De La Mennais Brothers - Weaving a tapestry of relationships like Jesus

Josh Garrels - "Love & War & The Sea In Between"

2012-01-26T10:23:00.000Z

This was voted "Album Of The Year" on a US website that I am subscribed to (http://bit.ly/y6c4aT). It is a wonderful album and I thoroughly recommend it. To cap it all, you can download it legally for free from noisetrade.com or from his own website!! http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/

See here for a lovely video for the first song from the album, "White Owl":

Fr. Maurice Zundel

2012-01-15T23:16:00.001Z

Here's a quote that came to me via Facebook (in the original French) from one of my favourite spiritual writers, the Swiss priest Fr. Maurice Zundel (1887-1975). He was a good friend of Pope Paul VI and was invited by him to preach retreats at the Vatican. His books "Je est un autre" and "Je parlerai à ton coeur" have been a big influence on me and the expression of my own faith.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Zundel

"If I could sum up my faith, I would do so as follows: I believe in the life of this "other" in me, I believe in the infinite risk taken by God, I believe in the fragility of God because, if there is indeed nothing stronger than love, there is also nothing more fragile." - a (translated) quote from one of my favourite spiritual writers, Fr. Maurice Zundel

The original text:

"Si je pouvais résumer toute ma foi, elle est vraiment là : je crois à cette vie d'un autre en moi, je crois au risque infini de Dieu, je crois à la tragédie éternelle de l'Amour crucifié, je crois à la fragilité de Dieu parce que, s'il n'y a rien de plus fort que l'amour, il n'y a rien de plus fragile"

The Irony of the Epiphany

2012-01-08T22:24:00.001Z

I have just read this from the Protestant Desiring God website and I think it raises a very interesting issue which I might summarise as follows: the danger of a disconnect in the matter of faith and discipleship between the head and the heart, i.e. the danger that the knowledge (biblical, theological, philosophical…) one might accrue in one's studies becomes an end in itself and a source of pride, preventing one from having "eyes that see and ears that hear" the presence of Christ in one's life. It is an attitude which results in an insensitivity to the action of the Holy Spirit, the source of all true enlightenment for the mind and heart. Knowledge is very important but it can only take us so far. We might know about Jesus, but do we truly know him in the sense of having had a deep personal encounter with him?

The Irony of the Epiphany:

January 6 has long been the date the Western church has observed the feast of the Epiphany. From the Greek for “appearance” or “manifestation” (epiphaneia), Epiphany marks the appearance of the Son of God among us in fully human flesh.
In particular, the day has become identified with the visit of the magi, those pagan astrologers who make their surprising appearance in Matthew 2 to worship baby Jesus.
It is not only striking in Matthew 2 that the religiously uncouth magi are seeking to worship the newborn Jewish king, but that the religious leaders of the day are not. The pagan astrologers bow their knee (verses 10–11), but the Jerusalem religious bow their back (verses 3–8).
An Easy Answer for the Religious
Herod’s wickedness is apparent. Insecure, disturbed, deceitful, murderous, of course he does not really intend to honor the child but to kill him. But don’t miss the role of the religious leaders. Verse 4 says that Herod assembled “all the chief priests [Sadducees] and scribes [Pharisees] of the people, [and] he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.”
So here we have the trained theologians of the day. They know all the biblical jargon. They’ve read and re-read and re-re-read the Scriptures—and memorized them. And it’s a piece-of-cake answer for them. “Where is the Messiah to be born?” Bethlehem. Check Micah.
A Strange Indifference
But here’s the tragic thing: They know the answer, but none of them acts on it. None of the trained theologians go to Bethlehem. Dirty shepherds leave their flocks and go to the manger. Pagan astrologers traverse far, hundreds of miles and months on the road. Meanwhile, the religious leaders, full of insider jargon and Bible knowledge and pat answers, don’t bother to make the relatively short five-mile journey to Bethlehem to actually see this baby that all their theological classes should have prepared them for.
Commentator David Turner calls it “the strange indifference” of these Bible-answer-guys who have amassed loads of scriptural knowledge but don’t act on it. Their heads are filled with verses, doctrines, and religious facts, but their hearts reject the very Messiah their training should have pointed them to.
The Danger of Religion
Is the warning here not obvious for those of us who have taken class after class and read Christian book after Christian book? Many of us are all too familiar with the church jargon. We can say all the rights things to appear pious. We’ve memorized Scripture. We know how to sound very churchy in our repeated use of precious theological terms and concepts. But biblical training does not guarantee that our hearts are inclined toward worshiping the true king. Religious language and learning can cloak the kingdom of self.
Note the contrast between the pagan astrologers and the religious establishment. The magi don’t know much, but they rejoice exceedingly with great joy (verse 10) at the true revelation from God they have received, while the religious leaders with all the answers and books about books about books are disturbed along with Herod and refuse to bow the knee in their hearts.
Don’t Take Jesus for Granted
“The religious leaders,” writes Turner, “replete with scriptural knowledge, react with apathy here and with antipathy later [when they crucify Jesus]. The magi, whose knowledge is quite limited, nevertheless offer genuine worship to the born-king of the Jews.”
Note this from the African Bible Commentary (page 1111):
The successors of these [religious] experts would be at odds with the adult Jesus, and in the end they would conspire to put him to death. The most knowledgeable church people often include those who take Jesus for granted. It is a dangerous situation to be in. It is no less a sin than the outright hatred of Herod, for in the end it leads to the same destiny (where Herod failed to kill the baby Jesus, the chief priests succeeded). Our pride in our knowledge of Christ, the Bible, and the church may turn out to be a snare in the end.
For the Religious and the Magi
A word to the modern-day chief priests and scribes, the religious establishment, the well churched: Bible knowledge from all the classes and all the books can be precious fuel for worshiping the true Jesus or a scary excuse for keeping Jesus at arm’s length. Increased knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate into increased worship.
And for those more like the magi, the non-churched “pagan” and de-churched disenfranchised: You may not have any Christian background (or you did and rejected it, maybe because of the religious). You may not know the Christian jargon. You don’t fit nicely into the church-goer box, and yet you’re being drawn to Jesus. And this whole church scene may feel really foreign, but we want you with us. We want the magi. Please don’t let imperfect Christians scare you away from the perfect Christ. Let the astrologers come to Jesus, and do not forbid them, for such is the kingdom of heaven.

