Thomas Hardy

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy


I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.


The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.


At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.


So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

CAMFORD UNIVERSITY FINALS JUNE 2050: ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Section A: Questions 1,2,3 are Multiple Choice. In each question there is only one wrong answer. It should be obvious which one it is.

Spelling and punctuation will not be taken into account. Inclusiveness, avoidance of divisiveness and elitism will earn extra marks.

1. Shakespeare's "King Lear" deals with the theme of

(a) Senile dementia and the need for euthanasia
(b) Male chauvinism
(c) Marxist critique of the family as an institution.
(d) Female aspiration
(e) Hamartia and peripateia.

2. Bob Dylan is:

(a) The new Keats.
(b) Better than Keats.
(c) The greatest poet since Pam Gems.
(d) The greatest poet since Siegfried Sassoon.
(d) Crap.

3. Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' is:

(a) An interesting piece of literary archaeology, but homophobic.
(b) A critique of the Roman Catholic Church.
(c) Only readable when raunchy.
(d) Written in Old English.
(e) The first great work of literature in modern English.

4. Imagine you are Hamlet, and have just seen your father's ghost. Stand up in the space between the desks and act out your feelings for five ot ten minutes. Then write about a hundred words about how you felt.

5. You are working in Macdonalds. (You will be).

How do you feel about that? (100 words)

MAO AND GOMUŁKA - A LITTLE STORY

Last night I went to a concert of Chopin's piano music given by a brilliant young pianist from Syria.

The musicologist who introduced each piece told a story about a meeting over thirty years ago between Chairman Mao and Gomułka.

Mao asked the Polish leader what he should do to make communism more popular in China, as so many pople didn't like Marxism.

"How many dissidents do you have?" asked Gomułka.

"About 36,000,000."

Don't worry," chortled the Pole, "We have the same number in Poland. No problem!"

FATHERLY PITY

Not the greatest of poems, but gives hope to idiots like me who often get it all wrong.

Coventry Patmore. 1823–1896

The Toys

MY little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
I struck him, and dismiss'd
With hard words and unkiss'd,
—His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray'd
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
'I will be sorry for their childishness.'

LOGOPOIOS

The Logopoios, or myth-maker, rumour-monger, was Theophrastus's eighth imaginary character. He was a gossip, and having spread false rumours at the barber's (as I remember it) was arrested, taken before the magistrates, and tortured.

The blogosphere is host to many logopoioi, who blather falsehood and vitriol in the elecronic barber's chair.

I hope I have not blathered falsehood, but vitriol I will admit to. My invention of Bogus Smirk, who started life as a Catholic Priest, and has degenerated into a substance-abusing syncretist cult-founder is an example, a straw man I invented to belabour, ridicule, and belittle those whose opinions I hate. This is definitely uncharitable, possibly destructive, and must be thought over.

Happy Christmas to all, targets included.

Happy Christmas

That's all!

In an Ecumenical Spirit

In my current ecumenical spirit, I have given space on another page of my blog to the rantings of Bishop Bogus Smirk, whose page bears the title 'The Ever-Changing Truth".

He is now complaining that no one reads it, so I reproduce his latest piece here. He has produced a video, but characteristically, it doesn't seem to work, so we must make do with this transcript.

GLASTONBURGESI, ORBI, ET PAPAE

TO GLASTONBURY, THE WORLD AND THE POPE


(Opening fanfare of didgeridoos. Camera pans over Glastonbury, cuts to Pope on balcony, pans to group of White Anglo-Saxon women dancing brokenly and angrily around a huge pile of burning wimples. Pans to balcony, on which stands Bishop.)

He speaks.

To Glastonbury - peace, melllow moods, fragrant vapours rising to the heavens from spliff and bong! Happy mushrooming.

To the world - see above.

To Pope Benedict the 16th: be humble. You have much to learn.

Learn, as Tony Blair said a few years ago, to LISTEN.

