For some years, my father made a habit of using me as a tame book reviewer. For a Christmas present he'd give me a book that he'd heard some buzz about, but wasn't convinced enough to invest his own time in. Then, based on my verdict, he'd decide whether or not to add it to his own reading list.
The process introduced me to some splendid books. I first encountered Philip Pullman and Iain Pears that way. But it was, as you'd expect, hit and miss: there were some serious turkeys in the Christmas mix.
So it was that one year, on my way to New Zealand for my then-annual New Year visit, I found myself saddled with an exceptionally bad 500-page hardback potboiler. I forget what it was - it had ghosts, I remember - but I didn't feel like carrying it home, so I 'regifted' it to my now-brother-in-law, whom we'll call Ben.
This Christmas, Ben got his revenge.
Dan Brown's most recent opus, The Lost Symbol, is a book so bad that I feel the need to recalibrate the bottom end of my scale. This undigested ramble around subjects that the author either doesn't begin to understand or, worse, simply chooses to misrepresent, runs to some 700 pages in paperback. (It could have been done in 300, tops, and it would still have been atrocious but less repetitive. Presumably Brown's publisher specified a wordcount.) Warning just in case you're planning to read this tosh for yourself: from this point on, I will be spoiling like milk in the sun.
Summary: a mysterious villain believes that 'ancient wisdom' guarded by the Freemasons would enable him to become a god, and sets out to force our hero to uncover the Masons' deepest secret.
Spoiler: it's a bible. Yes, that's right - the unspeakable secret that billionaire Freemasons are prepared to lay down their own, their families', and each others' lives to protect - is the most readily-available book in the Western world. If only our villain had thought to check in his hotel drawer, we could all have been spared this whole tedious taradiddle.
And if you think that's silly, just wait until you find out why the CIA is involved.
Along the way, we get introduced to the wonderful world of 'noetic science'. 'Noetics' - loosely speaking, Greek for 'bullshit' - is a label invented in the 1970s to make new-age mysticism sound scientific. In Brown's hands, it becomes a top-secret research institute that has conclusively proved the existence of multiple gods, the power of prayer, the weight of the soul and the length of a piece of string, through rigorous scientific experimental processes that are too dull to be explained even in this interminable pile of filler.
(Some of Brown's fans claim that the details are omitted because they're too technical. But based on the available evidence, it seems more likely that Brown simply neither knows nor cares what a 'scientific experiment' is.)
Science, then, is treated with a level of contempt seldom found outside a Bible Belt school board. It would be nice to report that Brown's other strand, mysticism, fares better. But here again, the author clearly despises his subject as much as his audience.
The hero spends much time lambasting others for taking metaphors literally. Yet Brown himself is agonisingly literal-minded. The idea of 'ancient wisdom' here becomes 'the Ancient Mysteries' - some sort of cosmic cheat sheet, well known to The Ancients, that can transform him who understands it into a god. (After all, when was the last time you left home without dropping a quick libation to Pythagoras?) And when Jesus says 'The works that I do shall [ye] do also; and greater works than these shall [ye] do', in Brown's world this means that we can all cure cancer by wishing hard enough. The mundane fact that proper science (as opposed to 'noetics') now routinely heals the sick, makes the lame to walk and the blind to see on a scale undreamt-of in Jesus' day - doesn't seem to have dawned on him.
I remember, as a teenager, talking ideas like these through with my schoolfriends and fellow students. And I don't believe my circle of friends was particularly elevated. In Dan Brown's world, these sophomoric meanderings become profound wisdom to be uncovered, to much gasping, by the most intellectual elite of the Ivy League.
Maybe Brown was stoned while he wrote. That would explain the prose style, but it's not much of an excuse.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Monday, May 23, 2011
Conclusive proof that I'm not Elect
The more I read about the Rapture, the dumber it gets.
We all know by now that the latest prediction, by some engineer-turned-numerologist, didn't happen - thus bearing out the predictions of the great majority of both Christians and non-Christians alike. But the last I heard of the prediction itself was that it set not only the date, but the precise time of the event: 6:00 p.m., wherever you happened to be.
Thus it would strike Tonga first, then roll westward across New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Asia, Europe, and finally sweep across America and Hawaii, ending up in Samoa 24 hours after it began.
I'm not clear whether it was supposed to be guided by 'official' time (so that whole timezones would be struck at once), or real astronomical time, so that it would roll steadily westwards at constant rate of approximately 1000mph (at the equator). If official time, then I wonder how long it would take for governments in all points west of New Zealand to hastily amend their own timezones? If astronomical time, then why would it begin at the International Date Line? - I would have pegged Jerusalem as the obvious starting point.
This is what happens when engineers get hold of holy scripture. They (we) are ferociously literal-minded people (Osama bin Laden was educated first as an engineer, before the CIA trained him to be a terrorist).
There's something about a certain type of religious fantasy that appeals to people who believe in "working things out". Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic bilgewater, describes himself as "... raised by a crossword-puzzling, poetic father and an anagramming, word-loving, Latin-knowing, grammarian Mother".
When you look at a crossword, you can be reasonably sure that there is a solution. And when you look at the world as something designed by a higher intelligence, it's very tempting to see it in the same terms - as a puzzle, with clues inserted for those with eyes to see. And if you get your predictions wrong, that's just like getting a 'x' from God - it doesn't mean your whole approach is flawed, just that you've made a mistake somewhere.
For people who think like this, the idea that there are no clues, there is no plan, there is nothing to be worked out - strikes at the heart of their belief.
We all know by now that the latest prediction, by some engineer-turned-numerologist, didn't happen - thus bearing out the predictions of the great majority of both Christians and non-Christians alike. But the last I heard of the prediction itself was that it set not only the date, but the precise time of the event: 6:00 p.m., wherever you happened to be.
Thus it would strike Tonga first, then roll westward across New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Asia, Europe, and finally sweep across America and Hawaii, ending up in Samoa 24 hours after it began.
I'm not clear whether it was supposed to be guided by 'official' time (so that whole timezones would be struck at once), or real astronomical time, so that it would roll steadily westwards at constant rate of approximately 1000mph (at the equator). If official time, then I wonder how long it would take for governments in all points west of New Zealand to hastily amend their own timezones? If astronomical time, then why would it begin at the International Date Line? - I would have pegged Jerusalem as the obvious starting point.