(Via Desiring God Blog)

If the Mayans are right, how should we live our last year?

2012-01-05T00:05:00.001Z

My sister wrote the below on one of her blogs.

If the Mayans are right, how should we live our last year?:

What if this were the last New year? How would you plan to live your last year?
There are those who believe the Mayan prediction. It will be interesting to see how it impacts their living, if at all?
St Paul believed he lived in the end times two thousand years ago. His advice was to make no major life changes – if you are married stay married , if single stay single. Instead, he suggested, focus on what’s more immediately important. And what was that – to Paul and to you? And me? This deserves some reflection.

(Via Catholic in 21st Century - Mo)

It reminded me of something I said during a round table after giving a personal testimony/talk (about my experience of evangelising through teaching and pastoral work with young people) during our annual 2-day Study Session at our Mother House in Ploërmel, Brittany. A fellow Brother asked me what aspect of our Founder's (Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais) writing spoke to me most in relation to evangelisation. I replied that for me it was his emphasis on the quality of our human relationships as a fundamental aspect of our apostolate to "make Jesus Christ better known and better loved".

This also links back to a New Testament passage that has been a constant touchstone for me since my studies in Paris back in the 1990s:

John 17:20-23

“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one - I in them and you in me- that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.

If we live our relationships with others (young people, colleagues, fellow Brothers, family, strangers…) in love, a true love that is selfless, joy-giving, God-inspired, then we bear witness most powerfully to the God who has loved each of us since before we were born and who invites us into eternal union with him through his Son.

We should live EACH DAY of our lives with the expression of such love as a priority… but do we?

And what if this year, this day was to be our last? Who is in need of knowing how much God loves them? Into whose lives am I being called to bring the light of God's love?

Love, and the relationships through which we express our love, are really all that matters. CARPE DIEM

Olympic Games selction! :-)

2011-12-23T00:16:00.000Z

Some of you will have seen the following on my Facebook page, but I can't resist sending this out anyway… I'm so excited I could crush a grape (as the immortal Bobby Ball once said):

I'm in!!! Just heard that after the 18 months selection process I've been accepted as an Olympic Games Chaplain!! Place of work = the Sailing Village for all the Sailing events which take place at Weymouth, just down the coast from here. Sailing village = a cruise ship in Weymouth Harbour (heh, heh!!). 8 hr shifts every 24 hours for 3-4 weeks, i.e. including preparations before the start of the Games. Yee-ha!! :-)

Since I've been back in Southampton I've done a bit of crewing on a yacht for someone here who is the brother of a friend of mine from Liverpool. So, I have got quite into sailing the last couple of years... the international competition side too. But I don't really know that much. I'm "winch man" and just do what my captain says!! When I was asked during the application process what my 2 preferred work locations for the Games would be, however, I indeed said London + Weymouth. Will have to seriously gen up now!!

Those final moments with Mum

2011-12-01T14:24:00.001Z

I got back to Southampton on Oct. 23rd after having buried my mother 2 days previously, and went straight into 2 days of trustees meetings for our two schools with Brothers over from Liverpool + France. My cycling friend from Liverpool who rode to Assisi with me, Pete Smith arrived a few days later for some cycling together and to help us with some jobs around the house (inc. the day and a half the 2 of us spent clearing out and tidying up the dumping area that was our cellar workshop). This meant that I was kept occupied at a time when I needed to be. Physical work in particular was of great benefit, but even more so was the presence of a dear friend.

Pete's visit was only possible because I was on half-term that week. Things would have been harder for me if I'd had to go straight back into school. So, the timing of Mum's death was a Godsend for me, having this week to recover + reflect, but be busy enough not to be just sitting + moping.

Indeed, the whole circumstances of Mum's death were blessed, to the extent that I cannot say that her passing has left me depressed, deeply saddened, or in a state of grief. Events seemed to be so tightly choreographed, guided by a divine hand, with God's presence so palpable through it all, that when the tears came they were filled with such a lightness, love, tenderness, sense of wonder and even joy.