LISTEN to the people in the pews.

LISTEN to the brokeness and angryness in you own church.

You're OUT OF TOUCH!

Tony Blair, now there's a man to respect and listen to!

For starters, he's a real English gentleman, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, speaks with a proper Oxford accent, not like that Brown, eh?

TONY BLAIR IS A DEEPLY HUMBLE AND RELIGIOUS MAN WHO SAYS IT AS IT IS.

He's also got a brain and a half - he must have. HE'S LOADED!

And he CARES. For BROKENESS, for ANGRYNESS.

He cares for all the unheard people in the Catholic Church, the gays, biseuals, transgenders, lesbians, ordinary people like you and I.

He told you straight, did Tone, that you were out of touch with ordinary people pewsitters, whatever.

He said you should LISTEN to THEM and HIM.

SO LISTEN!

Move on from your obsessions with condoms, abortion, sex, doctrine, theology (don't talk to me about theology), and embrace LIFE with all its DIVERSITY.

WE ARE BROKEN!

WE ARE ANGERED!!

WE ARE CHURCH!!!

(Fade-out broken, angry wailing.)

WORD-THEFT

Fifty years ago, while I was still a teenager, a gay bachelor had girlfriends, few responsibilities, and went to parties. He was decidedly heterosexual.

Then we lost 'gay', that beautiful word, and have not replaced it.

'Left-footer' has always been a term of affectionate mockery for Catholics, and it is listed as such in the Urban Dictionary, which, however, gives as a second usage, 'homosexual'.

A comment on another blog made me change the name of mine. I don't like the new name so much - Odysseus is described by Homer as 'polytropos = 'of many wiles', 'resourceful' in the second line of the Odyssey. I can't really lay claim to such a flattering title.

So I think tomorrow I will revert to the original, perhaps with a heterosexist note attached.

Sorry if I've caused some confusion.

IS THERE A FUTURE?

My answer to the question is, "Not yet."

Let me start by stating the obvious - I am no philosopher, and I am not about to say anything profound, startling, or new.

A long time ago I read most of Plato, Aristotle, and, of course, the Dialogues of their fountainhead, Socrates.

The biggest surprise for me was reading the amazing dialogue between Chanticlere and Pertelote, cock and hen, in Chaucers Nun's Priest's Tale. Their subject, predestination, still grips and worries me.

The argument put forward by Chanticlere, as I remember it, is this: If God is omnipotent and omniscient, then He must know the future.

If He knows the future, then the future is already determined.

If the future is already predetermined, then we have no freedom of action, no free-will.

To extrapolate beyond Chaucer, if we have no free-will, we cannot choose between Heaven or Hell.

Divine Justice is therefore unjust.

About twenty three years ago, when I was struggling with Catholicism, I read a book whose title I forget, by a Jesuit Chaplain (of Eton College, but I don't hold that against him - I forget his name too).

It was a series of meditations on the life of Saint Francis Xavier, who intended to convert China, and of course died before he had even started. One remark sticks in my mind.

"God sees us, not as we are, but as we are becoming."

Of course, because God knows our intentions.

I accept three spatial dimensions, but the fourth, time, is fundamentally different. We can travel in three dimensions, exist in them, measure them, but in time, we can travel only forward. It is not, I think, a dimension in the same sense as the others.

The future does not yet exist. Future souls may indeed exist - that is beyond me, but the future has no existence - yet.

How can God know what does not exist? It's reminiscent of silly questions such as: 'Can God make a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it?'
or 'Can God create a more powerful god than Himself?' Whether the answer is 'yes' or 'no', the questioner will claim to have proved that God is not omnipotent.

I would suggest that God cannot know what is not, because such a possibility is a nonsense.

Your views, please.

LABELS ARE LAZY - OR WORSE

I've been thinking more about the way labeling people or putting them in boxes, is destructive of both useful thinking and charity towards one's fellow man.