This is what happens when engineers get hold of holy scripture. They (we) are ferociously literal-minded people (Osama bin Laden was educated first as an engineer, before the CIA trained him to be a terrorist).
There's something about a certain type of religious fantasy that appeals to people who believe in "working things out". Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic bilgewater, describes himself as "... raised by a crossword-puzzling, poetic father and an anagramming, word-loving, Latin-knowing, grammarian Mother".
When you look at a crossword, you can be reasonably sure that there is a solution. And when you look at the world as something designed by a higher intelligence, it's very tempting to see it in the same terms - as a puzzle, with clues inserted for those with eyes to see. And if you get your predictions wrong, that's just like getting a 'x' from God - it doesn't mean your whole approach is flawed, just that you've made a mistake somewhere.
For people who think like this, the idea that there are no clues, there is no plan, there is nothing to be worked out - strikes at the heart of their belief.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Trust me, I'm a blogger
Apparently, the pope doesn't approve of the Twilight series of books and movies. The Vatican feels it's morally unhealthy for millions of teenage girls to be lusting after soulless monsters.
The only person I know who's seen the latest movie agrees that His Holiness has a point. Vampires have always had erotic undertones, from Dracula to Buffy, but at least they had the decency to remain undertones and subplots in an Epic Tale of Heroic Resistance to Ancient Supernatural Evil. Whereas Twilight, from what I hear, has abandoned most everything but the sex.
Of course, vanishingly few teenage girls are likely to care what some decrepit crossdresser thinks of their favourite soft-porn fix. The pope still carries some influence, but not as much as he'd probably like. Which brings me to today's ramble.
There was a report on Slashdot the other day of a survey that said that more than one-third of employees surveyed (in Canary Wharf and Wall Street) would sell confidential customer data, if the price was right. Of course the penalties for that sort of thing are pretty stiff, and it's unlikely they'd ever be offered enough to offset those. But it's still preying on my mind.
It seems to me that there's been a sharp drop in trust. And with trust goes loyalty.
It's not so much that, once, we would have "trusted" bankers to be honest. Really we had no choice. Bankers - like butchers, bakers, priests, auto mechanics, lawyers, computer programmers, farmers, manufacturers of everything from airliners to zip fasteners - most everyone, in fact - did their work, or at least the important bits of it, behind firmly closed, opaque and soundproof doors. Even journalists, those apostles of openness and transparency, kept their own work to themselves.
Now all that has changed.
Take itemised billing. We got into the habit of checking our bills. And occasionally there would be a mistake - not often, but it seemed often enough to make it worth the trouble. Banks and credit cards led the way, followed by phone companies, shops, restaurants, professional services, hotels... slowly but surely, we reached the point where nobody just says "That'll be four hundred and seventeen dollars thirty-two, please" any more. We get itemised bills... and we're expected, nay, actively encouraged to check them.
The Internet has spread this 'doublecheck' attitude to all walks of life. Now you're considered a chump if you believe a news report, without cross-checking. You're supposed to check prices before shopping for anything that costs more than groceries. Check reviews of consumer goods, movies, hotels. Follow every link. What we get then is a barrel of conflicting reports. And none of them is authoritative, because what we've done now is to reject the very idea of authority. We don't trust anyone to tell us "the truth".
All of which is just the way we thought we wanted it. We're all economically rational beings in pursuit of the perfect information that will enable us to make the optimum decisions about how to use our resources. We're all smart enough to make our own decisions - aren't we?
But now we don't expect the truth, most people have given up even the pretence. Politicians and corporations openly talk about "spinning". Journalists increasingly disclaim responsibility for the truth of what they say. With the notable exception of FOX News, most media make some effort or pretence to tell "the truth" - but the best they ever manage, the best they can ever manage, is what we've learned to call "spin": a single view of "the truth", which may make perfect sense within itself, yet still look entirely different when seen from a different angle.
And so the "perfect information" that, economic theory says, we need to make our decisions, is more elusive than ever. The people qualified to make decisions are the ones who not only have, but also understand, all this information. Authority figures. The very people whose advice we no longer trust.
Even this could work, in theory. Instead of letting the professionals get on with their work, we watch them with the intensity of a child watching an ice-cream cone being filled. Unfortunately, also like the child, we have only a very superficial understanding of what the cone is being filled with. This doesn't matter to the child, because she trusts the ice-cream vendor...
What really screws us up is, as always, human nature. When someone says to you "I don't trust you, I'll be watching your every move", what's your natural reaction? Do you think of the person as a friend, one of us, someone you want to help? Or is there a part of you that starts to think: how much can I get away with, can they really tell what I'm doing anyway, damn' know-it-all prodnose...
When you treat someone as your enemy, over time, they'll start to think of themselves that way.
And yet it seems that, increasingly, that's the expectation for how we should treat one another. Employers monitor their employees' activities; and worse, that's increasingly seen as "reasonable". School-age children are told to include references and citations in their work - an undreamt-of requirement in my day, until I reached university. Parents are supposed to monitor their kids, not just outdoors, but increasingly in school, on the bus, on the Internet, you name it. In the UK now, you need to be registered on a central database if you want to work anywhere near children. In the USA, I'm told, you need to show photo ID to enter a government building.
I was listening to a BBC podcast recently, which talked about the policing of political demonstrations. Protesters complained about the practice of "kettling" - corralling people in a limited area and not letting them leave for a certain time - a practice that, not infrequently, scoops up and seriously inconveniences innocent passers-by. Then there's the practice of police systematically photographing demonstrators (try to photograph a cop, on the other hand, and you stand a good chance of being arrested on the spot).
The police superintendent wheeled out to defend the Met talked about the "small minority" of "troublemakers", whom, apparently, the police can't distinguish from the eternal "law-abiding majority". And so, he concluded, the fuzz have no choice but to treat everyone as a potential terrorist.
That officer, I thought, was missing the point in the same way I've been talking about here. By casting "police" as "us" and "protesters" as "them", the police have made their job a hundred times harder. Police are supposed to see all law-abiding people as "us"; only criminals are "them". If they didn't treat every protester as a criminal - an enemy - then maybe the protesters themselves would be more inclined to help the cops do their job.
Mistrust leads to resentment. Resentment leads to hostility. Hostility leads to enmity. The pursuit of economic rationality has led us into a deeply dysfunctional world, one in which everyone really is our enemy.
Somehow, we need to rebuild trust.
A good starting point might be to rethink what we mean by "trust".