First of all, I was able to get to the nursing home 90 mins. before she died, having flown to Dublin within a few hours of getting the news from the home that this time it really did look serious, and then driving straight down to Co. Limerick WELL above the speed limit. I'd warned my cousin Pat Hayes and asked him to go in and be with her whilst I was journeying being there. He had been with his Mum when she died and when I got to the home he started briefing me as to what to expect as time went on and Mum's breathing got weaker. He said, "You watch, she's going to open her eyes and look at you before she goes and it will be the most wonderful thing for you and will stay with you for the rest of your life." At the time this struck me as an odd thing to say... what if she didn't? How would I then feel? Let down? But somehow, he intuitively knew. She did open her eyes, it was wonderful and it will stay with me for ever.

Once she had, he stood up, gripped my shoulders and said, "I'm just going to pop out for a cigarette…" leaving me to be on my own with her in what, again, he intuitively knew were going to be her final moments. I made a "confession" to Mum, thanked her for everything she did for me, etc... and said something to her + God that closed the circle on something she'd said to God when I was born and which she only told me about once I'd become a Brother… "James, I'd been praying so hard for a 5th child that when you were born I said to God, 'You've given me what I asked for… now I give him back to you.'" (Just like so many great women of the Old Testament!) So, at that moment at Mum's bedside I thanked God for having given her to me and I gave her back to him. I then blessed her with the holy water from Mount Melleray that was on the beside table, kissed her on the forehead and sat back down. As I did so, she then took what was to be her last breath. At that point she closed her eyes, hunched her shoulders, as if trying to reach up, and her facial muscles suddenly - just for a few seconds - seemed to come alive again, as if she was awake with her eyes closed, but very relaxed. Then after a moment, she slowly exhaled… and she was gone, but looking as if she had just fallen into a deep, restful, peaceful sleep.

Then, a minute or 2 later, Pat came back in. Nurses followed and we all said a decade of the rosary together, all of us tearful, but all, I think, deep down happy for her. The nursing staff had all grown very fond of our Mum. Everyone did. You couldn't help it. She brought light into the life of every person that she met.

I will be able to remember these moments for ever (at least until Alzheimer's gets me) and feel so privileged to have experienced them. I couldn't have scripted it… no-one could have. This is why my "grieving" has had such a lightness in it too. All light and no dark, just like the beautiful, simple pine wood coffin that we chose for her.

I now pray that whatever happens to Dad may be the best for him. I went over to be with him last weekend and although frail physically (he is 87, now weighs only about 6-7 stone, about half his "fighting weight", and has Parkinson's) mentally he seems ok, though it is clear that the fact of Mum's death seems to be buried deep in his mind. He didn't mention her and neither did I. His way of coping. The way he looks at me though is enough to make me cry... all his old barriers have gone in his current vulnerability and all I see is love. The "butch" butcher is no more and he seems genuinely at peace for the first time that I have known.

He's in God's hands and there is no better place for him to be.

Dad on Oct. 23rd, just before I left to come back to Southampton - the chocolates were for his birthday. We was 87 on the day of mum's funeral.

On Death from "The Prophet", Khalil Gibran

2011-11-16T23:20:00.001Z

Well, in less than 2 hours it will be exactly 1 month since Mum passed away. In the next few days I will endeavour to write here the story of my final minutes with her... blessed, God-given minutes that I think made subsequent events (the funeral, etc...) easier to deal with.

One thing I wanted to share is the text that my brother Shaun (a druid... yes really!) read just before I read the eulogy during the funeral. I had read this text some years back, but had pretty much forgotten it. I think it is one of the most beautiful and intelligent writings on death I have ever read or heard. My most emotional moment during the funeral came when hearing the last 3 lines, especially the very last one. Such a beautiful image and so, so true (according to what my faith tells me).

On Death (from “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran)

Then Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death."
And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand
is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and
expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink form the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

You are more than the choices that you've made

2011-11-04T20:25:00.000Z

... and here's a quote from the 2nd Tenth Avenue North song ("You Are More") whose video I included in the last post: something else that should cheer us up!!

“you are more than the choices that you’ve made
you are more than the sum of your past mistakes
you are more than the problems you create
you’ve been remade
cause this is not about what you’ve done
but what’s been done for you
this is not about where you’ve been
but where your brokenness brings you to
this is not about what you feel
but what He felt to forgive you
and what He felt to make you new.”

Deck the Halls with a bit of fun!

2011-11-04T20:04:00.003Z

A bit of Christmas-spirited cheer from Christian band Tenth Avenue North... to cheer you up on dark November nights :-)

And here is the video to a single of theirs from this time last year: more serious in tone, obviously, but a great video + great song.

Helen Hayes (1929-2011)

2011-10-19T11:27:00.002+01:00

Mum had been very frail for sometime. Fortunately the nursing home phoned me on Sunday afternoon to warn me that her condition was deteriorating rapidly. I flew out to Dublin from Southampton that night and drove straight down (ignoring speed limits), arriving at the home at 11.45pm. She passed away 90 mins. later.

I feel privileged to have been there with her. It was the least thing we could do after she had lived her life so totally for others.

Just before she died she opened her eyes at me. I prayed with her and talked to her, blessed her with holy water, kissed her on the forehead and as I did so she stopped breathing. It was so beautiful. At last she was at peace after so much suffering.

Someone's 43rd birthday meal!

2011-10-09T17:08:00.001+01:00

Before...

and after...

:-)

Audience Award for Ed, Pedro + Greg

2011-10-08T13:53:00.001+01:00

This morning I attended the Youth Film Awards as part of Southampton Film Week. Congratulations to Ed, Greg + Pedro from last year's GCSE Film Studies group for winning the Audience Award for a short film they did last year. Well done guys!!

