These are the days of Miracle & Wonder!

'when we are married'

Last night, struggling to get to sleep, I was noticing that December is pretty much here.  Advent.  Newness, new-life, salvation & all that.

It's funny how (for most of us) it's a winter festival - a festival of light at the darkest time, and of life when all around is bare and empty.  Good theology.

I've been away from my homeland for about 8 weeks now - when I left, Devon was just beginning to lean towards Autumn, although the leaves were all on the trees, the sun was out and the blackberries were still making my country walks slower than otherwise.  South Carolina is just reaching a similar stage now.

How does that feel?  I feel like I've been in stasis for 2 months - I've got married, been on honeymoon, been to California and back, etc.etc. - but no time seems to have elapsed in the world outside.

Yesterday, when we were talking about what we'd be doing once our visa arrives and we can finally come back to Britain and normality, Maria (accidently) said, "Yeah, when we're married we can ...".  That's how it feels - like we've had the ceremony but are yet to actually be married; to actually live as husband and wife.

It's like we're in the Christmas season, but aren't feeling Christmassy.  We are in Advent, but the actually new life hasn't really started yet.

Important Questions!

One of the advantages of living in such an exciting, joined-up world community is that find ng out what everyone else is doing/thinking/saying is pretty easy.  For example, type 'what is' into Google and allow it to suggest a completed questions, and you instantly discover what is most commonly on other people's lips/keyboards.

So here are a selection.  I've put the actual question in bold, the rest is what Google suggests.  Welcome to a world of important questions demanding to be answered.  It's comfortingly peculiar:

Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
Which is the only king in a modern standard pack of cards that doesn't have a moustache?
What are these strawberries doing on my nipples I need them for the fruit salad?
Why can’t I own a Canadian?
Why is there a dead Pakistani on my couch?
Why won't my parakeet eat my diarrhoea?
Who isn't your sister and isn't your brother but is still a child of your mother and father?
Why should you never weigh a hot object?
Will your grandchildren be Jewish?
How could you separate tellurium dioxide from silicon dioxide?
What do snails eat?
Why do Indians smell?
Where is Chuck Norris?
What won't Meatloaf do for love?
Who moved my cheese?

I used to presume that the funny guys at Google put these suggestions in as a joke, but now I'm not so sure.  I think life is weird enough to engender these kind of results.

fed, up to the back teeth

I have had a week of being very impressed with our friends.

At one and a half days' notice, Maria and I headed out to California last Tuesday - it cost us $10 each, the legacy of Star Alliance membership on the behalf of my wife.  Sometimes trans-Atlantic living has nice side-effects.

We stayed within sight of the HOLLYWOOD sign (with Dyball), within sight of a woman walking her pet pig (with cousin Janet's family in Oceanside), and within sight of the Pacific Ocean in the most expensive suburb of America (with Ariel & Chris in La Jolla).

We got into San Diego Zoo for free, renewed treasured old friendships, and got given presents by people we'd never met before.

We met an author and a rock star and a tiger, watched hummingbirds at breakfast-time, never had to so much as take a taxi for all the offers of lifts, and were fed an absolutely ridiculous amount of fantastic food.

In/after all this, the temptation for me is to go, 'Thank you God for looking after us!', and I think that is fine.  But I am of the opinion that the more prescient prayer is something more like, 'Thank you God for making humans like these and bumping us into them.'

Even though they are our friends/family, they didn't have to act like that; they didn't have to drop everything they were doing so as to take us out for milkshakes on the pier.  They chose to (and not grudgingly, either), and that is what impresses me.

Lord's Prayer Paraphrase

Had a go at this yesterday - doesn't seem quite right yet but am still quite pleased:

Our holy and heavenly Father
Come and rule, in us and around us,
So that Your desires for the world come to life.
And keep us alive, with food and with forgiveness,
Helping us to pass on those gifts.
Protect us from temptation,
Support us when we walk in darkness,
And lead us to Yourself;
Forever glorious, majestic and strong.
Always.
And that's the truth.

One Hymn to the Tune of Another

As I mentioned a few months back, I've been working on fitting familiar, singable tunes to unsingable (but lyrically good) hymns.  Here are a few that won't land me with copyright issues!

So, click to listen, right-click to download.  They are AIF files, so quite big ...

Abide With Me

God Moves In A Mysterious Way

O Jesus I Have Promised

The Marvellous Mr Chesterton

[Quotations from the great GK, helpfully arranged into categories to make it easier.]

Religion

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

Philosophy

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. 

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Being Human

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Being Silly

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

The First Armistice Day

The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.

The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.

Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern.

Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ...

And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.

As reported in the Manchester Guardian, 12th November 1919.

A Few Days Late, But Pertinant Nonetheless

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

It is my - or rather, our - wedding tomorrow.

I may not write a whole bundle for the next little while, so for now, please be contented with a very very very cute photo from the last wedding I attended.  Farewell for the present ...