If someone lies to us, and we know they're lying to us, does that mean we shouldn't trust them?
Catholics are familiar with this concept. They've long since accepted that the fairy-tales told in the Bible are not "true" in the strict sense of being literal descriptions of actual events as they happened. But that doesn't matter. What actually happened to a bunch of ancient Jews is not important to us, now, today: what matters is how we live our lives and bear ourselves to God, and the stories in the Bible (they believe) are the best guide to how we should do that. "Truth" is immaterial - only "faith" matters. That's what our sceptical age has forgotten.
The only person I know who's seen the latest movie agrees that His Holiness has a point. Vampires have always had erotic undertones, from Dracula to Buffy, but at least they had the decency to remain undertones and subplots in an Epic Tale of Heroic Resistance to Ancient Supernatural Evil. Whereas Twilight, from what I hear, has abandoned most everything but the sex.
Of course, vanishingly few teenage girls are likely to care what some decrepit crossdresser thinks of their favourite soft-porn fix. The pope still carries some influence, but not as much as he'd probably like. Which brings me to today's ramble.
There was a report on Slashdot the other day of a survey that said that more than one-third of employees surveyed (in Canary Wharf and Wall Street) would sell confidential customer data, if the price was right. Of course the penalties for that sort of thing are pretty stiff, and it's unlikely they'd ever be offered enough to offset those. But it's still preying on my mind.
It seems to me that there's been a sharp drop in trust. And with trust goes loyalty.
It's not so much that, once, we would have "trusted" bankers to be honest. Really we had no choice. Bankers - like butchers, bakers, priests, auto mechanics, lawyers, computer programmers, farmers, manufacturers of everything from airliners to zip fasteners - most everyone, in fact - did their work, or at least the important bits of it, behind firmly closed, opaque and soundproof doors. Even journalists, those apostles of openness and transparency, kept their own work to themselves.
Now all that has changed.
Take itemised billing. We got into the habit of checking our bills. And occasionally there would be a mistake - not often, but it seemed often enough to make it worth the trouble. Banks and credit cards led the way, followed by phone companies, shops, restaurants, professional services, hotels... slowly but surely, we reached the point where nobody just says "That'll be four hundred and seventeen dollars thirty-two, please" any more. We get itemised bills... and we're expected, nay, actively encouraged to check them.
The Internet has spread this 'doublecheck' attitude to all walks of life. Now you're considered a chump if you believe a news report, without cross-checking. You're supposed to check prices before shopping for anything that costs more than groceries. Check reviews of consumer goods, movies, hotels. Follow every link. What we get then is a barrel of conflicting reports. And none of them is authoritative, because what we've done now is to reject the very idea of authority. We don't trust anyone to tell us "the truth".
All of which is just the way we thought we wanted it. We're all economically rational beings in pursuit of the perfect information that will enable us to make the optimum decisions about how to use our resources. We're all smart enough to make our own decisions - aren't we?
But now we don't expect the truth, most people have given up even the pretence. Politicians and corporations openly talk about "spinning". Journalists increasingly disclaim responsibility for the truth of what they say. With the notable exception of FOX News, most media make some effort or pretence to tell "the truth" - but the best they ever manage, the best they can ever manage, is what we've learned to call "spin": a single view of "the truth", which may make perfect sense within itself, yet still look entirely different when seen from a different angle.
And so the "perfect information" that, economic theory says, we need to make our decisions, is more elusive than ever. The people qualified to make decisions are the ones who not only have, but also understand, all this information. Authority figures. The very people whose advice we no longer trust.
Even this could work, in theory. Instead of letting the professionals get on with their work, we watch them with the intensity of a child watching an ice-cream cone being filled. Unfortunately, also like the child, we have only a very superficial understanding of what the cone is being filled with. This doesn't matter to the child, because she trusts the ice-cream vendor...
What really screws us up is, as always, human nature. When someone says to you "I don't trust you, I'll be watching your every move", what's your natural reaction? Do you think of the person as a friend, one of us, someone you want to help? Or is there a part of you that starts to think: how much can I get away with, can they really tell what I'm doing anyway, damn' know-it-all prodnose...
When you treat someone as your enemy, over time, they'll start to think of themselves that way.
And yet it seems that, increasingly, that's the expectation for how we should treat one another. Employers monitor their employees' activities; and worse, that's increasingly seen as "reasonable". School-age children are told to include references and citations in their work - an undreamt-of requirement in my day, until I reached university. Parents are supposed to monitor their kids, not just outdoors, but increasingly in school, on the bus, on the Internet, you name it. In the UK now, you need to be registered on a central database if you want to work anywhere near children. In the USA, I'm told, you need to show photo ID to enter a government building.
I was listening to a BBC podcast recently, which talked about the policing of political demonstrations. Protesters complained about the practice of "kettling" - corralling people in a limited area and not letting them leave for a certain time - a practice that, not infrequently, scoops up and seriously inconveniences innocent passers-by. Then there's the practice of police systematically photographing demonstrators (try to photograph a cop, on the other hand, and you stand a good chance of being arrested on the spot).
The police superintendent wheeled out to defend the Met talked about the "small minority" of "troublemakers", whom, apparently, the police can't distinguish from the eternal "law-abiding majority". And so, he concluded, the fuzz have no choice but to treat everyone as a potential terrorist.
That officer, I thought, was missing the point in the same way I've been talking about here. By casting "police" as "us" and "protesters" as "them", the police have made their job a hundred times harder. Police are supposed to see all law-abiding people as "us"; only criminals are "them". If they didn't treat every protester as a criminal - an enemy - then maybe the protesters themselves would be more inclined to help the cops do their job.
Mistrust leads to resentment. Resentment leads to hostility. Hostility leads to enmity. The pursuit of economic rationality has led us into a deeply dysfunctional world, one in which everyone really is our enemy.
Somehow, we need to rebuild trust.
A good starting point might be to rethink what we mean by "trust".
If someone lies to us, and we know they're lying to us, does that mean we shouldn't trust them?
"What are you thinking about?"There are times we choose to accept the lie, knowning full well what it is, because we trust the liar.
"Oh, nothing."
Catholics are familiar with this concept. They've long since accepted that the fairy-tales told in the Bible are not "true" in the strict sense of being literal descriptions of actual events as they happened. But that doesn't matter. What actually happened to a bunch of ancient Jews is not important to us, now, today: what matters is how we live our lives and bear ourselves to God, and the stories in the Bible (they believe) are the best guide to how we should do that. "Truth" is immaterial - only "faith" matters. That's what our sceptical age has forgotten.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Fruit and nuts
Priests and prophets have never got along.