Here's the film.

Who needs therapy?

2011-09-27T23:14:00.002+01:00

Part of an interesting article over at The Guardian:

Reel therapy: can films make us feel better?

... In 2005, researchers at the University of Maryland school of medicine compared the effects of watching the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan to watching 15 minutes of Kingpin. They concluded that comedy is brilliant for the vascular system. If you're the kind of person who gets grouchy when denied a weekly trip to the cinema, there could be a genuine medical reason. Graef points out that film is "like a kind of active meditation". Meditation has been found to lower blood pressure, aid relaxation, improve concentration and even slow down brain deterioration due to ageing. Regular practitioners report feeling irritable and depressed if forced to go without. If watching a film really is like meditating, that could be why you get prickly when denied it.

My sister on T.S. Eliot + God

2011-09-27T23:09:00.001+01:00

A moving blog post from my sister Mo over at Catholicism in the 21st Century:

T.S. Eliot speaks of God

Catholic in 21st Century - Mo

Friday I was reading a T.S. Eliot poem on-line, Little Gidding, searching for a quote I wanted, and when the words of a friend's passing came to my ears the poem became a prayer.

V
…With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

I have always struggled to understand Eliot but have not, until today, tried to understand him with critical commentaries and scholarly insights. But Friday, when I lost Kitty, the words themselves were enough, speaking of endings and beginnings and oneness. And I thought about revelation and scripture and wondered why the poetry was more consoling than the psalm or the gospel verse. And I wondered: isn't God speaking in each and through each of these?

Writing that struggles to give voice to the mystery of life and death, give name to the Mystery of life and death, give meaning, give hope. Isn't that what scripture is, what poetry is? And I asked: is there poetry in the rituals of our faith? Does God speak through those, or only patriarchy and pomposity? When did we lose the poetry in our sacraments? Perhaps when we replaced poetry with prescription, inspiration with instruction, prophecy with pomposity, mysticism with Magisterium.

Today, even with the reading of a critical commentary, I find myself drawn to the depths of spirituality in Eliot: his struggle, his inspiration, his insight. He was a flawed man and didn't lay claim to the Truth and yet in his images and allusions I find more Truth than in our doctrine. Once Truth is claimed, Truth is lost. The humility of the Christian poet is more illuminating than the arrogant protestations of the Catholic hierarch.

Friday, in the moment of loss, it was poetry that spoke to me of Hope, God, continuation, Oneness. And I feel no need to honor her further than with these words, in which Eliot references the medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich:

All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

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The beauty of our natural world: Astronomy Picture Of The Day - 27 Sep 2011

2011-09-27T22:38:00.001+01:00

This is a quite stunning time-lapse view of our beautiful planet, courtesy of Astronomy Picture Of The Day (apod.nasa.gov/apod/).

27 Sep 2011 - Flying Over Planet Earth

Image Credit: NASA; Acknowledgement: Infinity Imagined

Have you ever dreamed of flying high above the Earth? Astronauts visiting the International Space Station do this every day, circling our restless planet twice every three hours. A dramatic example of their view was compiled in the above time-lapse video from images taken earlier this month. As the ISS speeds into the nighttime half of the globe, familiar constellations of stars remain visible above. An aerosol haze of Earth's thin atmosphere is visible on the horizon as an thin multi-colored ring. Many wonders whiz by below, including vast banks of white clouds, large stretches of deep blue sea, land lit up by the lights of big cities and small towns, and storm clouds flashing with lightning. The video starts over the northern Pacific Ocean and then passes from western North America to western South America, ending near Antarctica as daylight finally approaches.

NB Some images are copyrighted and to use publicly or commercially, permission must be obtained from the owner. APOD text by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell.

This email was created & sent with APODViewer - Available on the App Store

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"So you're here to save the world... Jeez, what a mind job!!"

2011-09-27T11:56:00.002+01:00

I'm giving a workshop on film + spirituality next Saturday at a weekend charismatic event. The workshop will be quite wide-ranging. One aspect will be looking at "saviour" figures. Just out of interest, who are your favourite "saviour" figures on film (apart from actual Jesus movies)? e.g. Neo in "The Matrix" - "So you're here to save the world... Jeez, what a mind job!" (Cypher to Neo).

Interestingly, when you look up this topic on the internet most of the references point to male saviour figures, and to be honest, when I think about it myself I spontaneously do likewise, but there are female saviour figures in the movies (thanks for the h/t Dan!), perhaps the most obvious being (at opposite ends of the cinematic spectrum) Joan of Arc (especially in Carl Dreyer's classic 1928 film "The Passion Of Joan Of Arc") and Lara Croft (Tomb Raider).

Which would you chose and why (male or female)... ?

World Youth Day - Bilbao/Madrid 2011

2011-09-20T21:27:00.001+01:00

It is now 3 weeks since we got back from World Youth Day in Spain and I think I have just about recovered! It was a tremendous experience, made all the more special because our group were so wonderful. It consisted of 18 young people, two brothers including myself and brother Francis and a good friend and youth worker from Liverpool. The youngsters included pupils from our school here in Southampton, former pupils of mine from our school in Liverpool where I worked until two years ago and young people from Lymington in the New Forest. It was wonderful to see the different members of the group get on so well. Firm friendships friendships were made that I think will endure. Indeed some of the Southampton pupils have been to visit the Lymington members since we got back.

