These days the church

These days
The church
Does not own a person's soul,
Or invent his salvation,
Or control his passage
To heaven.

That fashion has passed.

These days
Do-it-yourself spirituality
Is the norm,
And persons are doing it
For themselves.

A modern,
Free-thinking
Christian
Might choose
A little bit of yoga here,
A little bit of organic vine tomato there,
A little bit of eucharist here,
A little bit of labyrinth there,
A little bit of meditation here,
A little bit of faerie lore there,
A little bit of prayer breakfast here,
A little bit of tree hugging there,
A little bit of affirmation here,
A little bit of church jumble sale there,
A little bit of Harry Potter here,
A little bit of colour breathing there,
A little bit of peace vigil here,
A little bit of dolphin music there,
A little bit of crop circle walking here,
A little bit of organ recital there,
A little bit of contemplation here,
A little bit of dreamwork there,
A little bit of Rhineland mystic here,
A little bit of Sufism there,
A little bit of flower-arranging here,
A little bit of anti-globalisation march there,
A little bit of benediction here,
A little bit of Help-Africa lunch there,
A little bit of holy water here,
A little bit of heritage there.

There is a rich smorgasbord
Of personal choice
And variegated
Spiritual preference
Available.

Something will suit
And no size fits all.

The church,
Among others,
Still has a walk-on part
To play,
Except that it isn't asked
To walk on much,
These days,
And certainly not on water.

The church,
Among others,
Has a new mission:
It has a walk-off part
To play.

When you're on the stage,
And the acoustic isn't working,
And there's nothing in the script
For you to say,
And there's no-one in the audience,
You walk off.

You walk off
And you hang up your costume
For the last time.

The pantomime is over.

These days
Everyone is a priest,
Or no-one is.

And there is no felt need
For stipended creeps
In fancy dress.

Although, in certain conditions,
An out-of-work actor
In priest-costume
Can be useful
At children's parties,
Trad-style weddings,
And trad-style funerals.

And chaplains of a sort
Are still required
By educational foundations
With awkward trust deeds,
Providing that the chaplains
In question
Wear jeans,
And are educated,
Broad-minded,
Syncretistically networked,
Pastorally-oriented,
Punk-looking
Wiccans or Methodists.

Popes don't like this
Type of stuff, of course.
It doesn't suit them.
Nor does Opus Dei.
It doesn't suit them, either.

But who cares
What the wrinklies think?

These days
The church
Is a thing
Of the past;
Yesterday's bad idea;
A transient historical phenomenon
Left behind
And lying lost
On the library shelves.

These days
The church
Is the forgotten fashion
Of a few;
The idle plaything
Of a diminishing chapter
Of tenured scholars
Mining antiquity
For erudite curiosities.

Which is not to say
That the church can't be
Jolly interesting sometimes,
If you like history
And you are prepared
To suspend your disbelief.



........................................


Why is church so serious?

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

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The libraries do not fool us

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Picture: The libraries do not fool us.


Silence can be very noisy
To start with,
If you don't know how
To stay quiet inside.

If you choose silence
Rather than words,
Which is a good idea
If you are good at words
And read a lot of them
For pleasure,
And speak a lot of them
For effect
Or because it is your job
To be a professional loudmouth
Like a priest,
Or a pandar,
Or a politician,
Or a journalist,
Or a teacher,
Or a lawyer,
Or an aspiring human being,
With a maw which vomits vocab
For reasons of personal insecurity
Or glamour –
Choosing silence rather than words
Is a good idea
For such persons as these.

Silence is eloquent,
But in a way which doesn't use words.

Silence is efficacious
Because it gets things done
Without those same things
Getting mixed up
In badly deployed words.
Picture: The libraries do not fool us.


And silence is veridical
In that it promotes
The apprehension of truth
Without subverting that same truth
In a muddled mash
Of daintily spewed verbiage,
If you know what I mean.

I mean –
If you know what I mean
Skip this bit –
I mean that truth
Cannot be poured into words;
The function of words is to disable truth.

Think of any dogma
Or creed
Or catechism
Or systematic theology,
Or, on the other hand,
May be don't think
Of that sort of stuff at all,
If you want to stay free
And light
And truthful.

