Final Curtain Call

What was it about that week?  In one week alone we lost some incredibly talented, gifted people from the entertainment world.  Somewhere a celestial timer went off which acts as an uncomfortable reminder to all of us that time is short: don’t waste a minute!  So a sad farewell to:

Frank Deasey.  I know you might be scratching your head over him but you are probably familiar with some of his work.  A gifted playwright, he penned the award winning finale for Prime Suspect amongst many other things.  Some of you will know him if you watched The Passion, first screened on channel four and last year on BBC.  Filmed in five half hour slots, it depicts Jesus’ last week as he  sets his face towards Calvary.  Frank wrote it while having to deal with his first bout of cancer four and a half years ago.  He said ‘I poured myself into The Passion identifying with its themes of suffering and redemption’.  He died aged forty nine of liver cancer.

Though sadly he hadn’t been on our TV’s for a while,  who could forget Keith Floyd?  Bow tie, glass of wine in hand, one for the dish, half a dozen for the road.  He really seemed like an old fashioned roué with an eye for the girls, chatting up the French housewife whose kitchen he would be cooking in even though she looked like Dame Edna.  The programme would end with her clearly not quite hating the English as much as when it started.  He made cooking fun and really had a thing about fish which is always a challenge for most of us cooks if we’re being honest.  Will you ever be able to hear The Stranglers again without thinking of him?  He died aged sixty five.

Predator* one of my all time favourite films came out in 1987.  It’s a winning combination, Arnie and a camouflaged alien in a jungle!  Anyway the point is as a result I missed the advent of  Dirty Dancing, a movie that has spawned an industry so vast including a TV series, a stage production and a computer game, I wonder that governments don’t actually invite script writers to run the country.  Without doubt it was the making of Patrick Swayze as Johnny Castle the dance instructor.  Ghost nailed him as the funny, charming yet vulnerable leading man though he was nearly upstaged by Demi Moore’s funky haircut.  He died aged forty seven.

Lots of us I’m afraid are old enough to remember the songs, If I had a hammer, Where have all the flowers gone?  Leaving on a jet plane and the inimitable, rumour laden Puff the magic dragon. Peter Paul and Mary, two blokes with beards and a beautiful blonde, were launched as a super folk group in a coffee house in Greenwich Village in 1961.  Their songs and voices became intrinsically linked  with the anti war and civil rights movements of the sixties.  There were reunions and other songs and albums along the way but they were probably best know and loved for the enduring anthems of their early days.  The beautiful blonde, Mary Travers died aged seventy two.

Way before The Sweeney there was Z Cars.  It might seem a bit black and white and lacking in forensics and stab vests but back then it was radical.  Up till 1962 our perceived image of the British bobby was George Dixon;  kindly, fatherly, more inclined to clip you round the ear than aim a Taser gun at you.  Then along came Troy Kennedy Martin who wrote fast paced scripts with believable situations and proper regional accents, a first for the BBC and mighty successful it was.  He wrote The Italian job which will be remembered forever for putting Noel Coward and Benny Hill in a film together but more importantly for the immortal line, You were only meant to blow the ****** doors off!  Later came the BAFTA winning eco- thriller Edge of Darkness in1985 that explored the nuclear industry and secret intelligence, the kind of thing Dan Brown wishes he could write.  I implore you if you’ve never seen it, get the box set.  It still has the power to haunt after all these years later.   Troy Kennedy Martin died aged seventy seven.

Yet for all their impressive legacy I’m still reminded that ultimately, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of God stands forever.  All the clever words fall away eventually except the genius words of God, the legacy that matters most to us in this world and the next one.

*  The other one is Predator vs Aliens

New Wine and water, water everywhere

I haven’t thought about War of the Worlds for years (let’s draw a veil over that Tom Cruise version) but I was reminded of the text about envious eyes and plans being slowly and surely drawn during our week at New Wine. I know what you’re thinking, that wasn’t quite what you were expecting to hear seeing as we were at a Christian conference and envy not quite being the order of the day and all that. However at the time it was raining Old Testament style* and for us huddled under a micron of nylon, well the caravaners were looking a bit too dry and smug for my liking. I could have been mistaken, I may have been hallucinating as it had been raining for 16 solid hours but I could have sworn the laughing and joking and hot chocolate drinking were coming only from those with the foresight to bring a house on wheels. The rest of us seemed to be reliving the best of Tiswas.**

So, New Wine. It was a first for the three intrepid families from St. Matthew’s that pitched up (did you see what I did there, pitched up) at the Shepton Mallett site. It’s not actually a camp site but the grounds for the Royal Bath and West Show. As a result amenities are extremely basic: approx sixty loos between 12,000 (you do the maths) and half a dozen showers are available. But there is something liberating about living in such spartan conditions, it’s one of the things I love about holidays. I’ve left all my clutter behind, as a result even my thoughts seem more streamlined or at least that’s what I tell myself when my only decision is a Feast or a Cornetto.