The actual trip itself consisted of a week spend in Bilbao (N.W. Spain - Basque region) as guests of the Bilbao diocese and a week in Madrid where the other 1.5 million or so pilgrims congregated. In both cases we stayed on sports hall floors of large secondary schools run by Brothers from my congregation (De La Mennais Brothers). Having help "on the inside" as it were certainly helped. Indeed, some of the young Spanish "voluntarios" in each place had been to our small youth gathering for Brothers' pupils in Spain, France and England that we held in Liverpool at Christmas 2008.

Here is a response that I wrote on a Catholic Herald website comment thread, in response to an article by someone who focused on the "negative" aspects of that person's WYD experience:

I sympathise with the negative comments... yes, lots of things could have been done better... but I also agree with the fact that anyone knowingly going to an event where between 1mill. + 2mill. people are expected should be prepared for hiccups. My main gripe was with the choice of venues for the opening Mass, Papal welcome + Way of the Cross. In Cologne 2005, the opening Mass took place in 3 venues simultaneously (Bonn, Dusseldorf + Cologne)... we were in Bonn and it went brilliantly. In Madrid there was mayhem on the streets... no sound, no loos, no translations on the radio... we managed to storm a single small temporary stand a block away from the "main stage" and at least had seats. Things improved thereafter, inc. police security, road closures, etc...

As regards the final weekend, we took the decision to not do the pilgrimage walk and go straight there by metro after breakfast, arriving in our allotted zone at 11.20a.m. We had been gazumped by those pesky Italians in 2005... not this time. The fire engines hosing us done was an inspired idea, a Godsend. Our group thoroughly enjoyed the experience (we had 6 out of our 21 as young as 14 = 6 girls. A De La Mennais Brothers group from our schools in Southampton + Liverpool) and wished the whole thing could have gone on longer.

Anyone who expected to arrive after 5pm on the Sat. and simply waltz into their zone was being incredibly naïve, no matter the assurances given by the organisers that their places would be reserved. I must say that the police + volunteers near us were absolutely brilliant at keeping out of our zone anyone who didn't have the correct pass. Good thing too, as we were then able to squeeze in a dozen or so of the Westminster diocese group late on who did have the right passes.

So, in my opinion, the positives far outweighed the negatives. To give you a good idea of how much our youngsters seemed to enjoy themselves, just have a look at this selection of photos from the trip:

Jordan being interviewed by Spanish TV during our first day staying in Bilbao (the day before official activities began, hence the beach location!).

After the beach, a visit of the world famous Guggenheim contemporary art gallery.

Lunch in Guernica near Bilbao, site of a massive Nazi (German + Italian) bombing raid in 1937 in support of General Franco's Spanish Civil War campaign. Br. Francis demonstrating his dancing skills... no, actually he is re-enacting how he managed to accidentally kick a busker's hat full of money about 50 yards along an underground metro corridor!

Some of the team relaxing in central Bilbao one evening.

A demonstration of Basque sports. Here the new Olympic sport of tree trunk chopping.

Enjoying the dancing routines provided by our South Korean friends.

Saying goodbye to Erik (front-centre) our wonderful guide + friend in Bilbao.

Making new friends in Madrid.

The Mass to open the final 5 days of activities in Madrid: the crowd 1/4 of a mile away from the altar... joyous mayhem!!

Evening praise + worship in English at a Madrid concert arena. Uplifting + great fun.

Lining the street to see the Pope drive past after arriving at Madrid airport.

At the England + Wales National Office for Vocations stall at the Vocations Fair, where I volunteered to work for 2 afternoons during the Madrid week.

In the pleasantly air-conditioned Madrid metro.

Cuatro Ventos aerodrome for the final weekend with about 1.5 million other young people (prayer vigil Sat. night, Mass Sunday morning, both with the Pope).

An improvised shelter to get some respite from the intense heat (up to 45C in the shade!)

Myself and Br. Francis.

Making new friends.

Heading for home...

:-)

The Team Win formation backpack carrying squad!!

Grace at work in suffering

2011-09-02T15:34:00.002+01:00

I mentioned earlier today that I feel our Mum is willingly going through an extended Calvary experience for the sake of our family, Dad first of all, offering it up for us. I do not pretend to understand suffering or want to suggest that it is in itself "good", or to be wished for. It is not. Though I do believe that good can come from it through the way that a person lives their suffering.

Mum seems to be drinking just enough water and medication to keep herself alive for now. She has been bed-bound for nearly 5 years now, due in part to the cumulative effects of epilepsy drugs she has had to take for nearly 30 years, following a brain tumour which left her epileptic. She has had many highs and lows these past 4 years (we thought she was near her end back in 2007... that's a whole other story - and an incredible one at that - which I hope to get round to telling sometime), but this time it does look different. She is barely conscious, has refused all solid foods for many weeks, drinks very little and is only sipping a minimum amount of fluids and epilepsy drugs. She has been under the care of a palliative team for a couple of months now. She is also having regular massive fits, sometimes lasting over 4 hours. If it wasn't for an incredibly strong heart, she would have died long ago.

Having been on a subcutaneous drip during these past 2 months, this has had to be removed. She therefore runs the risk of dehydration. Her veins are now collapsing. The doctors have asked that we recommend that if she did go into cardiac arrest that we allow them not to resuscitate her. This has been accepted by the family.