Ever since Moses came down from the mountain to find Aaron cavorting in front of an ornate bookend, every prophet has made it his business to condemn the priests of his own time. And the priests have returned the favour. A prophet is basically a heretic with a following.
Since Christ's day, the term "prophet" has been out of favour in Christendom. Instead we've had various kinds of "reformers", many of whom have also been condemned by the church of their day. The rules are reasonably clear. You can have all the private communion you want with God, but your preaching and argument has to be grounded firmly and solely in scripture. Those who want to give their personal revelations a comparable status, generally have to split completely from mainstream Christianity. (Like Islam, or Mormonism.)
Sometimes it can be hard to tell, at a glance, on which side of the dividing line a given Holy Figure stands.
Brian Tamaki - or Bishop Brian Tamaki, as he calls himself - is the founder and leader of the ominously-named Destiny Church. It's a vaguely Pentecostal organisation, with branches in New Zealand and Australia. Tamaki preaches a type of prosperity theology, and accordingly lives the high life as a demonstration of his own righteousness.
Yesterday, he was in the news for conducting a ceremony in which 700 "spiritual sons" swore personal fealty to him and subscribed to a 1300-word manifesto specifying how they must conduct themselves towards him at all times.
Now, some people have been calling Destiny a cult for some time. Yesterday the Herald sat on the fence: the ludicrous Garth George broke out the c-word, but the more measured journalists and editorial writers refrained from comment. TV3 did a fine hatchet-job. Today, Destiny is complaining that TV3's anonymous commentator "misrepresented" the church.
I heard part of that report (I was cooking at the time), and it strikes me that the things TV3 is accused of misrepresenting pale in comparison to what I heard Tamaki saying in his own words.
Tamaki claims equivalence to respectable religions ("If we are a cult then the Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists and the Pentecostals are all cults as well").
And I'm disappointed to see that a surprising number of supposedly intelligent atheists are willing to let him get away with that. Editing the Herald, for instance, points out that it's not in the business of criticising random nutcases (fair enough), but then goes on to grant Tamaki the equivalence he craves: "The old saying goes that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. A similar sort of thing could be said about religion: a 'valid church' is a cult with fancy robes and the favour of journalists." The lunatic-Libertarian Not PC makes the same mistake: "He's not doing anything that hasn’t been done before by other religious leaders".
Now, that's a line that could only have been written by someone who not only has no understanding of religion, but also doesn't really believe that there is anything to understand. I guess it just goes to show how un-seriously religion is taken nowadays.
Because what Tamaki claims goes far, far beyond what any of those religions claims:
There is no wiggle-room there. No interpretation, no reference to a primary source. It's a direct, unarguable claim to know the mind of God. Even the much-mocked Doctrine of Papal Infallibility doesn't give that kind of authority to any one person.
Catholics and Presbyterians and Methodists and Baptists and Pentecostalists - all claim to communicate with God, but none identify with Him. That claim - private revelation that trumps anything you know or think you know about God - puts Tamaki beyond priesthood and firmly into the "prophet" category.
Couple that with people swearing personal loyalty to him - not to the office of the bishop, but to Brian Tamaki personally - and I'd say the difference between "church" and "cult", in this case at least, is pretty clear-cut.
Ever since Moses came down from the mountain to find Aaron cavorting in front of an ornate bookend, every prophet has made it his business to condemn the priests of his own time. And the priests have returned the favour. A prophet is basically a heretic with a following.
Since Christ's day, the term "prophet" has been out of favour in Christendom. Instead we've had various kinds of "reformers", many of whom have also been condemned by the church of their day. The rules are reasonably clear. You can have all the private communion you want with God, but your preaching and argument has to be grounded firmly and solely in scripture. Those who want to give their personal revelations a comparable status, generally have to split completely from mainstream Christianity. (Like Islam, or Mormonism.)
Sometimes it can be hard to tell, at a glance, on which side of the dividing line a given Holy Figure stands.
Brian Tamaki - or Bishop Brian Tamaki, as he calls himself - is the founder and leader of the ominously-named Destiny Church. It's a vaguely Pentecostal organisation, with branches in New Zealand and Australia. Tamaki preaches a type of prosperity theology, and accordingly lives the high life as a demonstration of his own righteousness.
Yesterday, he was in the news for conducting a ceremony in which 700 "spiritual sons" swore personal fealty to him and subscribed to a 1300-word manifesto specifying how they must conduct themselves towards him at all times.
Now, some people have been calling Destiny a cult for some time. Yesterday the Herald sat on the fence: the ludicrous Garth George broke out the c-word, but the more measured journalists and editorial writers refrained from comment. TV3 did a fine hatchet-job. Today, Destiny is complaining that TV3's anonymous commentator "misrepresented" the church.
I heard part of that report (I was cooking at the time), and it strikes me that the things TV3 is accused of misrepresenting pale in comparison to what I heard Tamaki saying in his own words.
Tamaki claims equivalence to respectable religions ("If we are a cult then the Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists and the Pentecostals are all cults as well").
And I'm disappointed to see that a surprising number of supposedly intelligent atheists are willing to let him get away with that. Editing the Herald, for instance, points out that it's not in the business of criticising random nutcases (fair enough), but then goes on to grant Tamaki the equivalence he craves: "The old saying goes that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. A similar sort of thing could be said about religion: a 'valid church' is a cult with fancy robes and the favour of journalists." The lunatic-Libertarian Not PC makes the same mistake: "He's not doing anything that hasn’t been done before by other religious leaders".
Now, that's a line that could only have been written by someone who not only has no understanding of religion, but also doesn't really believe that there is anything to understand. I guess it just goes to show how un-seriously religion is taken nowadays.
Because what Tamaki claims goes far, far beyond what any of those religions claims:
"What [God] loves, I love. He loves people, he hates the world. I hate the world."Look at that claim for a moment.
There is no wiggle-room there. No interpretation, no reference to a primary source. It's a direct, unarguable claim to know the mind of God. Even the much-mocked Doctrine of Papal Infallibility doesn't give that kind of authority to any one person.
