : bit ef tha zalt ith laust ez zaver, werway shil et be zalted? et ez thencevore gud vur nort, bit ta be cast owt, an be scammil’d under vut a men.
Ye ur tha lite a tha wurdle. A zitty thit ez zot pin a hill cannat be hydid.”

You may need help with pronunciation. ‘a’ is more open than the ‘a’ in ‘fat’. ‘u’ is pronounced like the Scottish ‘oo’ in ‘moon’. ‘ow’ is a dipthong, the French ‘oeu’ as in ‘coeur’ plus the Scottish ‘oo’.

I tell you what. If I start writing sermons in this I’m going to have to change my spellchecker.

Colin Hodgetts is responsible for the spiritual welfare of the parishioners of Hartland, which includes the Editor of Resurgence.

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