It would seem that she is enduring a very slow, drawn out death and probably very painful death. As you can imagine, this is also very hard for our family to deal with, especially living so far away from both our parents.

I can imagine that for Dad this is a kind of purgatory, and I mean that seriously... seeing Mum going through this is I think having a purifying effect on him. Everything is being stripped away from him, all his defences, all the comfort blanket defences of possessions and money, etc... (even if he hasn't been able to make active use of these for a few years now due to being himself wheelchair-bound through Parkinson's, psychologically he has still been clinging to them) and his wounds are being healed... till all that's left is love, and especially his love for her. I've seen it in his face and demeanour the last few times I have been with them.

Our mother is a real saint... a REAL saint. I can't elaborate here, but trust me. She is a truly remarkable person and one whose faith is greater than that of any person I know. God has worked through her already at so many different times in her life (including back in 2007, when through her a reconciliation occurred between 2 members of our family) and I know he is working through her now. But the waiting... waiting... is very hard.

Two of my brothers and sisters are going over to be with them both in a few days time. I will probably be the next to go over soon after them. But, only God knows when it will be time for her to go. Maybe this will only happen when Dad is ready to let her go. Maybe God has plans for her yet. All we can do is pray for her, for them both, for the whole family, and entrust us all to God's caring embrace.

Let his will be done.

Benedict XVI: art is a doorway to God

2011-09-02T14:57:00.001+01:00

An interesting article (with which I heartily agree) quoting Pope Benedict's weekly address at the General Audience in Castel Gondolfo (his summer residence just outside Rome). I would also add film to the list of arts that he refers to.

Benedict XVI: art is a doorway to God

Beautiful art is not just for cultural enrichment but is an important way to experience God and become aware of the human thirst for the infinite, Pope Benedict XVI has said.

A sculpture, a painting, a poem or a piece of music can arouse a feeling of joy when it becomes apparent it is something more than just a chunk of marble, a canvas covered with colours, or words or notes on a page, he said.

“It’s something bigger, something that speaks and touches your heart; it carries a message and lifts the spirit,” he said as he held his weekly general audience in the town square at Castel Gandolfo.

“Art is like an open doorway to the infinite, toward a beauty and truth that go beyond everyday reality,” he told 3,000 visitors and pilgrims present for the audience...

Go here for the rest of the article.

End of summer musings...

2011-09-02T14:45:00.002+01:00

Well, it's been over a week since we got back from World Youth Day and I don't feel as if I have really got anything done since then. I suppose that's not such a bad thing in itself as it has been a pretty action-packed summer and I certainly needed some time to just relax and recharge the batteries before the onslaught of the new school year.

I have, however, also been away for another three days in the meantime at our Mother House in Brittany for our annual gathering to celebrate the jubilees of Brothers who have spent 50, 60 or 70 years in religious life. This year our very own Brother Augustine from our community here in Southampton is celebrating 70 years in religious life. And Gus, as he is known, travelled with myself and Bro. Francis for the celebration last weekend and stayed on in France to do his annual retreat with another 30 or so Brothers.

Br. Gus (left), aged 85, last Christmas

Another - more decisive reason - for not having got much done this past week is the fact that my mother is very, very poorly. In fact, she has been at, or near to, death's door quite a few times now in the past few months. Indeed, I was half expecting a phone call from one of the family saying that mum had passed away while I was doing my sponsored cycle to its easy at the end of May. However, she is still with us, but for how long the only God knows. It would seem that she is going through her own extended calvary and, knowing her, offering it up for our family.

What makes things all the more difficult for us, her children is that both her and our father are in Ireland in a nursing home, the two of them having retired back to their country of origin over 20 years ago. We cannot simply pop in and see them when we want. Two of my brothers and sisters are going over together to see our parents in a few days - but especially to be with mum - and I am on red alert to join them if it is felt necessary. In this context it is not easy to try and focus one's mind on the coming school year and get the necessary jobs done in preparation for our first day back on Monday. But I'm getting there.

I hope to put an article on here before Monday with photos about our 2-week World Youth Day adventure which was a truly fantastic experience, in large part thanks to the attitude of the 18 young people, aged between 14 and 23, that we took with us from Southampton, Liverpool and Lymington. More on that later.

Summer fun

2011-08-04T16:30:00.001+01:00

Not been up to much so far this summer... 10 days in Lourdes (retreat + international Mennaisian pilgrimage to celebrate the 150th anniversary of our Founder’s death), a week cycling round Brittany with partner in crime Pete Smith (Southampton to Assisi wasn't enough for us), now preparing for 12 days in Spain with youth group for World Youth Day, leaving on Tues... then there's our annual Province celebration in Brittany at the end of the month…

… and I’ve started planning for our next Educational Project trip at Easter 2012: this time to Haiti.

Join the Brothers and see the world, hey… :-)

When Pete and I got back from Brittany (430 miles cycling in 5 days, with some long, well lubricated midday or evening meals in Brothers’ communities) we felt we were in need of some exercise and so set about clearing out a “store room” in the school that is to be turned into the Chaplain’s new office/base. It took us a day + a half (4 car loads to the skip). Here’s a couple of snaps taken by a delighted Fr. Mike… you couldn’t move in there to start with (notice the cycling tan on my legs -ahem!). More photos to follow from my days in Lourdes and the cycle round Brittany.