Catholics and Presbyterians and Methodists and Baptists and Pentecostalists - all claim to communicate with God, but none identify with Him. That claim - private revelation that trumps anything you know or think you know about God - puts Tamaki beyond priesthood and firmly into the "prophet" category.
Couple that with people swearing personal loyalty to him - not to the office of the bishop, but to Brian Tamaki personally - and I'd say the difference between "church" and "cult", in this case at least, is pretty clear-cut.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Responsibility
I see Gordon Brown has issued "an apology" to Alan Turing, for the persecution he suffered at the hands of the British government.
That's all nice and peachy, but it does raise the question: "What exactly is an apology for?" It's a bit late for Turing, who's been pushing up daisies this half-century or more. Gordon Brown was less than three years old when Turing died, which makes his personal complicity a bit tenuous, and his contrition a bit - contrived. None of the officials who had anything to do with his case are still alive - or if they are, they're understandably keeping their heads down.
Such belated apologies are all the rage lately. When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, practically the first thing he did was to apologise for Britain's actions in the Irish potato blight. The Australian prime minister apologised for the treatment of aborigines; the Japanese government issued an apology to the "comfort women" of those parts of Asia occupied during the war; Pope John Paul II apologised for many of the past crimes committed in the name of the Catholic Church, with particular reference to women, "other Christians" and Jews. Last year, the Church of England issued an apology to Charles Darwin, and earlier this year, the US Congress apologised for slavery.
These apologies vary in coherence and usefulness. The Pope's statement was admirably clear as to its goal ("We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours [Jews] to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood") - but vague as to exactly what he thought he was apologising for.
The Japanese and Australian apologies have been different in that at least some of the victims of their actions are still alive, and the governments have actually made token gestures towards restitution. It would be going too far to call them "sincere", but they at least seem to have some meaning.
The American apology over slavery, it seems to me, is simply incoherent. Since Congress now represents all Americans, black and white, it follows that part of the nation was apologising to itself. It may express regret, but by "apologising", it seems to me that the US government is implicitly saying "we, a white nation, have done wrong". It would make more sense for Georgia to apologise to the Cherokee over the Trail of Tears - since both the state of Georgia and the Cherokee nation still exist as distinct entities in their own right - but that would inevitably open a whole can of worms about all the Indian nations: treaties broken, wars and war crimes on both sides throughout the 19th century.
Tony Blair's apology over Ireland made more sense: "Ireland" is still a recognisable entitiy, and Blair was the legitimate, linear successor of Lord Russell. However, the timing made it clear that the driving need was not for absolution, but to be seen to make a concession for the sake of peace in Northern Ireland. It was based squarely on the needs of present-day politics, not historical understanding.
The Church of England, for its part, was mostly interested in diverting attention from its internal struggles over gay clergy. The Darwin apology was part smokescreen, part weapon against its own fundamentalists - by reminding them that the Church had erred in the past by being too strict, not the opposite.
And Gordon Brown's is similar. In the wake of the furore over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Turing apology serves several purposes. It creates some mostly-good press; it subtly reminds the western world in general, and America in particular, that Britain has its own priorities and sense of justice; and it reminds them that there was a time, within living memory, when the whole of the western world - America included - had reason to be very glad of that sense.
Otherwise, it makes little sense. Turing's persecution was not something the government of the day set out to do wilfully or spitefully: in 1952, anti-homosexual attitudes were deeply entrenched in practically all levels of society. Turing was not singled out by an enemy, but prosecuted, quite routinely, by the legal system. It's not the government that owes him an apology: it's the British people. The logical person to apologise to him, on behalf of us all, would be the queen. Not Gordon Brown.
Nor is Brown foreswearing the practice that led to Turing's plight: basing laws solely on public morality, not public welfare. On the contrary, he has presided over a considerable expansion of laws banning things on the basis of nothing more tangible than public disgust.
I firmly believe that this blurring of distinctions between roles - between people, state, and different layers of government - is the cause of most of what's wrong in our world.
Take the al-Megrahi case, for instance. Whether he was guilty or not, he was clearly a scapegoat for his country. We pretended that he alone was responsible for Lockerbie, because we could punish him and then move on with commerce. That's why he was greeted as a hero in his own country, and rightly so. He was a hero - a sacrifice on behalf of his country. That should surely earn him some glory on his return.
And his release - the British and Scots governments alike find it convenient to pretend that this was a purely Scottish legal decision, with no political interference. This is of course garbage - both governments clearly interfered for all they were worth - but by pretending it was "just the normal course of Scottish justice", they both disclaim responsibility, and thus avoid embarrassing questions. It's a trick that successive British governments have used to great effect. Unpopular policies are blamed on Europe, or America, or the World Trade Organization, or some treaty or other. More often than not this is pure smoke; the policy is the government's own.
And even if it isn't, the decision to implement it in this damn' silly way - is.
That's all nice and peachy, but it does raise the question: "What exactly is an apology for?" It's a bit late for Turing, who's been pushing up daisies this half-century or more. Gordon Brown was less than three years old when Turing died, which makes his personal complicity a bit tenuous, and his contrition a bit - contrived. None of the officials who had anything to do with his case are still alive - or if they are, they're understandably keeping their heads down.
Such belated apologies are all the rage lately. When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, practically the first thing he did was to apologise for Britain's actions in the Irish potato blight. The Australian prime minister apologised for the treatment of aborigines; the Japanese government issued an apology to the "comfort women" of those parts of Asia occupied during the war; Pope John Paul II apologised for many of the past crimes committed in the name of the Catholic Church, with particular reference to women, "other Christians" and Jews. Last year, the Church of England issued an apology to Charles Darwin, and earlier this year, the US Congress apologised for slavery.
These apologies vary in coherence and usefulness. The Pope's statement was admirably clear as to its goal ("We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours [Jews] to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood") - but vague as to exactly what he thought he was apologising for.
The Japanese and Australian apologies have been different in that at least some of the victims of their actions are still alive, and the governments have actually made token gestures towards restitution. It would be going too far to call them "sincere", but they at least seem to have some meaning.
The American apology over slavery, it seems to me, is simply incoherent. Since Congress now represents all Americans, black and white, it follows that part of the nation was apologising to itself. It may express regret, but by "apologising", it seems to me that the US government is implicitly saying "we, a white nation, have done wrong". It would make more sense for Georgia to apologise to the Cherokee over the Trail of Tears - since both the state of Georgia and the Cherokee nation still exist as distinct entities in their own right - but that would inevitably open a whole can of worms about all the Indian nations: treaties broken, wars and war crimes on both sides throughout the 19th century.