As Paul Mallinder commented on an earlier post, "we just label people when our reason isn't up to the game."

Label-stickers are lazy, or stupid, or vindictive, or dishonest, or I know not what. They dodge the issue of engaging people with whom they disagree, and just dismiss them.

For example, how about 'anti-Semite'? What do the users of this label mean, if not anti-Jew or anti-Israel? A true anti-Semite must also be anti-Arab and anti-Maltese, as both Arabs and Maltese are at least partly Semitic, and both speak Semitic languages. Speak plainly and use 'anti-Jewish' or 'anti-Israel', depending on what you mean. To engage the people is to engage the issues.

'Nazi' is applied indiscriminately to racists. However, under the prussian Bismarck, Adalbert Falk's falk laws expelled Catholic Religious (See Hopkins's "The Wreck of the Deutschland"). Further legislation deprived Poles of the right to speak Polish in school, sell their homes to other Poles, and more. The aim was to eliminate Polishness. IN 1900!

Racist? Very.

Anti-Jewish? No anti-Słowenski.

Nazi? Not under Bismarck, but later.

One more example, ridiculous, horrible, but true.

I had been in Poland about a week when a German, about 30 years old, asked me what I thought of Poles. I replied that I had not had time to form an impression.

So he told me. He said that the Poles were dirty, lazy, ignorant, and poor. Their food was unhealthy and their roads terrible.

He then said that the word Slav is derived from slave, because the Slavonic people exist to serve the teutonic races.

I could have labeled him 'ignorant nazi scumbag', but I didn't (tee hee!). Oh, I wanted to.

I was kind and explained that the Słowenik word which is known as Slav is cognate with Sławny = famous. The word 'slave' is derived from Slav, not vice-versa. I did not label him, but I wanted to kill him.

I then told him about the post WW2 Morgenthau plan, and its vision, thwarted by Roosevelt, of the permanent partition of Germany and its reduction to an agricultural economy.

I ended by telling him what I thought about his country's history.

As to a worthy label? Maybe 'evil idiot'.

He's Back.

Unfortunately.
I have evicted him from here, and if anyone is so inclined, they may read his ramblings at bishopsmirk.blogspot.com

Torquemada Shrooms released - New Twist in Glastonbury Mystery

Shrooms, arrested on a charge of murder and hate crime after he apparently ran over Smirk, a local preacher, with his steam-roller, has been released without charge, according to a Somerset police spokesman.

This follows forensic tests on the remains found outside Smirk's flat, which proved to be from a huge roast pig.

Shrooms's daughter, Muriel, who allegedly recently took out a very large life assurance policy on the missing Smirk, is helping police with their inquiries.

Hilarious Accident in Glastonbury

It is without any particular regret that I report the demise of 'Bishop' Bogus Smirk.

His common-law wife, Muriel Shrooms, Mu for short, a character well-known in the Glastonbury community, reports that after eating a huge psilocybin and 'herb' omelette she had prepared for him, he rushed to the window of their shared ground floor flat, and with a cry of "Shabbaddabbada", threw himself through the glass to the street below.

As the fall was a matter of only eighteen inches, no tragedy could have been foreseen. However, a passing steamroller swerved to avoid a sparrow in the road, skidded, and ran over the unfortunate man.

It may be of some consolation to him, wherever he is, that he was physically as widely spread on the surface of the road as he had hoped his church and his literary fame would be in the world beyond the Somerset town where he lived.

If the public feel so inclined, they may leave their condolences in the comment box.

A NEW PRAISE SONG FROM BISHOP SMIRK (at least I think that's what it is)

Hi! It's Smirkie, the Mugwumpist.

Us poets depend so much on inspiration, don't you agree? I been trying to write a cool praise song for our Winter Season Praise Service. Trying for a week! Then I went up the Tor for some serious puffing (heh!), and the good weed brought me this.

Cool?