Downhere - new album next month

2011-07-12T23:05:00.001+01:00

One of my favourite bands, Dove award-winning Canadian Christian group Downhere, have a new album out soon. There are lots of things I love about their songs. They manage to maintain that delicate balance between their songs being accessible and uplifting (at times hymn-like) and yet unpredictable and artistic (in the sense of creative musical arrangements with little twists that take you somewhere new musically...), without being on the one hand cheesy and on the other overly virtuosic (just for the sake of it). Their lyrics are direct, genuine, heartfelt. As for the 2 singers, Marc Martel + Jason Germain, a lot has been said about how well they complement each other. Well, it's very true. They are very different, and yet blend so well.

Here's last year's "You're not alone":

And from the forthcoming album, "On The Altar Of Love"...

Downhere's music video for the song, "Let Me Rediscover You"

Click here for Downhere's website.

Cycle diary (part 3 of 3) - Southampton to Assisi

2011-06-24T08:10:00.001+01:00

Day 9 - Cascina (just east of Pisa - 130 miles)

Our toughest day so far. Morning = constant up + down over the steep headlands of the Ligurian coast in searing heat... after 5 hours of this we were wishing for the Mont Ventoux. Then when I tried to find a flatter road right on the coast I only succeeded in wasting over an hour in the early afternoon and adding about 10 miles to our journey. More important was the time wasted. We eventually had to double back. Felt so sorry for Pete with his painful ribs. He could have really torn strips off me, but instead he simply said that I had done so well navigating for 8 days, I was bound to make a bad choice at some point and not to worry. Now there's a true friend, and boy did I need one right at that moment. Self-confidence very low.

The intense heat required drastic action...

This cock-up of mine would, however, have a serious knock on effect for us later in the day. Once we got onto flatter roads I basically got my head down on the front and we pushed as hard as we could for the remainder of the afternoon + early evening, just making the one stop of any length in about 6 hours riding. When we did make that stop at a Lidl to get supplies (as we so often did during the 10 days as a whole), I nearly collapsed when I got off the bike... heat exhaustion + dehydration + guilt for what I'd messed up earlier making me push on longer than I should have without stopping. I slumped to the floor, hyperventilating and started retching... an empty stomach, so nothing came. It's a feeling I've had before and know that it does wear off once you get fluids + energy back into you. After initially checking I wasn't going to completely expire on him, Pete went in to do his shopping and let me recover in my own time... 10 mins. later I went in and joined him in the cool of the supermarket... some drinking yoghurt, cereal bars and iced tea later and I felt I could just about get on the bike again. 30 mins. riding later and I was on the front flying again... a good thing too, as we still had lots of miles to do.

My favourite photo of the whole trip: Pete caught unawares in Pisa after an afternoon of hard riding (he says he was posing! Yeah, right! :-)

Tonight we basically pushed on as far as we could into the night, eventually totalling 130 mls for the day by 9.30pm - we should have done about 140 and so had to cancel our planned accommodation again and find somewhere else to stay. This we ended up doing east of Pisa when it was getting dark, eventually finding a lovely B&B "chambres d'hôtes"-style off the beaten track, where we were welcomed in with open arms by the owner, a very interesting bloke who gave us a heart-warming discount.

But our adventures have left us with a bit of a "mountain" to climb on the last day: well in excess of 150 miles, possibly over 160 if we are unable to take the direct road to Perugia and on to Assisi which looks like a dual carriageway on the map, but could be a "no go" for cyclists. This would require us to zig-zag through the Tuscany hills. We'll see... but hey, it's the last day. When a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do....!! :-)

Day 10 - Assisi (164 miles)

Pre-departure on our final day.

WHAT A DAY!! Pete was certainly "up for it" this morning. Once I had led us through some fiddly easterly roads into a headwind for a couple of hours, Pete went on the front (about time too!) on the long straight road to Siena. After my exertions the day before (+ this morning), I had a real job keeping up with him. But I could understand what he was doing... we had a VERY long day ahead of us and it was a good idea to try and get as many miles under our belts in rapid time while we could in the morning. And we did... much more so than on the previous 2 days. However, once we got past Siena, the roads got more hilly again as we zig-zgged through the Tuscany hills, at times reminiscent of the North Wales hills that the 2 of us know so well. Beautiful, quiet roads, but slower progress.

Pete got to see what he considered a typically Italian scenic view (lines of conifers leading up to hilltop settlements, rolling fields, etc...). Time for a photo...

... and here it is.

Then we decided to see if we could go the direct way to Perugia + beyond... No luck. The dual carriageway marked on the map now had the status of a motorway. However, we did chance our arm for a few miles, given than we were desperate to try and get to Assisi before it got too dark. But there was just so little room at the side of the road for us to ride, otherwise I think we would have persevered and saved ourselves well over an hour. As it was, we came off at Perugia and it was then down to me + the GPS on my phone to find the most direct way to Assisi that didn't take the expressway. Not an easy task, given that for much of the last 10 miles we rode in darkness on unlit country roads without adequate lights on our bikes. I have to thank Pete for his encouragement + support during these final miles. I realised I was putting him through the mill, especially as he was having even more trouble than I was to see the road and his ribs were still causing him much discomfort. But he was all for us pushing on to Assisi and making sure we got there on the day we'd said we'd get there, rather than compromising and staying the night in a hotel nearer Perugia, even if it meant arriving after 10pm (which is what happened).

