Be ye as little children

One of the things about the command to be as little children is that, at least from my perspective, I think I already am. I'm just not a child in the way Christ meant!

Nothing convinces me more of this that the arrival of Lent in the late winter. All I have to do is fast for two measly days, and the rest of the time, I can choose my own penance which might involve fasting, giving things up, doing extra stuff, praying more, or all of the above.

And yet what happens? What happens is that I usually behave like a child who has suddenly gone all floppy because he doesn't want to go where his parent is leading him. Yes, the knees become weak, the head goes back and a grimace alights upon the face. A sort of whinging sound begins, firstly because I have to do something I don't want to do, and then because I'm too naff to do the thing I'm supposed to do, and then something else distracts me ... something else other than what I should actually be focused on. Just like a child ...

I like to comfort myself with the thought that such capacity for standing on the outside of the process is indicative of my being able to master it, by God's grace and if only I make the effort. Perhaps. I was told recently it might also be a sign of burn out!!! Now, that is worrying. The old saying goes Omnis comparatio claudicat: all comparisons limp. In my case, we might say all comparisons go limp and refuse to cooperate. Be ye as little children ... but not like THOSE little children!

Here we are uncovering more of the profound meaning of today's gospel which invites us to wash our faces and not show that we are doing penance. This is not just a case of humility, or of not seeking human reward for what we do; it is also deep psychology. If we want to do some penance - as indeed we must - we'll do it more easily if we put on a brave face. Put a brave face on: the ancient wisdom is the best. And oddly enough, that's exactly the way to make a whinging child cooperate as well: if reason and a slap don't work, try amusing it. There is a capacity for cooperation buried in there somewhere.

A twelvemonth! well; befall what will befall,
I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

Well, perhaps not a twelve month but at least forty days ... with a few days off for good behaviour on a Sunday.

Thus, as a man shod in plimsols joins the road of Compostela, I enter Lent.

Misere mei, Domine, secumdum misericordiam tuam.

B*$%^& B@~:?:

I just heard on The Andrew Marr Show that among the proposals for new laws suggested by their viewers one of the most interesting was that supermarkets be forced to shelve all their goods in alphabetical order. You can see the inspiration behind this. You walk into a supermarket you don't know, and where on earth do you start to shop? You have to go through every aisle - they quite possibly WANT you to go through every aisle - before you find what you're looking for. With the alphabetical system, however, you could dash along to the initial letter of your desired good, and, bingo, the shopping is done and dusted.

'Would you need any other letter than B though?' asked one of the guests on the AM show, and when everyone looked puzzled, he added, 'Beer and bread.' I must say I liked this idea. I know Lent is almost upon us but I couldn't resist playing with the letter 'B' to see exactly what necessities (what I define as necessities), I could come up with under that letter alone. At times, I have been a little bit loose in applying the 'B' rule, but this is my blog, and frankly, what are you going to do about it anyway?

The list is, I think, more than sufficient, to keep a man alive and vaguely happy.


Bacon
Back gammon
Baked Alaska
Balsamic vinegar
Basil
Basmati rice
Beans
Beef
Beer
Benedictine
Blue cheese
Borlotti beans
Bovril
Brandy
Bratwurst
Bread
Brie
Broccoli
Brownies
Brown sauce
Brussels (Sprouts)
Burgundy
Butter

Errr, that'll do. Takers for other letters?

Mirrors within mirrors of mirrors

This Sunday evening I have no doubt millions will tune in to see Piers Morgan interviewing Gordon Brown. The BBC have been playing the killer clip of Brown choking up just ever so slightly as he describes the moment in which his baby girl, aged just ten days, died in his arms. Already debate is raging about whether this is a cynical stunt played by Brown's exhausted media team, an unwise disclosure of private feeling, or a genuine ouverture on Brown's part. I rather think it is hard to tell.

There is no chance on the one hand that the interview is just some kind of sideshow. Brown doesn't have time for that in his current set of predicaments. No doubt the interview will serve all kinds of tactical purposes, not the least of which is to remind us that Brown has suffered just as much as David Cameron in his private life. We mustn't be too mean to him in other words, especially not at the ballot box.