But I can't think of a good title - maybe "YEAH!" - can anyone help? But don't get snide - be positive! And don't get all technical about tenses. "When the creed and the colour and the name WON'T matter WERE you there?" is ok - everybody loves singing it.


I saw a man sitting by a tree.
Yeah, I saw a man sitting by a tree.
He's sitting by a tree
And that man is you and me!
I saw a man sitting by a tree.

I saw a man looking at a rope.
Yeah, I saw a man looking at a rope.
He's looking at that rope
Cuz he ain't got any hope.
I saw a man looking at a rope.

I saw a man standing on a chair
Yeah, I saw a man standing on a chair
He's standing on a chair
And he's reaching in the air.
I saw a man standing on a chair.

I saw a man tying rope to bough
Yeah, I saw a man tying rope to bough
He's tying rope to bough,
And I think he's ready now.
I saw a man tying rope to bough.

I saw a man kicking at a chair
Yeah, I saw a man kicking at a chair.
He's kicking at the chair
Now he's swinging in the air
I saw a man swinging in the air.

I saw a man hanging from a tree
Yeah, I saw a man hanging from a tree
He's hanging from a tree
And that man is you and me
I saw a man hanging from a tree.

Why was that man hanging in a tree?

Because of society's cruelty!

So let's go into the street,

Smile at people that we meet,

And show them just how happy they can be!

More to come! YAY, as we say.

This Instrument Kills Fascists

When Woody Guthrie went on tour after the last war, his guitar was decorated with the words - "This instrument kills fascists".

How many did it kill during the war I wonder?

I don't much like political 'folk' singers. "Killing Kruger with your mouth"?

Huh!

IMPERIALIST FASCIST STOOGE MACMILLAN

When I was about 17, I dearly wanted to be a communist. I read Marx's 'Capital', in translation, of course, and found it often heady and poetic.

Then I tuned into Radio Moscow, which was in English, and heard a Russian woman reading the news. Russian, like Polish, is a beautiful, very musical languge, but both Russians and Poles speak English without much intonation or emotion, so that to us they sound very cold.

The woman's words stick with me: "The imperialist fascist stooge, Macmillan, speaking yesterday in the so-called British Parliament, said that...."

That was enough. No more communism for me.

Why is it so tempting to insult the opposition or enemy? Labels like 'fascist', 'nazi', 'liberal', are bandied about, often with little regard for their historical significance, as though they were potent weapons for defeating opponents. As Kipling wrote over 100 years ago:

When you've shouted, "Rule Britannia!" when you've sung, "God Save the Queen",
When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth."

what have you achieved? Perhaps very little. As with swearing, so with verbal abuse, using the currency debases it. The lewd words or insults progressively fail to satisfy, and reveal their own impotence and the user's. If you spend much time on Twitter, and I spend less than I used to, you will soon become bored with displays of bad-mouthing.

As an art form, it soon palls.

St John the Baptist did it, and so did St Thomas More, but much more creatively, and therefore more tellingly. There was poetry and passion in their invective. They were wise and good men, Saints, and their language was chosen to tell the truth, inspire their supporters, denigrate the enemy, and demolish his arguments.

But it is hard to see what purpose is served by merely insulting opponents, whether they be 'Taliban' Catholics, liberal 'fascists', or any other hated group, without actually pointing out where they are wrong.

Does doing so advance the cause, whatever it may be?
Rather, it is off-putting to many who might otherwise be inclined to listen to us. See above.

Does it hurt or demoralise the enemy?
Only clever satire can do that, not name-calling..

Does it rally and motivate our supporters and make them feel better?
Probably yes, if they are people of not very subtle perceptions.

Does it make us feel better?
Yes, of course. Watch a little dog behind its garden gate, go into yappping frenzy when a big dog, on a lead, has safely gone past.

Does it betray the fact that we feel weak, impotent, and on the losing side of a battle?
I fear so.