Tony Blair's apology over Ireland made more sense: "Ireland" is still a recognisable entitiy, and Blair was the legitimate, linear successor of Lord Russell. However, the timing made it clear that the driving need was not for absolution, but to be seen to make a concession for the sake of peace in Northern Ireland. It was based squarely on the needs of present-day politics, not historical understanding.
The Church of England, for its part, was mostly interested in diverting attention from its internal struggles over gay clergy. The Darwin apology was part smokescreen, part weapon against its own fundamentalists - by reminding them that the Church had erred in the past by being too strict, not the opposite.
And Gordon Brown's is similar. In the wake of the furore over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Turing apology serves several purposes. It creates some mostly-good press; it subtly reminds the western world in general, and America in particular, that Britain has its own priorities and sense of justice; and it reminds them that there was a time, within living memory, when the whole of the western world - America included - had reason to be very glad of that sense.
Otherwise, it makes little sense. Turing's persecution was not something the government of the day set out to do wilfully or spitefully: in 1952, anti-homosexual attitudes were deeply entrenched in practically all levels of society. Turing was not singled out by an enemy, but prosecuted, quite routinely, by the legal system. It's not the government that owes him an apology: it's the British people. The logical person to apologise to him, on behalf of us all, would be the queen. Not Gordon Brown.
Nor is Brown foreswearing the practice that led to Turing's plight: basing laws solely on public morality, not public welfare. On the contrary, he has presided over a considerable expansion of laws banning things on the basis of nothing more tangible than public disgust.
I firmly believe that this blurring of distinctions between roles - between people, state, and different layers of government - is the cause of most of what's wrong in our world.
Take the al-Megrahi case, for instance. Whether he was guilty or not, he was clearly a scapegoat for his country. We pretended that he alone was responsible for Lockerbie, because we could punish him and then move on with commerce. That's why he was greeted as a hero in his own country, and rightly so. He was a hero - a sacrifice on behalf of his country. That should surely earn him some glory on his return.
And his release - the British and Scots governments alike find it convenient to pretend that this was a purely Scottish legal decision, with no political interference. This is of course garbage - both governments clearly interfered for all they were worth - but by pretending it was "just the normal course of Scottish justice", they both disclaim responsibility, and thus avoid embarrassing questions. It's a trick that successive British governments have used to great effect. Unpopular policies are blamed on Europe, or America, or the World Trade Organization, or some treaty or other. More often than not this is pure smoke; the policy is the government's own.
And even if it isn't, the decision to implement it in this damn' silly way - is.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Daylight
Dawn is completely unlike sunset. Sunset is all about pinks and patterns and particulates in the sky, still aglow and dancing in the heat of day. Sunrise, now... sunrise is a much more demure affair. The air is cool and clear and still; the sky changes gradually, the colours of the whole world grow stronger and clearer, and it becomes very hard to resist pretentious words like "suffuse". I can quite see why the Greeks had a goddess of the Dawn, while Dusk was left to its own devices.
I shouldn't be aware of this yet. It's still too early in the year to be waking up in the dark. But a couple of years ago, our government extended daylight savings for an extra three weeks in the autumn. It was one of those pointless moves that unfailingly shows that a party has been in power too long. (Incidentally it has flummoxed Microsoft, which despite having released at least two patches specifically to accommodate the change, still hasn't managed it - Outlook is currently reminding me of appointments an hour late.)
I'm not sure whether this illustrates MS's incompetence, or the inherent silliness of daylight savings. Both, I think.
Back home, the beginning of September was always my favourite time of year. For a couple of weeks the tail-of-summer weather continues glorious, the oppressive August heat is gone, the leaves just beginning to look interesting. Maybe it's the childhood associations of the new school year, but to me it always felt like a beginning, not an end. When I fell in love, it would usually happen in September.
Here, I've discovered, March occupies the same slot. The leaves are just beginning to turn. And because our weather is milder, late March is as good as early September back home. It's cool enough in the evenings, now, that one doesn't feel silly taking a jacket to go out, but the days are still relaxingly warm.
One of the nice things about our present city pad - one reason why we've stayed there for several years now - is that it's very well designed. Our bedroom faces northeast, which helps us get up in the morning. The living room is on a north-facing corner, which means it gets sun throughout the day. The kitchen is deep inside, away from the aggressive sunlight altogether. Pretty good feng shui.
And now in the mornings, I can lie in bed and watch the sun rise. Well, what I watch is the shadows moving down the wall, as the sun moves up the sky. Even after all this time, I'm still amazed at how quickly this happens - I can actually see the movement while I watch. At 7:30a.m., the navigation lights on the Sky Tower blink out, which I take to mean it's officially daylight. At 7:40, there's no help for it but to get out of bed and start the day.
Another ten days until daylight savings ends. I'm counting them down.
I shouldn't be aware of this yet. It's still too early in the year to be waking up in the dark. But a couple of years ago, our government extended daylight savings for an extra three weeks in the autumn. It was one of those pointless moves that unfailingly shows that a party has been in power too long. (Incidentally it has flummoxed Microsoft, which despite having released at least two patches specifically to accommodate the change, still hasn't managed it - Outlook is currently reminding me of appointments an hour late.)
I'm not sure whether this illustrates MS's incompetence, or the inherent silliness of daylight savings. Both, I think.
Back home, the beginning of September was always my favourite time of year. For a couple of weeks the tail-of-summer weather continues glorious, the oppressive August heat is gone, the leaves just beginning to look interesting. Maybe it's the childhood associations of the new school year, but to me it always felt like a beginning, not an end. When I fell in love, it would usually happen in September.
Here, I've discovered, March occupies the same slot. The leaves are just beginning to turn. And because our weather is milder, late March is as good as early September back home. It's cool enough in the evenings, now, that one doesn't feel silly taking a jacket to go out, but the days are still relaxingly warm.
One of the nice things about our present city pad - one reason why we've stayed there for several years now - is that it's very well designed. Our bedroom faces northeast, which helps us get up in the morning. The living room is on a north-facing corner, which means it gets sun throughout the day. The kitchen is deep inside, away from the aggressive sunlight altogether. Pretty good feng shui.