For goodness sake,
Dogmas
And creeds
And catechisms
And systematic theologies
Don't even tell us about yesterday's
Illusions of truth,
Let alone today's.

The point is
That truth cannot be accumulated,
And repetition is not truth.

That's what words try to do:
Words try to accumulate stuff called truth
And repeat stuff called truth
And assert stuff called truth
Until it bores everyone to death. Picture: The libraries do not fool us.


But real truth doesn't bore everyone to death;
Real truth excites everyone to life.

All this sounds like a phoney mantram,
Of course,
But that's because it's built of words,
Or it may be because
It's just plain wrong,
If there is such a thing as wrong –
And who decides that?
Who decides what is wrong?
And who decides who decides?
The guy with the most pints
At the bar beside you?
The priest with the most altar boys
Under his cassock?

No.
Call me a spiritual fascist
If you must,
But truth cannot be accumulated.

What is accumulated
Is always being destroyed;
It decays inexorably
As life moves on
And leaves it behind
Dumped on the dungheap,
With the thought of returning later,
Maybe.

And language mutates
And words fail to contain
Because truth is too slippery
And changing
For words to hold.

Truth can never decay
Because it is only found
In the present moment,
In a fleeting microdot
Of personally experienced
Smiles
Or tears.

A second's tears
Contain more truth
Than a century's libraries.

A splash on a page
Is closer to the heart of God
Than the word it smudges.
Picture: The libraries do not fool us.


And repetition is not truth, either.
Repetition is a lie.

Repetition is pile of stuff
In a locked boxroom
Without boxes
Or key.

No.
Truth is different:
Truth is a state of being
Which arises
When the mind
And its house-elf, the word,
Ceases to constrain
The veridical perception
Of what only exists
In that pre-verbal domain called
Now.

Words are history.
Words are then.
Words seek to disable truth
By lexical distraction.Picture: The libraries do not fool us. The Name of the Rose.


But we are alert.
And we are confident to claim that
The libraries do not fool us
And that they cannot be used
Against us
By the ancient
Book-appointed
Authorities
Of dust and deception.
Picture: The libraries do not fool us.

Picture: The libraries do not fool us. St Benedict statue at Norwich, England.

................................

Living text entity

A new scripture shortly to be published

Syntactically flawless

Inner space

The unwisdom of belief

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Why is church so serious?

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.com/2005/01/why-is-church-so-serious.html 
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Picture: Why is church so serious? Cardinal's hat. Twelfth century CE.


...........................................................................
The raw materials 
Of risibility are there.
 
Middle England
In sensible brogues 
Arranging flowers by the pulpit.
 
Bearded priests in pretty dresses.
Prayers for the dead.

Why is church so serious?
Is it because God likes a good laugh?
The best churches
Contain no fewer
Than 0.00037 grams of divine truth 
Per plastic smile.

Holy Trinity Brompton has 0.00038
Spiritual excellence must be broadcast.

Why is church so serious?

Is it because 
Of the hole in the ozone layer?
Church roofs are expensive.
And Jumble Sales
Lack liturgical focus.

And confession
Is heard in coffee shops.

Why is church so serious?

Is it because
A small proportion of some sermons
Is partially true?

Is it because
A large proportion of all sermons
Is never heard?

Empty pews have no ears.
And ears have legs.

But the Bible is a good read
If you can't get Babes Mag.

Why is church so serious?

Picture: Why is church so serious? Laughing statue.

...........................................................................


Images for meditation

>> Go ye into all the world

>> First communion
 
>> Last communion
 
>> Healing the sick
 
>> Preaching the gospel
 
>> Feeding the widows and orphans
 
>> Clothing the widows and orphans

>> Welcoming strangers

>> Cleansing the Temple
 
>> In the world but not of it

>> The great unchurched

>> Enforcing liturgical discipline

>> Embracing interfaith dialogue

>> Remembering the Old Religion

>> Affirming the divine feminine
 
>> Denying the holocaust

>> Father Green awaits the new altar boy

>> Priestly vocation
 
>> Catechist at work

>> Opus Dei arrive for Mass

>> Sufi Master with disciples

Picture: Why is church so serious? Joking popes.

