Critic Cal

            THEN                         Later, there would be doctrine.                         After whispers and mayhem;             After dinner in a locked room and a show of hands;             After “mass hallucinations”, private consultations,             Promises and re-commissions;             After sea and sand and sunrise,             And a parting in the clouds.                         After fire falling, filling, overspilling;             Raging and enraging;             After news and bread and bodies breaking.         ...

I recently heard it suggested that church should aspire to be like the butterfly: beautiful and carefree, our days of darkness and enshroudedness past, existing only to reproduce and to bring joy. A lovely image – and I’m sure it resonated with those who needed it. For me, though, it registered a little … partial. There is so much about my Christian journey – raw, real, difficult-but-hope-filled good stuff – that is not described by such an analogy: times of personal struggle and limitation (often, for me, in the form of depression and anxiety) in which my faith is no less real, and God is no less faithful; times of heartache as I learn to lament the brokenness of a world in which there's no getting away from the fact that new creation life is ‘not yet’ as well as ‘now’ . It’s also, if you stretch the metaphor, a little bleak – the existence of a butterfly is famously fleeting, while the Christian hope is of something altogether more enduring. As I pondered this, a different ...

So, I've been writing about the importance of being real, especially within church community  –  real about personal pain, real about the brokenness of the world, real about (and repentant of) the role of Christianity in upholding and reproducing aspects of that brokenness. And I've been reading lots on the subject; our small group study series at the moment, for example, is Brueggemann et al. 's  Psalmist's Cry: Scripts for Embracing Lament , which seeks to lead us into greater openness with ourselves and with one another. And it sounds great, it really does, but I have to confess that I sorta haven't actually made it to any of the sessions, and it kinda might not be entirely accidental – a fact I feel appropriately sheepish about, given that, erm, it mighta been me who recommended the book in the first place. Thing is, thanks and all that for the suggestion, Brueggemann, but it's just not that simple, actually. When you've been hurt in the past and you...

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!         ...

Mr. W and I had the privilege of reading bedtime stories to the children of some friends the other day. The three books we were presented with were quite charming – beautiful illustrations, gently wholesome messaging (friendship, courage, the joy of reading, and the importance of keeping libraries open) and, best of all, one of them rhymed. Only, no joke, of the twelve or so characters across the books none were female, with the passing exception of somebody's unnamed mother. *Sigh*. In conversation about the new Star Wars (which I haven't seen yet), I heard it suggested that there were 'too many women'. So, I went and, with the help of IMDB and key stage 3 level maths, I found out that, of the entire cast, 25% were female, while of the top 12 characters, 40% were. Granted, headcount may or may not be a good proxy for screentime, but still: 'too many', as too often (see, e.g., research about perceived and actual speaker ratios), meant 'a larger mino...

Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day,         or like vinegar poured on a wound,         is one who sings songs to a heavy heart. ( Proverbs 25 :20) A particularly low point of the particularly dark advent just gone was finding myself in the middle of a particularly jolly Christmas carol knees-up at one of the bigger, shinier, more musically-polished churches in my local area. Don't get me wrong; it was an excellent evening on all objective counts. There was dancing, and whooping, and banjos, and mulled wine, and affable friends of friends I don't get to see very often. Only, to me, this was all so much coat theft and vinegar the way I was feeling, and I shivered and winced my way through just enough of the service to justify taking up a much-sought-after seat before heading for the quiet and solitude of my comfortingly un-festive house. I've more than  adequately documented my annual set-to with the season already. Pa...

[Edited to add (31/03/2020): Two and a bit years since writing this, my unexpectedly drawn-out relationship with university has now, finally, for the time being at least, come to an end. But that part of the story is for another day.] I wrote recently about my  university days  – lessons learned (and unlearned), people met, struggles faced (or fled). Except of course, in spite of my undergraduate malaise, those days haven't technically finished yet ... I've just moved from one university to another, switched fields, raised my qualification level, and meandered recklessly into perpetual postdoctoralism. Still, change has this way of happening around me and at me in spite of my best efforts to avoid it. And this season is one of endings and new beginnings in the group where I work – including talk of an en masse removal from the uni building we've been based in since before I joined to some off-site offices just down the road. In nostalgic tribute, here is a poem –...