Of the St. Matthew’s families that went, we were the ones unfamiliar with the way of the tent but with help and what came to be the obligatory downpour, the tent was erected and the kettle was on.

We quickly got into a routine, the cooking was shared. It’s amazing what you can produce for ten people on two gas rings: having said that, we won’t be eating rice again for about a year!

We all met for worship in the mornings then a choice of sessions and workshops held mid morning and after lunch, then we congregated for the evening meetings. It sounds terribly busy but it was all optional. There’s also a day off for going out and about in nearby Wells or further afield for the adventurous.

I did get to some of the sessions and they were thought provoking and funny and sometimes incredibly moving. Ironically I got rejected from the Rejecting Rejection session (oversubscribed) and felt like steaming straight into Managing Anger only I bumped into Mike and we went to the market place for coffee and our damp clothes to gently steam in the heat. It beats tumble drying.

What we enjoyed was the novelty of sitting together in the evenings, eating, talking and laughing and sharing the day; fellowship at its best.

I think I can speak on behalf of the others when I say I think we enjoyed singing our worship most of all. I can’t really do justice trying to describe what it feels like to sing with thousands of other Christians expressing our passion for Jesus and giving God the glory: well maybe I can, I think it felt like a tiny piece of heaven.

* A lot.

** You’ll either get this or you won’t.

For information about New Wine visit the website, bookings start in September 2009 for the 2010 summer conference.

For the lowdown on What you Mustn’t Forget at any Cost Whilst Camping email Rector’s Wife

For soggy New Wine photo experience visit Emily Humphrey’s Face Book page!

Where were you when they landed on the moon?

I can remember exactly what I was doing the day they were preparing to land on the moon.  My mum had to call the doctor out as I had a raging throat infection.  Hard to remember a time when doctors made house calls; they’ve gone forever  now in the manner of Green Shield stamps, Spangles and Simon Dee.

We had all been watching the extraordinary events unfolding before our eyes, would men really walk on the moon?  As the doorbell rang, my mum  snapped off the television lest the doctor think we were all time wasters and shirkers after all he was a professional.  Thankfully he took in the scene with a glance: my dad still in the ‘viewing’ position, my brother and I with crestfallen faces, the cathode ray tube still hot enough to toast something.  Besides,  he clearly had no intention of missing it himself.  Diplomatically he said it was history in the making and we children (nice touch!) should be witnessing it.  My dad had the TV on in one movement, the moon landing happened and (more importantly!) I was given a course of antibiotics.

For a while the only impact it had on me was an enthusiasm for science fiction as opposed to fact.   2001: A Space Odyssey produced so much CO2 from the pontificating amongst my aficionado friends that Kyoto might have got in touch;  had it been around then.

Forty years on we are still contemplating the enormity of what happened (and I do believe it did despite the conspiracy theorists though I’ll admit Capricorn One is a highly entertaining film).  In an age where they had problems building reliable washing machines, a primitive craft took men to the moon and brought them back.  Not only primitive but downright flimsy as though it were collaborative effort between NASA and Blue Peter.

The men who went to the moon seemed to find it difficult to translate what they had experienced into cohesive expression.  It was the astronauts with Christian beliefs or at least with some real sense of God, knowing their own words to be  hopelessly inadequate who turned to the Bible for inspiration.    Apollo 8  in 1968 was the first manned mission to escape earth’s gravitational field.   As a result it was the first time anyone had a chance to view our world from the perspective of another planet.   The  astronauts timed the live broadcast to coincide with a full view of planet earth in all its luminous beauty hanging against the vast blackness of space.  Their response was to give God the glory, taking it in turns to read the creation story from Genesis.

Buzz Aldrin on his return journey from the moon contemplating the amazing sight of our small blue planet was reminded of the words from Psalm 8, When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him……’  I can only say Amen to that.

For more mind blowing information about God the ‘Star Breather’, I recommend How Great is our God, one of a series of DVDs by Louie Giglio, pastor/evangelist Passion Conferences.