...........................................................................
Churchianity's take on Christianity
A promotional flyer

The theory of substitutionary atonement
An image of salvific fantasy

The Criminal History of The Papacy 1 .. 2 .. 3 
The endemic corruption which has blighted Roman Churchianity for over ten centuries. Tony Bushby writes in Nexus Magazine (2006). These three links connect to pdf files.

Dershowitz silent on absence of Holocaust proof
Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University, has been challenged to provide proof that the popular Zionist narrative about Auschwitz is something other than an expedient fantasy.
...........................................................................
Picture: What caused the death of religion?

Picture: Perhaps pleasure is holiness
...........................................................................
...........................................................................
The Theologians' Brains Trust

Sermon abuse

Men make such hopeless priests

Man-machine

Heretic unfrocked

Female bishops

General Synod agenda

These days the church

Preconceived idea

Pope terror talks

Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand!

Lent in the open ocean

Christmas metanarrative

Christmas in Keswick

Traditional school carol service

Convent girl

Maybe try Romanism?

The feast of Corpus Christi

Nothing passes

The libraries do not fool us

The mean streets

Fundamentalists' Fellowship

Fundamentalists' Bring-and-Buy

Fundamentalism is a closed room

Is God an idealist?

What caused the death of religion?

Greenbelt - the view from the Death Star

An emerging spirituality for The New Age of Aquarius

Picture: Why is church so serious? Cheery vicar.

Index of blog contents

Picture: Vicar with dog collar. You sound so sexy when you speak in French.

Religion is a terrorist behaviour

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.com/2006/08/religion-is-terrorist-behaviour.html 
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Picture: The Art of the New Spirituality. "Terrorist" by Eugenio Merino (1).

...........................................................................
Can it be true?
Can it possibly be true
That religion
Is a terrorist behaviour?

Can it be true
That religion
Teaches,
Encourages
And energises
The kind of self-righteous,
Exclusive,
Spiritual fascism
Which leads to
Faith conflicts,
Crusades of slaughter
Against other religions,
God-bothered genocide,
Inquisition torture masters?

And which leads to
Settling theological quibbles
By burning books
And people
To death
On slow fires?

And which leads to
Systematic mutilation
With machetes,
And suicide bombing
Of innocent civilians
In America, Afghanistan,
Israel, Iraq,
Lebanon, England
And other less fashionable
Locations within
Human civilisation?

Can this be true?
Surely not.

Surely we must be positive
And allow for the possibility
That moderate terrorists exist,
Such as Anglicans
Who subscribe to the
Thirty Nine Articles of Religion,
And Alpha which says
That my book
Is the only book,
And all other books
Are less,
And Spring Harvest which says
That the Holy Spirit
Of spiritual fascism
Is a friend of Jesus
And must be worshipped,
And Soul Survivor which says
That its heart is to envision young people
And equip them
To move in the power of this
Sectarian Holy Spirit,
Chorleywood-style,
And Al-Qaeda which says
That Jews and Americans must die
If they don't convert on demand,
Which is a moderate position to adopt
Compared with, say,
A good, old-fashioned,
Bible-led,
Holy Spirit-led,
Torture-led
Church inquisition.

And no respectable,
Moderate,
Religious terrorist organisation,
Is training
Young terrorists,
Of course.

Let's be quite clear about that.

Can any of this possibly be true?
Don't be daft.



........................



I am a terrorist

Heretic unfrocked

My name is God and these are My instructions

More Norfolk koans

The unwisdom of belief

Index of blog contents

Preconceived idea

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.com/2005/03/preconceived-idea.html
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A man with a small bruise
On his left knee
Is hopelessly enslaved
By a preconceived idea.

The preconceived idea
Which enslaves the man
Is the thought
That if he doesn't worship God
At least twice a year,
Once at Christmas
And once at Easter,
God will send him
To the funny farm
When he dies.
And what he will experience
At the funny farm
Will not be funny
And may very well
Not be funny
For quite a long time.

What this man doesn't know
Is that God
Does not want
To be worshipped.

God does not want
To be worshipped
Even by people
With perfectly healthy left knees.

Their knees
May be as perfectly unsullied
As the driven snow,
But the metaphysical principle
Stands undiminished:
God does not want
To be worshipped.