And now in the mornings, I can lie in bed and watch the sun rise. Well, what I watch is the shadows moving down the wall, as the sun moves up the sky. Even after all this time, I'm still amazed at how quickly this happens - I can actually see the movement while I watch. At 7:30a.m., the navigation lights on the Sky Tower blink out, which I take to mean it's officially daylight. At 7:40, there's no help for it but to get out of bed and start the day.
Another ten days until daylight savings ends. I'm counting them down.
Monday, February 23, 2009
How the Internet will kill you
Spending too much time online, apparently, causes high blood pressure. Also heart disease, cancer, dementia, sleep deprivation, diabetes, and Dr House's favourite: lupus.
This story comes to us from Biologist, the strictly non-sensationalist journal of the British Institute of Biology, via El Reg. I'm torn, for a response, between "you're making it up as you go along" and "well, duh."
I think this conflict arises from the outrageously wide remit of the paper. It's as if the author were briefed to look at all the studies linking health effects to either online behaviour or social interaction of any sort, to find all the possible biological connections between "getting ill" and "spending too much time typing away at a lonely screen", and then write a paragraph on each one. There's no coherence to it.
In fact it looks very like dozens of articles I published in my time on a similar journal, although of course "social networking" hadn't been invented then. (And in justice to myself: if they were this bad, I'd generally send them back to the author and tell him to try again. I was a better editor than this.)
In short: the part I can both understand and believe says that (a) if you spend a lot of your time and energy "socialising" online, you don't spend as much time and energy meeting people physically; and (b) spending time physically with other people, preferably in groups, is important for health.
This much seems (to me) obvious. What's not so obvious is the detailed process by which loneliness translates into illness. The paper touches on the usual culprits - stress, depression, lack of confidants, and so forth - but also covers a wide range of biological mechanisms. Sadly, it doesn't provide enough information on any of these for me to understand what it's talking about.
Take the discussion of leucocytes and cytokines, for instance. Citing "Recent research at the UCLA School of Medicine", it seems to be saying that social interaction increases the efficiency of our immune systems. In other words, not only do we share germs with other people, but also immunities to germs that they've previously been exposed to. To me that seems far-fetched, but I don't know enough to argue it either way.
"Regular religious group participation", it says intriguingly but uninformatively, "is a significant predictor of elevated IL-6 [interleukin-6] levels and lower subsequent 12-year mortality." So there you go. It's not the power of prayer, it's the power of churchgoing; it doesn't matter what god you worship, so long as you do it with others.
What makes this paper frustrating, for me, is the shopping-list feel. The authors make no attempt to conceal the fact that they started out from what (you might think) should have been their conclusion - that online life increases physical isolation, which is bad - and gathered evidence only in support of that belief. They make no attempt to develop arguments from one point to another, nor to explore alternative explanations of any of their "findings", nor to explore the full implications of what they did find, or otherwise present any kind of balanced picture. So although I'm inclined to believe that they're probably right, for limited values of "right", I'm left frustrated and dissatisfied.
And now, instead of heading down to the pub to bore the earlobes off some poor sap in real life, I'm blogging about it. That'll show 'em.
This story comes to us from Biologist, the strictly non-sensationalist journal of the British Institute of Biology, via El Reg. I'm torn, for a response, between "you're making it up as you go along" and "well, duh."
I think this conflict arises from the outrageously wide remit of the paper. It's as if the author were briefed to look at all the studies linking health effects to either online behaviour or social interaction of any sort, to find all the possible biological connections between "getting ill" and "spending too much time typing away at a lonely screen", and then write a paragraph on each one. There's no coherence to it.
In fact it looks very like dozens of articles I published in my time on a similar journal, although of course "social networking" hadn't been invented then. (And in justice to myself: if they were this bad, I'd generally send them back to the author and tell him to try again. I was a better editor than this.)
In short: the part I can both understand and believe says that (a) if you spend a lot of your time and energy "socialising" online, you don't spend as much time and energy meeting people physically; and (b) spending time physically with other people, preferably in groups, is important for health.
This much seems (to me) obvious. What's not so obvious is the detailed process by which loneliness translates into illness. The paper touches on the usual culprits - stress, depression, lack of confidants, and so forth - but also covers a wide range of biological mechanisms. Sadly, it doesn't provide enough information on any of these for me to understand what it's talking about.
Take the discussion of leucocytes and cytokines, for instance. Citing "Recent research at the UCLA School of Medicine", it seems to be saying that social interaction increases the efficiency of our immune systems. In other words, not only do we share germs with other people, but also immunities to germs that they've previously been exposed to. To me that seems far-fetched, but I don't know enough to argue it either way.
"Regular religious group participation", it says intriguingly but uninformatively, "is a significant predictor of elevated IL-6 [interleukin-6] levels and lower subsequent 12-year mortality." So there you go. It's not the power of prayer, it's the power of churchgoing; it doesn't matter what god you worship, so long as you do it with others.
What makes this paper frustrating, for me, is the shopping-list feel. The authors make no attempt to conceal the fact that they started out from what (you might think) should have been their conclusion - that online life increases physical isolation, which is bad - and gathered evidence only in support of that belief. They make no attempt to develop arguments from one point to another, nor to explore alternative explanations of any of their "findings", nor to explore the full implications of what they did find, or otherwise present any kind of balanced picture. So although I'm inclined to believe that they're probably right, for limited values of "right", I'm left frustrated and dissatisfied.
And now, instead of heading down to the pub to bore the earlobes off some poor sap in real life, I'm blogging about it. That'll show 'em.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The road to hell is paved with - Cosmo surveys?
Here's one for the gender warriors: men and women - or at least observant Roman Catholic men and women - "sin differently", according to a shiny new report from the Vatican.
It's a bizarre survey, conducted by Fr Roberto Busa, a 95-year-old Jesuit priest, and based on data from an undisclosed (to me, at least) sample of confessions. Apparently, men tend to enjoy lust, gluttony and sloth, while women are more likely to indulge in pride, envy and anger.
Note that the stereotypically macho vice of "wrath" makes the top three for women, but not for men - although without quantitative data we can't really deduce anything about it. "Greed", also called "covetousness" or "avarice", appears to be firmly at the bottom of the pile.
"Sloth" is an interesting sin, and one of my personal favourites. According to one view, it's the inverse of "avarice" - you're unlikely to make much money while sitting about on your backside. On the other hand, what's the point of making money, beyond bare survival needs, if not in anticipation of enjoying some sloth at a later date?