Let us by, all means, trash, rout, demoralise, destroy the enemy and his credibility, but, like G. K. Chesterton (who never sank to insulting even his arch enemies) let us do so with meticulous reasoning, wit, and truth. It was the rather risible F. E. Smith who dismissed Chesterton as an 'obese mountebank', as though his bulk invalidated his polemic.

Do we go to F.E. Smith for wisdom? I rather think not.

A THING RABBIT KNOWS

If you enjoy A.A. Milne's "Winnie The Pooh" and "The House At Pooh Corner" (not the cartoon versions) as much as I do, you may remember the sad chapter near the end of the second book where Christopher Robin is learning his alphabet and 'twy stimes' table, and is obviously going off to school.

Eeyore, the gloomy donkey, thinks he will learn the alpahbet too, and makes an "A" out of sticks, and asks Rabbit, the perennial busybody, what it is.

Rabbit replies, "An A, but not a very good one."

Poor Eeyore, cut to the quick, jumps on the sticks, saying "A, a thing Rabbit knows?"

Ever felt like that? I have.

It is very unpleasant (and hard to accept) when someone I don't like, who is a bit of a know-all, gets it right, and in a smarty-pants kind of way.

"How can I hear what you say, when what you are is deafening me?" as an African is said to have asked a European missionary.

We must always be careful - no, I must - to be sure that when we reject an idea, we are not rejecting it simply out of dislike or contempt for, or a grievance against, the author of that idea.

For example:

I don't like Richard Dawkins's face. I don't like clever-head atheists. If he told me the time I would want a second opinion: not reasonable.

Likewise Tony Blair: when he was received into the Catholic Church, I was annoyed. When he proved to be a dissenting Catholic, I was, shamefully, just a little gruntled.

The conflict between the Greek leaders Aristides, nicknamed 'The Just" and Themistocles ended in the ostracism of Aristides, at a date variously given between 485 BC and 482 BC. It is said that an illiterate voter, who did not know Aristides, came up to him, and giving him his voting sherd, desired him to write upon it the name of Aristides. The latter asked if Aristides had wronged him.

"No," was the reply, "and I do not even know him, but it irritates me to hear him everywhere called the just."

I am sure I would have liked Aristides and not wished for his ostracism, but even so, that illiterate was, I am ashamed to say, "mon semblable, mon frere".

Defamation

A purely academic question, and just out of interest, would it amount to actionable libel or slander in the U.K. to write or say that someone was homosexual or a practising homosexual if they were not?

I have absolutely no intention of putting the answer to the test.

MARRIAGE FEAST AT CANA - A FUN MIRACLE, AND THE FIRST

Our Lady's Presumptive Close

Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

I love this miracle because it is, after all, the first recorded, and it's about Holy Fun.

Weddings should be great fun (in Poland the reception normally lasts 3 days) and alcohol is part of the fun.

Jesus' mother (unnamed in John's Gospel) told Jesus, "They have no more wine," and Jesus replied, "Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come." Jesus' mother then said to the servants, "Do whatever He tells you" (John 2:3-5). Jesus ordered the servants to fill the empty containers with water and to draw out some and take it to the chief waiter. After tasting the water that had become wine, and not knowing what Jesus had done, he remarked to the bridegroom that he had departed from the custom of serving the best wine first by serving it last (John 2:6-10). John concludes his account by saying: "This was the first miracle of Jesus and it was performed to reveal His glory, and His disciples put their faith in Him (John 2:11)".

I'm fascinated also by the psychology. Mary was a very clever woman, and knew a thing or two. Notice how, when Jesus demurs, she says, "Do whatever He tells you."

As a trainee salesman, I was taught the 'presumptive close'. The 'close' is the prospective client's decision to buy. The presumptive close involves behaving and speaking as though he or she had already agreed. Classic, though cheesy and not always very successful presumptive closes are:

How would you like to pay for this, Mr Prospect, monthly or annually?

When do you want your policy to start?

Shall we put it in trust for your wife? How do you feel about that, Mrs Prospect?