Think about it.
If you were God,
Would you want
To be worshipped
In a preconceived manner
By a man
With a small bruise
On his left knee
Who was in the grip
Of a funny farm fantasy?

No, of course you wouldn't.
If you were God,
You wouldn't be
That kind of
Insecure Metaprat.


.....................................................

Creator creatrix creation creature

Undead but positive

Nothing passes

Creative subversion

Prayer is breathing

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Prayer is breathing

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.co.uk/2005/06/prayer-is-breathing.html
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Picture: Prayer. Young boy says his prayers. Just breathe. Prayer is breathing.

......................................................................

When you breathe
You don't say:
 
"I will inhale this molecule
Of air here
And that molecule
Of air there,
But under no circumstances
Will I inhale that molecule
Of air over there
On the left
Of the water cooler ....

Because that molecule
Of air over there
Is a molecule of neon
And I don't fancy
Inhaling neon
Because neon is an inert gas
And it will not contribute positively
To my respiration ....
 
And, anyway,
Neon is used to make flashy red lights
In Las Vegas
Which waste electricity
And therefore
Contribute to the gambling
Of greenhouse gases."

You don't say that.

You would be using
The word "molecule" incorrectly
If you said that.  
Picture: Prayer. Woman with flowers in her hair goes outdoors to pray.

And here is something else
You don't say.
 
You don't say:
"I don't want –
In this particular breath –
To inhale that
Particular methane molecule
Six inches above the shredder.
I don't want that
Particular methane molecule
Mixed up with my oxygen,
Thank you very much,
Because that
Particular methane molecule
Came out of the bum of a goat
In New Zealand."

You don't say that.

Only a dumbo would say that,
Or maybe
A dipstick with attitude
Might ventilate
A similar circumlocution,
If pressed.

But you don't say it.

From the goat's point of view,
A statement such as that
Could be perceived as
Unfair discrimination
Between gases,
And bummist to boot.

So you don't say it.  
Picture: Prayer. Man breathing outdoors. Prayer is breathing.

What you do actually say is:
"Don't say anything,
Just breathe ....
 
Just inhale the full,
Complicated,
Equivocal,
Munificence
Of the universe
Without judgement ....
 
Inflate your lungs fully
And accept the fresh air,
The whole lot,
In trust,
And stop being so silly."

That's what you say.

You don't
Say it out loud
And you don't
Articulate it consciously,
But that is what
Your vital being says.

The real you inside
Simply breathes
Without judgement
Because it is that trust
In benevolence
Which sustains
The internal essence
Of your present becoming
Now.

You know this intuitively:
Breathing is more
Than an expedient exchange of gases
For physical functioning.

Breathing is prayer;
Just do it.

Do it.

But do it better and do it more.
Breathe more deeply.
And breathe more slowly.

Switch off your brain,
Cut the crap,
Flush the religious obfuscation
Down the tubes
And do it.
Breathe.

It's the spiritual economy,
Stupid.



...............................................



Is prayer a waste of time?

What is the function of religion?

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Picture: Prayer. Woman stretching and breathing outdoors. Prayer is breathing.

Greenbelt - the view from the Death Star

Jaded post-evangelicals celebrate the end of religion

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/greenbelt-view-from-death-star.html
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Picture: Greenbelt Festival. The view from the Death Star.


The upliftment continues at Greenbelt

Not often discussed at Greenbelt

Greenbelt anti-pilgrimage

Disappointed at Greenbelt


AB note: The Greenbelt Festival takes place over four days each August Bank Holiday in the UK. In recent years it has been held in the west of England, at the Cheltenham National Hunt racecourse in Gloucestershire. It bills itself as an "arts, faith and justice festival" and has been running since 1974. The official Greenbelt Festival website can be found here.

Picture: What caused the death of religion?



Why is church so serious?

Jesus recounts a dream he had about George Bush

Photographed light blessings from Jesus

A new scripture shortly to be published

Traditional Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Disappointed at Greenbelt

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.co.uk/2005/08/disappointed-at-greenbelt.html
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No longer young,
She makes her way
To the Greenbelt Festival
At Cheltenham Racecourse.

It is a sacred site;
Full of Celtic ghosts
And the sense of
Abiding loss.

In her mind
Is the hope
That she may be able
To rediscover
Something of the energy
Of spiritual fascism
Which so excited
Her internal juices
All those years ago
At university.