I haven't been able to find if this kind of survey has ever been done before. The Vatican's official theory is that, while environments and circumstances change, basic human nature is constant, so they might argue that these findings would never greatly change. But really I find it hard to believe they'd be that naïve. In harder times, surely avarice would be more popular.
(I do want to know more about Fr Busa's sample. Was it purely local, around Rome, or nationwide, or wider? Was it weighted towards any particular groups, such as religious communities? But I can't find this data. The original publication, in the Vatican's weekly L'Osservatore Romano, doesn't seem to be available online, and none of the summaries I've found goes into that kind of detail.)
Also not mentioned are the "new sins" published last year, listed as "environmental pollution, genetic manipulation, obscene wealth, infliction of poverty, drug trafficking, morally debatable experiments, and violation of the fundamental rights of human nature." I'd love to know how often men and women confess to each of those.
It's a bizarre survey, conducted by Fr Roberto Busa, a 95-year-old Jesuit priest, and based on data from an undisclosed (to me, at least) sample of confessions. Apparently, men tend to enjoy lust, gluttony and sloth, while women are more likely to indulge in pride, envy and anger.
Note that the stereotypically macho vice of "wrath" makes the top three for women, but not for men - although without quantitative data we can't really deduce anything about it. "Greed", also called "covetousness" or "avarice", appears to be firmly at the bottom of the pile.
"Sloth" is an interesting sin, and one of my personal favourites. According to one view, it's the inverse of "avarice" - you're unlikely to make much money while sitting about on your backside. On the other hand, what's the point of making money, beyond bare survival needs, if not in anticipation of enjoying some sloth at a later date?
I haven't been able to find if this kind of survey has ever been done before. The Vatican's official theory is that, while environments and circumstances change, basic human nature is constant, so they might argue that these findings would never greatly change. But really I find it hard to believe they'd be that naïve. In harder times, surely avarice would be more popular.
(I do want to know more about Fr Busa's sample. Was it purely local, around Rome, or nationwide, or wider? Was it weighted towards any particular groups, such as religious communities? But I can't find this data. The original publication, in the Vatican's weekly L'Osservatore Romano, doesn't seem to be available online, and none of the summaries I've found goes into that kind of detail.)
Also not mentioned are the "new sins" published last year, listed as "environmental pollution, genetic manipulation, obscene wealth, infliction of poverty, drug trafficking, morally debatable experiments, and violation of the fundamental rights of human nature." I'd love to know how often men and women confess to each of those.
Friday, January 2, 2009
He came down from tumpty tumpty
The BBC is ridiculously proud of its oldest Christmas tradition: Carols from King's, a highest-of-high-church festival of carols and bible readings. For 80 years, the Beeb has been broadcasting it every Christmas Eve.
I heard it circa 1993, at 3p.m. on Christmas Eve when driving home, and for the first time, I understood the appeal of church choirs. As soon as the first soloist struck up, the pure countertenor voice seemed to take me back to a time when Christmas wasn't a matter of preparation and panic, but anticipation and peace. Ever since, I've tried to time my Christmas Eve journeys to catch that broadcast. When the service begins, I can feel once again the peace that comes with knowing that -- Christmas is come, my deadline is passed, there is nothing more to do save drive through the gathering dusk, on fast-emptying roads, to journey's end, warmth and welcome. Home.
That's what "Carols from King's" means to me. Or rather, meant. (I have no interest in the TV broadcast. You listen while you're doing something else -- that's the whole point.)
Because the BBC, with its astonishingly lopsided sense of priorities, doesn't podcast it.
Of course there may be sound business reasons for that. It might worry that a podcast would damage its CD sales, but the poxy CD versions only offer the carols, not the readings, otherwise I'd buy it with pleasure. It's broadcast on the World Service, but -- well, if you can find a schedule and frequency details for that in New Zealand, let me know. ("Asia-Pacific" forsooth.)
This Christmas I tried to look at the New Zealand equivalent. The choir sang carols, for want of a better word, that I've never heard (and frankly never want to hear again), and the "lessons" were delivered by moralising clerics talking about doing good in the Real World. Very worthy, and tortuously dull.
This morning I was dreaming about setting up an equivalent carol service in New Zealand. We were rehearsing the traditional processional carol, "Once in Royal David's City", and I was following the words on a hymn sheet, when I found myself reading a verse I'd never heard. It was beautiful: it fit the meaning, rhythm and rhyme of the carol, it was haunting and lovely and perfect, and when I woke I couldn't remember a word of it.
All I know now is that my subconscious can write better poetry than I can.
Happy New Year, everyone.
I heard it circa 1993, at 3p.m. on Christmas Eve when driving home, and for the first time, I understood the appeal of church choirs. As soon as the first soloist struck up, the pure countertenor voice seemed to take me back to a time when Christmas wasn't a matter of preparation and panic, but anticipation and peace. Ever since, I've tried to time my Christmas Eve journeys to catch that broadcast. When the service begins, I can feel once again the peace that comes with knowing that -- Christmas is come, my deadline is passed, there is nothing more to do save drive through the gathering dusk, on fast-emptying roads, to journey's end, warmth and welcome. Home.
That's what "Carols from King's" means to me. Or rather, meant. (I have no interest in the TV broadcast. You listen while you're doing something else -- that's the whole point.)
Because the BBC, with its astonishingly lopsided sense of priorities, doesn't podcast it.
Of course there may be sound business reasons for that. It might worry that a podcast would damage its CD sales, but the poxy CD versions only offer the carols, not the readings, otherwise I'd buy it with pleasure. It's broadcast on the World Service, but -- well, if you can find a schedule and frequency details for that in New Zealand, let me know. ("Asia-Pacific" forsooth.)
This Christmas I tried to look at the New Zealand equivalent. The choir sang carols, for want of a better word, that I've never heard (and frankly never want to hear again), and the "lessons" were delivered by moralising clerics talking about doing good in the Real World. Very worthy, and tortuously dull.
This morning I was dreaming about setting up an equivalent carol service in New Zealand. We were rehearsing the traditional processional carol, "Once in Royal David's City", and I was following the words on a hymn sheet, when I found myself reading a verse I'd never heard. It was beautiful: it fit the meaning, rhythm and rhyme of the carol, it was haunting and lovely and perfect, and when I woke I couldn't remember a word of it.
All I know now is that my subconscious can write better poetry than I can.
Happy New Year, everyone.
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