Critic Cal

Poetry is what happens to you when you really should be writing essays... I'm rather fond of this one though. Enough to have a go at recording it (full text underneath): CHRISTMAS 2020 Please wait, the host will let you in; The meeting is about to start – You’ve got your Christmas jumper on, A rigid grin, a grudging heart,  A drink that you don’t want in hand, An exit strategy pre-planned. You love the faces on the screen; You’ve loved them, every day since March A little more – and even then You leave them daily in the lurch;  It feels as much as you can do To keep on top of keeping you. And meanwhile all the web-wide world Is page refreshing for a sign Of AstraZeneca’s brainchild, Or one, perhaps, of Pfizer’s line; A saviour in a chilled pipette By which our hopes and fears are met. For now, it’s carols from our doors, And reindeer in the windowpanes That rainbows graced not long before, And charitable food campaigns For jobless households scraping by, As businesses are l...

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” ( John 12 :1-8) CONVENTION Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, And Mary with about a pint of nard At dinnertime, and all the peopl...

“Biblical Womanhood” is a pulse-raising phrase that typically describes a set of prescriptive (and subordinating) gender norms based on particular interpretations of selected portions of scripture. Funnily, those selected portions don’t typically include the accounts of actual Biblical women – many of which make for fascinating / inspiring / disturbing / all-round-complicating reading. When they get read at all, that is.  One of my favourites is that of Tamar, through whose initiative God extends the tribe of Judah , establishes the house of King David and, according to the Christian testament, selects the human ancestry of the Messiah. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus actually goes out of its (patrilinear) way to honour her by name – and yet, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her mentioned in church. Perhaps because we’re stumped for a Sunday School moral-of-the-story (though we have disturbingly little difficulty deriving neat takeaways from the lives of male biblical “heroes” whose ac...

A poem about, among other things, the importance of biblical literacy.             NEVERTHELESS             You warned me to keep quiet.             Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic,             You explained.             My soul depended on it.             Don’t be so hysterical, you said.             There were no actual cages,             And the youngest were already crawling.             Romans 13.             Violence on many sides,             For all have sinned, you emphasised;             And God so loved the world ...             It’s there in black and white.     ...

At the start of the year I wrote about  the alienation of being bombarded by seasonal jollity when (for personal and/or socially conscious reasons) you're really not 'feeling it', nor sure that you should be. Well, in my church tradition the jollity tends to keep on coming – as, for me, does the disconnect...           ORDER OF SERVICE                  Let’s make a joyful noise before the Lord!          Maracas at the ready, girls and boys;          Before we take our seats and Kevin brings a word,          Let’s make a joyful noise.                  Forget fake news; spurn melancholy’s ploys;          My friends, have we not overcome the world?          Then stand together, with triumphant poise!         ...

Recently, my Twitter feed threw up a YouTube nugget that kinda made me want to throw up too. It was a paean to Wayne Grudem , performed – to the tune and choreography of Greased Lightnin' – by a merry band of UCCF volunteer workers at a summer training camp a few years back. For those of you wondering what half the words in that sentence mean: Wayne Grudem is a well- and widely-respected American evangelical theologian who helped found an  organisation  working to maintain the subordination of women (and, perhaps not unrelatedly, openly  endorsed Trump ); UCCF stands for  Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship  and is a UK-based charity overseeing a large network of student Christian Unions; a 'paean' is, as I was pleased to hazard correctly before seeking the assistance of the Internet, "a creative work expressing enthusiastic praise"; and Greased Lightnin'  is a song about a car that will help you to become more manly and to show the ladies w...

Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your dear friend's of ten years back—your dear friend whom you hate now. Look at a file of your sister's! how you clung to each other till you quarrelled about the twenty-pound legacy! Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son who has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or a parcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal, which were sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob—your mistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows, love, promises, confidences, gratitude, how queerly they read after a while! There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction of every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after a certain brief and proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes who advertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their wicked discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fai...

Every Christian in Rightville liked Christmas a lot... But the Liberals, who lived left of Rightville, did NOT! They wanted to swap it for "holiday season"! And Rightvillers knew that they knew the true reason: It wasn't about a desire to be broad; It wasn't to make it so none were ignored; Those Liberals were out to destroy their religion Beginning by banning their bestest tradition! What next? It was surely a slippery slope From “Warm Season’s Greetings!” to loss of all hope. There’d be boys dressed in pink! Girls playing with trucks! And both made to study that “theory” of Chuck’s; While restrooms would sink into free-for-all madness, And teens would know how to use condoms for badness, And most of each hard-work-earned dollar would go Towards helping the lazy die slightly more slow. Now the Trump, in his tower, gazed out on the land Thinking, “How can I make myself EVEN MORE grand?” So he looked down on Rightville, and saw their distress Wit...

No one enters suit justly;       no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies,       they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. They hatch adders' eggs;       they weave the spider's web; he who eats their eggs dies,       and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched. Their webs will not serve as clothing;       men will not cover themselves with what they make. Their works are works of iniquity,       and deeds of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil,       and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;       desolation and destruction are in their highways. The way of peace they do not know,       and there is no...