And Mary, much too clever for such obvious approaches, but using the technique of presuming that Jesus will do something, simply says, "Do whatever He tells you."

After that, how could Jesus extract himself from performing the required miracle. We know that sometimes presumption can be a sin. Voltaire's, "Dieu me pardonera - c'st Son metier" is a classic example, but the spirit which cries out, "Abba, Father" can wheedle. Our Lady is our Mother too, and she can wheedle better than anyone, being His Mother, bodily in Heaven, and never tainted by original sin.

And if we needed the stamp of authenticity on the idea that we can be good, and have fun, this miracle is it.

Dzięki Bogu! Thank God!

SAINT PETER CUTS OF MALCHUS'S EAR St John's Gospel, 18: 10

Pondering on Saint Nicholas and the blow he (literally) struck for the Truth, I've had just a thought: Jesus must have known that Peter was armed. According to at least one commentary, carrying weapons was prohibited on feast days.

If the Jews of the Old Testament had been pacifist, they would probably have either lost their identity or been exterminated long before the Incarnation.

So would there have been an Incarnation?

Are we so sure that force and violence are always wrong? They seem to have worked in Salvation History.

SAINT NICHOLAS THE PLAGOLOGIST, POSSIBLY THE 1ST 'MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN'

Saint Nicholas was my kind of Saint,
If sometimes short of temper.
Though pacifism was not his bent;
He was fidelis semper.

When Arius denied his Lord's
Divinity, Nick felt sore;
Decided acts speak more than words,
Felled Arius to the floor.

His kind of knock-down plagologue*
Is now not to our taste.
We value courteous dialogue
Above such wordless haste.

And yet there is a time, one feels
To strike and not to speak.
When Reason with Unreason deals,
It's reason which is weak.

For who can mould a brain of mud
With philosophic lore?
Better to thump the stupid crud.
His place is on the floor.


Note: Plagologue = arguing or reasoning with blows. This word does not appear in any dictionary. It is my own coinage, being derived from Latin 'plagus' = a blow, 'plagosus' = full of blows, violent, cognate with Greek 'plegein = to beat, and logos = reason.

A FAVOURITE POEM BY G. K. CHESTERTON

Curiously topical: "From all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men..."

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to Thee.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS V. TONY BLAIR: THE GREAT DEBATE

So they debated whether religion is a force for good in the world. Huh!

Are sharks a force for good in the world? As someone who is anything but a 'deep ecologist', I consider sharks, along with crocodiles, leprosy, tornados, HIV and streptococci a force for evil. They sometimes kill people. However, I don't stop believing in them. They manifestly exist. I believe, but I love them not. I wish they could be exterminated, if you can do that to a tornado.

So what does the verdict amount to? If as a Catholic, or Muslim, or whatever, I come to see that religion is a force for what other people do not regard as 'good', do I stop believing? If a deranged Pope ate a Cardinal, would I become an atheist?

Had the debate been about the truth of a particular religion, that would have been interesting, but well beyond the intellctual capabilities of Tony Blair. Those who could have carried it off are all dead. George Weigel maybe?

Your comments are more than welcome.

NEW DECALOGUE - GETALIFE, MOSES!

OK, folks, it's ME, Smirk, and here they are!

My new 10 Commandments, which I just received at the top of Glastonbury Tor (my Holy Mountain) after a great lunch of MUSHROOMS (Know what I mean? Know what I mean!!!). It's brass monkeys up there, but the local fuzz don't like me smokin' ganja, man, not in the street, anyway, and my landlady's not cool with it. Life's grim without the odd spliff.

