In 1945 the American Military Occupation in Japan invited the distinguished conductor Richard Franko Goldman to visit the country and conduct some highly skilled Japanese orchestras. At first rehearsal he began to conduct the orchestra in Beethoven’s “Egmont Overture”. After five minutes he stopped the rehearsal, horrified. “What was the matter?” asked a later colleague. “They were just playing the notes.”¹

It’s an interesting idea. Following the score accurately and skilfully isn’t enough. To produce music-in-sound worthy of the music-on-paper something more is required. For Goldman what was missing in his technically adept Japanese bands was a tradition of interpretation: “I know the score says you have to play these notes, but to make music, you have to play the notes in this way.”

I’m sure there is some parallel here with the atheist “interpreters” of the Scriptural and Theological inheritances of Christianity: just look at the lower reaches of the comments in the Guardian’s Comment is Free Faith blogs— “This is the plain meaning of the words. Isn’t it ridiculous?”

Just playing the notes does not compensate for the tradition of interpretation being missing. Just reading the words doesn’t work if you have no idea how the words are to be performed.

1. The anecdote in related in H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: The Years of ‘The Creation’, 1796-1800, Haydn: Chronicles and Works 5 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977). p. 396 [↩]

It’s not often that the Acknowledgements page of a book brings one up short, but the first line of John Kiser’s The Monks of Tibhirine¹ had that effect on me:

Like Trappist monks, writers do their real work alone, but their efforts are sustained and bear fruit only with the help and support of others.

It immediately wonder if the vocation of Trappist monks, as seen by Kiser, can be extended to all Christians:

Like writers, Christians do their real work alone, but their efforts are sustained and bear fruit only with the help and support of others.

And, if this is so, what is the “real work” of the Christian?

1. John Kiser, The Monks of Tibhirine : faith, love, and terror in Algeria (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003). [↩]

Actually, the question is not so much about the Ordinariate as about the legal advice prepared for the next meeting of General Synod, and placed on the intertubes here.

Commendably clear (and uncompromising), the basic tenor of the piece is “No… you can’t” when it comes to questions of property, office, decision-making processes, legal title and so on. However there is one interesting contradiction within its paras, which is only a contradiction because I don’t know enough canon law:

In the section Will church buildings transfer to the Ordinariate? there is this explanation

it is a general principle of law that -even if the trusts do not expressly require it – where a charity is established for Church of England purposes, only members of the Church of England should act as its trustees. Thus those who leave the Church of England to join the Roman Catholic Church are no longer eligible to remain as trustees of any such charity. The vacancies which their departure creates stand to be filled, in the usual way by new trustees who are members of the Church of England.

Fair enough. If the charity / trust is for the Church of England you have to be part of the Church of England to run it. Then again, in the section Who will care for the parishioners if clergy leave the Church of England? there seems to be another definition of “member”:

As one aspect of its established status, the Church of England relates to its ‘parishioners’, rather than simply to its ‘members’. Its ministry is open to all comers, whether they are on its church electoral rolls or otherwise.

Note the “scare quotes” around ‘members’ in that sentence. The Church of England does not have ‘members’ as such: everyone in the country is able to access the pastoral care and the governance of the Church, unless…

Well, unless what? What is the difference between membership in the first para and ‘membership’ in the second? Is it communicate status? Is it canonical obedience? Is it being listed on an electoral roll? Is it being on the coffee rota?

This has, historically, been one of the strengths of the established church, a blurred and movable boundary. The Church of England is the liminal church par excellence. Does GS Misc 979 indicate the beginnings of the hardening of those boundaries?

A suggestion from the new Team Rector of most of Essex:

1. Go to Wikipedia & hit random. The first article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to quotationspage.com & hit random quotes. The last 4 or 5 words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”. The 3rd picture no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.

And this is my random band and its random album (I like to think it will  be our “difficult” third album)

Today an email from Amazon, noting my purchasing pattern, and based upon the purchasing patterns of other discerning consumers, suggesting a book I might like to buy.

Rowan Williams and careers advice? There’s a neat combination!