and finding this:

That’s “Watchman” (singular), not “Watchmen” (plural) folks!

Not so much Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? as Quis investigatiet ipsos custodes?

Ozymandias, thy name is Sarmiento!

Unique?...

...or ordinary?

In their new film Revolutionary Road, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio play April and Frank Wheeler, an unhappily married couple. The unhappiness, which sooner or later will lead to death and destruction, has its origins in a shocking realisation: April and Frank aren’t special. They are not different, rather they are exactly like everyone else, indistinguishable from the common herd. As April says: “Frank knows what he wants, he found his place, he’s just fine. Married, two kids, it should be enough. It is for him. And he’s right; we were never special or destined for anything at all.”

No wonder April and Frank are driven into a self-destructive mode. This is a fundamentally unorthodox admittance. We live in a society in which everyone is different, everyone is special, like a multinational version of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”. It seems that this is the only way we can bear to live our lives, to think that we are some unique. When the realisation comes that we are just the same, there is no alternative to nihilism.

Today is the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple: Candlemas in the Western Church, Hypapante in the Greek Orthodox church, the day of Encounter with the infant Christ. In Luke’s account we hear how Mary and Joseph went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to perform the necessary rites:

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons.’ Luke 2:22-24

Luke clear the important idea by repeating it three times: “according to the law of Moses”; “as it is written in the law of the Lord”; “according to what is stated in the law of the Lord”. This was the“done” thing, the usual thing, the ordinary thing to do. Mary and Joseph were being conventional. Neither were Simeon and Anna doing anything extraordinary that day either.  As Luke tells us the two spent all their time in the Temple, looking for the consolation of Israel. Luke 2.25

Four people following the ordinary and the customary. And then the extraordinary happens. Simeon sees that this is the moment promised to him by God:

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation”.

Here is the significance of Candlemas: here we see another story of the encounter between the human and the divine, in the meeting of the ordinary and the extraordinary, in the things of this world and the things of heaven. This is the reason why the Orthodox name for the day is such a good one, Hypapante, the day of Encounter. When we encounter Christ on Candlemas we have a chance to recognise that our salvation, our glory and our freedom, will be found in the most ordinary moments of our lives — not because we are extraordinary characters who obviously deserve such wonders, but because we worship a God who loves us so much that he brings all the wonders of the heavens down to us, and gives them to us in the face and love of his Son.

A thousand years ago, a father of the Church described the meaning of Candlemas in this way:

Come to him and be enlightened that you do not so much bear lamps as become them, shining within yourselves and radiating light to your neighbours¹

1. ‘Sermon for Candlemas’ by Guerric of Igny, 1070-1157, in Liturgical sermons Vol 1 Introduction  and translation by monks of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey (Spencer, Mass., Cistercian Publications, 1970)

I don’t intend, therefore, to publish any more from “Kill George” in this forum. This means that the final third of the book, the practical application of the “Kill George” methodology, will have to wait until next summer before readers get their hands on it. Blame the nervousness of the author or blame the necessities of publishing.

This doesn’t mean that, if you are interested in “Kill George”, if my ideas have resonated with you, that “Kill George” has to go completely silent. If you are “clerge”, and live in the UK, and would like me to come and talk to your chapter / deanery / diocesan synod / clergy support group, then I will be very happy to come. (If you don’t live in the UK, and are willing to pay for my travel expenses, then I am also very willing to come to see you). If you follow the publication of learned journals, then a future issue of the George Herbert Journal will see printed a paper which I presented to the international “George Herbert’s Travels” conference, recently held at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (and more on that anon).

In the meantime, until 1 June or we meet, if you feel the weight and oppression of Herbertism, then please do keep in touch. It began as a movement of one. It needn’t continue that way.

Especially when the opportunity means travelling to the US to give a paper on the subject at an international conference!

In October, your 3MinuteTheologian has been invited to deliver a paper: If you meet George Herbert in the road . . . kill him! Herbertism and Contemporary Parish Ministry.

This is the conference:

GEORGE HERBERT’S
LIVING LEGACIES:
TWO CONFERENCES, 2007-2008
AN ATLANTIC WORLD INITIATIVE

Co-Sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
Sarum College, Salisbury, England

More details from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s website.

It has been sometime since the last installment of KGH was posted on 3 Minute Theologian. This has been caused by, amongst other things, Easter, parish life, the demands of a new PhD project, preparing for the Lambeth Conference, Anglican Roots, an exciting project that is still underwraps (but was hinted at by my new best friend, Sam Norton), and vain attempts to get a life.

Having said all that, the next section of Killing George Herbert will be posted beginning on Monday, in smaller, screen-sized chunks (rather than the previous, full-on, chapter-length, 15,000 behemoths). If you want to see in which way a parish priest’s ministry should approximate to a Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix song, join me from Monday.

KGH : Lin-Chi, the Curate and the Anglican Divine

Sorry, whoever you are. Perhaps that wasn’t the sort of information that you want now… but, one day, you will!

For those of you who were patient, thank you.

Rule 1) List three reasons for your blogging.
Rule 2) List these rules.
Rule 3) Tag three others with the thread.

Reasons:

1. “hello world”: no more than the ego-centric attempt to find reassurance that I actually exist as a sentient being outside and beyond the roles allotted to me by job and social status.
2. “hello brain”: it’s an external forum by which I am obliged to think and to articulate something more demanding than “three ways to be a better Christian” and “how do we increase our volunteer numbers? (hmm. note to self: two possible future blog entries)
3. “hello God”: this is what I am thinking, Lord, and this is how I am trying to make sense of your calling of me. Tom Merton had a typewriter in a cabin in the woods. I have WordPress.

So I tag Dave, who’s got far too much on for this sort of thing; Doug who deals with much more elevated ideas than this sort of thing; and Kathryn, who is probably going to have to give up this sort of thing.

(There: did I get it right?)

1. and he wants a beer as well!