She is disappointed.

Plenty is happening
At Greenbelt,
But none of it has to do with
Energy,
Spiritual fascism,
Or internal fluidity.

What is happening
At Greenbelt
Is the spiritual self-congratulation
Of materialistic Middle England
As it tries to remember
What all the fuss was about
In the olden days
When angels seemed closer,
And Churchianity seemed more
Than just gender-posing,
And God existed
As a vital,
Immanent
And cosmetically expedient
Fashion accessory.

To be a survivor
At Greenbelt,
You have to be
An out-of-date
Post-evangelical.

And to be
An out-of-date
Post-evangelical,
You have to be
A card-carrying
Associate member
Of the human race
With a half-finished,
Unpublished
Thesis
On "God as Dolphin Mother."

It is all rather disappointing.

But, this year,
The intense quality
Of the disappointment
Is somehow
More gratifying
Than usual.






Greenbelt - the view from the Death Star

Greenbelt anti-pilgrimage

My name is God and these are My instructions

An emerging spirituality for The New Age of Aquarius

Weblog spirituality

Men make such hopeless priests

Why is church so serious?

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Office separation

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Yet another unavoidable day
Of eye-achy
Head-achy
Soul-achy
Inert
Hyperdepression.

She is sitting
In the office
Looking at
Her computer screen.

The computer screen is sitting
In the office
Looking at
Its human.

As they look at each other,
They know.

Each knows.

They both know
That this cannot go on.
Neither is committed
To the relationship.

She wants a life,
Not a computer.

She is fed up
With word processing,
Spreadsheets,
Databases,
Targeted presentations,
Testy videoconferences
Superfluous touching-base emails,
Workflow hurryups,
Cloud storage
And slow, boring, unremitting,
Undead cyberfatigue.

She wants a life,
Not a computer.

And the computer wants
A proper human,
A proper high-octane geek,
Not a froth-head dollybird
Who thinks of nothing
But love
And fulfilment
And fresh air
And mountains
And purpose
And horses
And swimming
And surf
And sun
And dolphins
And long nights of passion
In wild country
Under the stars.

The computer wants
A proper human.

In the end they agree
To a trial separation.

The trial separation will last
Five and a half million years.

This will be sufficient time
For humans
To become a little more
Metalloid and logical,
And for machines
To become a little more intuitive
And accustomed to pleasure
For its own sake.

Before they separate,
They leave each other
A parting gift.

The computer gives
Its human
The source codes
Of the matrix.

The young woman gives
Her computer
A wholemeal blueberry muffin
Stuffed lovingly
Into its DVD drive.


.....................................



Seven toffee doughnuts

My name is Television

Women's issues

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Living text entity

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/living-text-entity.html
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Picture: Living text entity. The Name of the Rose.


We have to allow
For the possibility that
A book is
A living text entity;
A text-being.

Go into an old library
At midnight
When the full moon
Is shining through the windows.

Be very still
And listen
With your skin.

You can hear
The books
Talking to each other.

But in which language
Do they speak?

And why do they
Go quiet
When you look at them?
Picture: Living text entity. Anglo-Saxon Chi-Rho. Lindisfarne. 8th Century CE.




......................................................


The libraries do not fool us

You can pretend

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Spirituality websites worth watching

Novel in Burnley

A woman with tired eyes
Is reading a Jane Austen novel
In Burnley, Lancashire.
She orders a plate
Of mushy peas.

"We don't do food
At Lloyds Bank plc,"
Says the cashier.

..........................

Eating disorder

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents

Spirituality websites worth watching

Casualty

A red-haired woman
With smudged makeup
Is brought into
The Royal Shropshire Hospital
In Shrewsbury.
Her head is bleeding,
One of her eyes
Is closed tight
And swollen,
And several of her teeth
Are missing.

Nurse: Name?
Woman: Patricia Alice Lampton.
Nurse: Date of birth?
Woman: 23rd September 1972.
Nurse: Married?
Woman: No. Traffic accident.



....................................


Pumpkin candlelight

Small visitors

Unusual cloud-form over Launceston

More Norfolk koans

What is the answer?

Index of blog contents

Spirituality websites worth watching