1. Thou shalt worship whatever gods or godesses you please, but they gotta be nice.

2. Keep it coool!

3. Graven images are ok - the RCs love 'em, but no fertility godesses, please. Think environmentally.

4. Thou shalt embrace DEEP ECOLOGY.

5. He prayeth best who loveth best all creatures great and small (Saint Samuel Coleridge) (see 4)

6. Thou shalt financially support thy pastors, and especially thy Bishop.

7. Thou shalt love everyone, everywhere, as often as possible.

8. Thou shalt not be a bigot.

9. Thou shalt support the BIG SOCIETY.

10. Thou shalt retweet me as often as physically possible, and desist from slagging off my cool hip jive. It's NOT out of date - the holy never is.

Yours in the love of whatever

Bishop Smirk

A Salute to Archbishop Vincent Nichols

Yes it's me, Bishop Bogus Smirk, at your service.

People have asked me why I am not listed in The Catholic Directory.

Simple, stupid!

I'm not a Papist.

I'm a Bishop of the Multi-credal, Universal, Gay-friendly, What-you-will, Universalist, Modernist Patriarchate, or, for short:

MUGWUMP.

And today I want, maybe a little late, to declare my solidarity with my separated brother, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, in London.

Why, you ask?

Because he SPEAKS THE TRUTH AND SPEAKS IT OUT!

1. He's on record as having said that mortal sin was an unsuccesful attempt to motivate the faithful. Unsuccesful = they weren't motivated!

Cuz there ain't no such thing as Mortal sin, folks. It was an invention of power-crazed clerical obscurantists in the Dark Ages, to spoil people's fun and keep them down, while monks and nuns, bishops and that lot enjoyed their alcohol-fuelled orgies.

No mortal sin means no Hell! Yay!

2. He does not rule out future LGTB marriage or female clergy!

No wonder he missed out on the red titfer!!

So, we are currently redesigning our liturgies to make them more full of sisterly, brotherly, and anyotherly love. Yup!

Come and see for yourself - don't be apart - be a part of our:

Women's liturgical dance - boy, we got some babes!

Men's liturgical dance - tame it ain't,

Topless women's drum circles,

LGBT love-ins,

Abortion/deep ecology/macrobiotic workshops.

We're compiling a New 10 Commandments - get a life, Moses.

So, once again, I salute you, separated but beloved brother Archbishop Vincent (tell-it how-it-is) Nichols.

You inspire me!!!

HOLY NUISANCE

I've just read, and posted a comment on, Richard Collins's powerful post "What Do We Expect of a Bishop?" http://linenonthehedgerow.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-do-we-expect-of-bishop.html.

Catholics work hard at blogging. They, we, inform, encourage, support, tweet, and sometimes criticise each other. Some are learned and informative, some are prayerful, some, like me, are just angry.

I have a few slight talents, but an immense capacity for anger when I hear or read of a 'shiten shepherd' leading astray his 'clene shepe' (I like Chaucer, too) with misleading statements on matters of Faith, or feeding obscenities to their children (see the excellent John Smeaton, passim) through immoral sex-intruction teaching materials, or putting the favour of malignant megalomaniac over-paid windbags - the "great and the good" above the call to preach the Gospel.

I know I am not alone in my anger.

So would it be worth making a bigger nuisance of ourselves to weak, cowardly, place-seeking, empire buiding, anti-Papal (the list could go on and on) members of the hierarchy, if only to smoke them out?

In a Yorkshire parish, everyone sang 'ee bah gum!' instead of 'kumbayah'. The 'hymn' was dropped.

We could refuse to sing heretical nonsense at Mass.

We could stop giving money to the C.E.S and helping to pay for Greg Pope, and the scandal of unCatholic, obscene, and immoral sex-instruction in Catholic schools.

Ditto Cafod until it toes the line on 'reproductive health'.

Ditto red-nose day.

We could keep the Ecclestone Square bureaucrats busy with heavy dumps of mail after some dubious, idiotic, or plainly heretical pronouncement by a cleric or circular magician.

And we could be a bigger nuisance to government when it promotes or enforces by legislation, anti-Catholic practices.

Fancy being a Holy Nuisance?

I do.