But where does this drive come from for self disclosure? In a media-driven age the prurient British - those visitors at the ballot box - undoubtedly feel they have a right to know these things; indeed, they respond to being fed them by thrashing the waters all the more and yelping delightedly like blubbery seals. We saw as much in the recent John Terry scandal. Public appetite, let us not forget, is one of the images that emerges like a shard of broken glass from this media portrayal of Brown's domestic tragedy.

Brown himself, however, is between the rock of media exposure and the hard place of authenticity. For media exposure, demanded by the consumers of news, demands the authenticity inscribed in unselfconscious conduct; we want to know that 'they' are not hiding anything, or declining to unveil their secrets out of some form of outdated condescension. At the same time, the consumers of news cry foul if that authenticity is not to be found in the suddenly selfconscious victim.

But why? Well, we tell ourselves such authenticity is a sign of sincerity, although we then go off and admire the actor's art at the cinema without a second thought. Perhaps, on the other hand, the demand for authenticity - the demand for the victim to be unselfconscious - also arises because the victim must not be a reminder that the news consumer is in some respects a Peeping Tom. Nobody likes to be shown themselves in the mirror, especially not a mirror provided by a politician we don't like in the first place.

There is the remote possiblity that Brown has sought this opportunity like some venal, self-exploiting twerp (an activity one feels sure will soon become known as 'doing a Jordan'). But I don't think so. He and his team are merely dancing through the hall of mirrors which the media provide - the original reality-TV dance show - in an age where appearance must supply for lack of substance, where impression must stand proxy for judgment, and where we expect our mirrors to show us only what we want to see.

When Brown chokes up on Piers Morgan's show tomorrow night, he will be showing Britain to itself. My advice, therefore, is: don't be distracted in the days to come by the conservative rage over his sincerity or his cynicism. Marvel rather at the collision of appetites - our appetite for prurience, his appetite for power - which splits reflected fame into a prism that dazzles to deceive.

Denn alles fleisch

Have you heard any news about King's College London recently? KCL is one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Nay, it is one of the most distinguished universities in the world. Of all the British institutions that are known across the seas, KCL is high up there on the list.

So, you've heard no news? Me neither. Not, that is, from the mainstream media. The only thing is, last week KCL announced not only that they were making over two hundred redundancies, they compounded the matter by saying that all staff in the Arts and Humanities would have to reapply for their jobs. Everyone but everyone, from lowly teaching fellows, to world-class professors. 'Gizza job' is set to become the order of the day.

So, why haven't we heard a word about this in the mainstream media? I grant you academics are hardly cherished as national treasures. But, we're not all Curry Studies specialists teaching at Thames Valley University, nor are we all writing studies with names like, Gendering the Divide: Dividing the Gender. So why not a word?

I'm not sure I know. Perhaps it is a sign of how low these institutions have fallen in the nation's mind, which is overpowered by crucial issues such as the next Big Brother series or whether John Terry is a fit captain of the England football team. Perhaps it is a symptom of the age-old disrespect in which intellectual pursuits are held in this country, the embarrassment which dictates that English academics can sit in common rooms and be too gêné to talk about anything other than the weekend's sports results. I really cannot say for sure.

What I can say for sure is that university management teams across the country will be watching KCL like hawks to see if they get away with such a slash-and-burn policy. What happens next is anyone's guess.

I have many complaints about modern academia, its vile obeissance in this country to the ridiculous pressure of research assessment exercises, its readiness to swallow tosh, its feudal system which is stricken with favours and nepotistical tendencies.

But, most of the colleagues I work with are men and women of extraordinary ability who have undertaken a profession whose nature is set against the reduction to functionalism and market forces which dominate the rest of the nation's culture. Should these be mown down like grass? I hardly think so.

Denn alles fleisch ist die Gras of course. But while the bankers are making hay? Give me a break.

Losing my religion

I hear this morning that there is a growing campaign to include Heavy Metal Music as a religion at the next census in 2011. Believe it or not - and I suggest you should believe it - some 400,000 people at the last census of 2001 wrote down 'Jedi' as their religion. I understand the statistic gives the Jedi religion some form of official recognition, even though this sudden rush for Jedism is a postmodern joke, rather than a form of spirituality. It is in the nature of statistics not to know the difference.

Or perhaps not. It is in the nature of certain people to consider the menu at McDonald's to be perfectly edible. But is it? Nothing is religious or irreligious but thinking makes it so, as Shakespeare might have written if he had been as clever as the chattering classes. But is it a religion? What is a religion exactly?

But what is more important here is what approval of Heavy Metalism as a religion means for the definition of religion: it means simply that whatever I broadly call my religion is my religion. Some religions demand moral codes, others dress codes, and others still suicide codes; religion, thus understood, is almost about as useful a label in these matters as 'thing'. What, on the other hand, if we class religion as one's most important belief, or the guiding light of one's life? I'm not sure that helps either. That isn't why Jedi was written on the census by nearly half a million people. Going to church doesn't help either, nor any particular belief in an afterlife that separates the good and the bad, nor indeed in any particular kind of God: Sugar-Daddy versus Angry-Lord.

So, what we are facing here is not actually an understanding of religion, but something much broader: a particular understanding of the individual. Religion is whatever I say it is, says the enlightened, autonomous, self-defining particle, or the buffered individual, as Charles Taylor calls him. This thinking has now gone viral within religious organizations themselves. I define what kind of Christian I am going to be, not only within Protestant Christianity where autonomy has always been a factor, but also within Catholicism. I can be anything from a member of Catholics for a Changing Church to a member of the Latin Mass Society. I can consider regular Sunday Mass attendance as fundamentalism, if I wish to.

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And this is one of the things the pope meant last week when he talked to the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales about 'mature debate' excluding dissent. What he meant was that it was about time people both inside and outside the Church stopped behaving like teenagers who want the world to revolve around them, their views, their expectations and definitions. It is about time they stopped behaving like buffered individuals or autonomous 'I's. He perhaps meant it was about time we became attentive to the life the Church initiates us into, if only we would allow it. If I'm not mistaken, he practically suggested we should grow up.

I cannot be categorical about this, but I think when we start losing 'our' religion, and embracing the Church, perhaps we will.

A Salter which has lost its savour

A couple of friends sent me links for the the very silly article posted by Martin Salter, MP for Reading West, on his blog on 2 February. What a model democrat Salter is, opening his article with a joke about men in dresses. This could, one supposes, be applied equally to some Muslims, not to mention some rather butch Scotsmen, but these are constituencies I suspect Salter would not have the nerve to mock.

It would bore all three of us to list Salter's silliness in more than one or two details. I was struck though by his suggestion that the Pope's argument about the Equality Bill contravening natural law is 'code for saying “we want all the benefits of living in a society where religious freedoms are protected, just as long as we don’t have to afford those protections to others.”'. This is what happens when a world-respected, serious-minded scholar is analysed by a blundering philistine. If the pope's words were at all coded, it was in the sense of saying, 'You lot want the vocabulary of natural law but insist on using itas a platform for a Jacobin model of State-protected rights'. My gloss, my gloss.

Salter isn't really worthy of consideration but I must say I was highly amused by one of his arguments. I must quote it in full for all its delicious absurdity:

What the Bill seeks to ensure is that some 22-year-old applying for a job cleaning the windows of Our Lady of the Visitation Church will not automatically be rejected because he might be a fan of The Village People or, Heaven forefend, an out-and-out gay.

So that's what it's about! I hadn't noticed this but apparently Salter's government is moving to stop the oppression of gay window cleaners by homophobic Catholics. How did we not realise? We are all familiar with the recent case of the gay window cleaner drenched in his own water and run out of St Therese of the Little Flower, Little Bimpton. The shameful Poor Claire nuns who pushed a transvestite off those ladders in Throckmoreton just before Christmas have a lot to answer. And after that incident in January when a gay window cleaner was admitted to Nether Wallop Accident and Emergency with a soapy, wet leather stuffed down his left ear, we can understand why the government had to act.

If there is anything more depressing than the prospect of half the MPs in this country beind forced to cough up loot they had prised from the fingers of the tax payer for their Parliamentary Expenses, it is the sight of MPs, of whom Salter is but one example, totally unable to understand their own prejudices, the inner weaknesses of their justifications, and the silliness of their own emotional gut rot.

Done

Right, folks. I'm back from my big deadline, and feeling temporarily dead, as it happens.

Still, the blog will now recommence, and probably more than on Sundays (promises, promises).

But, for tonight, I simply wish you a good evening. It was for me!