I CANNOT IMAGINE THEM IN HELL

This story is, I believe, completely true, but I do not know how it ended. I am telling it only as an footnote to my last post.

Nine years ago when I was working for a homelessness charity in central London, I was key-worker to a young Muslim resident, aged 17, from a West African country. His parents, who were dead, had been Egyptian shopkeepers in a small town and during the civil war, militia arrived at the shop and told him, "We are going to kill your family, but if you are a brave boy and don't cry, you can come with us and be a soldier."

He was 13 years old.

He said they butchered his mother, father, and sisters in front of him, he did not cry, and for the next two years, until he was 15, he was an irregular soldier, killing, raping, using drugs, living in terror at what he was doing.

The most horrible thing he told me was that when they came across a pregnant woman, they would take bets on whether the child was a boy or a girl, and disembowel the woman to settle the matter.

He cried continually while telling this.

He escaped and made his way, a long way, to Zimbabwe, where he was cared for by Protestant missionaries who arranged and paid for him to come to London.

In London, he attended a secondary school in a South London suburb, where he passed his GCSEs while living rough on the streets. I telephoned his former head teacher who confirmed this.

When I knew him, he was still smoking cannabis, and perhaps sometimes crack cocaine. Without self-pity, he talked mainly about his feelings of remorse and guilt, and how he might atone to God for his wickedness.

He would not go to a mosque, so I spoke to a helpful mullah on his behalf, who said that God would accept his sorrow and penitence and forgive him. I did not need the mullah to tell me that, but he did. I am not sure he accepted the assurance.

Unfortunately the hostel closed and I never heard what happened to him, only that he had been given a flat.

I regularly pray for him and for so many of my clients (as we called them) from 2000-2005. In some ways they were the most penitent people, always trying and (like the rest of us) often failing to be the people they wanted to be.

And I cannot imagine them in Hell.

HELL? ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Caveat: this is an inquiry, not dogmatic assertion. I am no theologian. Please don't get angry.

Long ago I read somewhere that St Augustine said or wrote that the Blessed in Heaven wouls be allowed a pain-free visit to Hell to witness for themselves the Justice of God. I can nowhere find any reference to this, but the idea has stayed with me for 40 years.

Hell certainly terrifies me, sometimes to the point of insomnia, not as a horror film adddict is pleasantly scared, but as the prospect of nuclear war scared most people during the Cuban missile crisis: as a terrible possibility which we know will happen to some people at some future time.

It's been fashionable (and not necessarily incorrect) for a long time now to picture Hell as a state of denial of the Beatific Vision, with the inevitable terrible grief and longing which that state would entail. Such an unassuageable spiritual hunger and thirst is both imaginable and terrifying.

The older picture is of fire, ice, unspeakable filth, and tormenting devils, as depicted by St Alphonsus Liguori, and if we accept, as we must, the Resurrection of the Body, it seems that physical torment will be part of the punishment in Hell.

Polish friends assert that St Faustina was a universalist and believed that, ultimately, everyone will be saved. Julian of Norwich seems to be of the same mind, asserting that "all shall be well". If St Faustina was right, the suffering will be terrible, but only temporary, perhaps only a few million years. Some Poles say that the canonisation of St Faustina may have put the Church's seal of approval on universalism.

The questions that exercise my mind are:

1. Would you or I wish such horror on the worst person who ever lived? I have to admit that, as to people whose sufferings I would like to witness on a Heavenly excursion to Hell, I might have a little list. But then, I am an unworthy, nasty, angry man.

2. Does God will such horror?

3. If not, why does He not prevent it, and allow for the ultimate presence in Heaven of everyone, however wicked? Jesus said ,"Their fire is not quenched", and I suppose He meant that it will last forever.

4. If He does will it, should we not rejoice in His will, and so in the triumph of Divine Justice, and so in the existence of Hell?

And therefore, should we not look forward to such an excursion as a chance to further understand and rejoice in God's Perfect Justice?