Those prayers I mentioned a few days ago worked their magic again... once we eventually got to our destination and found the street that contained our planned B&B in the lower part of Assisi (St. Mary of the Angels) a couple of miles outside the old town on the hill, I immediately noticed a youngish man starting to pull down a window shutter. He saw us and called out in excellent English, "Is that James?" With buckets full of relief instantly coursing through my veins I breathlessly shouted back "YES!!" "Oh, we were so worried about you!" They had waited for us all evening, but were about to go back to where they lived 4 miles away in the hills, having given up hope that we were going to ever turn up. I had tried to phone them during the day to warn that we would be late, but the number I had taken from their website was unfortunately no longer accurate. It turned out that the husband was a Music teacher + choral director. When we walked into their apartment B&B we were welcomed by the gentle sounds of Glen Gould playing Bach's "Goldberg Variations" on cd, the piece originally written for an insomniac patron of Bach to give him something to play whilst awake during his long, sleepless nights. Somehow I don't think we'll have any trouble sleeping tonight!!

Rest day (6 miles by bus + 1 mile or so walking)

Our body clocks still being attuned to early rising, we were both fully awake well before 6am, 2 hours before breakfast. So we pottered around in the bedroom, did a few odd jobs mending bits of gear + clothing, wrote a bit in our journals, and started to take stock of what we'd achieved... but to be honest our brains were pretty much frazzled, so we mainly just chilled.

The Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels.

Inside the Basilica, the chapel where St. Clare received the religious habit from St. Francis, around which was built the Basilica.

After a long, relaxed breakfast we ambled down the road to the bus stop that would take us up the hill into the old town of Assisi. We took our time strolling through the town, visiting some of the many churches on the way, admiring the lovely old brick work of the dwellings that lined the narrow, winding streets, both of us surprised + delighted that there seemed to be relatively few people around. Some photos and a smoked ham + cheese panini later (just for me. Pete wasn't feeling hungry) we headed for a bus stop to make the short journey back to our dwelling and a 2 hour afternoon siesta, after which we both seemed pretty much back to our usual selves, though I was soon to be in for a surprise...

Pete Smith, Man of Action!!

The Basilica of St. Francis in the late afternoon.

Two weary, but happy travellers.

Inside the Basilica.

A little bike maintenance in the cellar of our B&B.

One of Pete's causes célèbres during the 10 days as a whole was the invasion of McDonalds across Europe, so imagine my surprise when he suggested that rather than sit and order a pizza in the noisier central part of lower Assisi, surrounded by jabbering tourists + pilgrims, a pizza that we could end up waiting a good while for, he'd rather that we buy a quick carbohydrate (+ fat!) take out fix from the local McDonalds, and sit outside in the cool, drizzly evening air to eat it. I laughingly agreed, so long as I had his permission to take a photo of him in this incriminating situation underneath the McDonalds sign. Deal!

:-)

Departure day (23 miles)

Another early rise well before 6am, but this time Pete came up with a stroke of genius. He suggested that we ride up into Assisi before breakfast to

a) visit the town when it was at nearly empty altogether with minds more receptive than they were the day before

b) take in San Damiano just outside old Assisi (a Franciscan monastery on the site of the first Franciscan community founded by St. Francis + his followers)

c) give our legs a stretch before the ride to Perugia airport

d) and perhaps most importantly, cycle up to the Basilica of St. Francis, because I had always said that for me our ride would end at the door of the Basilica in the old town and we hadn't actually ridden up to it yet.

So at 6a.m. we set off up the hill on our bikes. It was a lovely, lovely experience and I got some very nice photos.

Thank you, Pete.

Approaching old Assisi by bike at 6a.m.

San Damiano monastery

A statue of St. Francis in prayer at San Damiano.

The Basilica in the early morning.

After breakfast back at the B&B we headed for the airport about 6-7 miles away... all in all, the journey back to Southampton wasn't as smooth as we would have liked: a few "jobsworths" in Perugia airport and Stansted airport railway station did their best to make our last day a miserable one, but fortunately there were also some very helpful people about, e.g. those that let us put our bikes on 2 coaches (down below with the suitcases): Stansted to Liverpool St. Station in London (National Express) and Victoria to Southampton (Greyhound coaches). We eventually made it back to So'ton at about 8 p.m. to a hero's welcome and a well-deserved glass of champagne from Br. Francis. Ouf!!!

......

3 days later Pete rode 193 miles in one day back from his sister's in Andover to his own house in Birkenhead. Talk about tough as old boots!!!!!! :-)

THE END

Cycle diary (part2 of 3) - Southampton to Assisi

2011-06-24T00:35:00.001+01:00

Day 7 - Menton (107 miles)

Early morning view from Ganagobie monastery.

The monastery garden - very Mediterranean in character.

Pete trying out an alternative form of locomotion...

The entrance to the monastery church which dates back to the 12th century.

Once we'd come down from Ganagobie monastery's beautiful mountaintop location to the Durance valley below, a headwind stayed with us all day through the Alps, funnelling down each valley we rode through: the first few kms heading north, then a long stretch east eventually following the Var river. At highest point of the day - the Col de Toutes Aures at 1160mtrs - we were almost blown off our bikes by the force of the wind coming over the mountain pass. We've never known a wind like it.

Riding through the Alps...

Lunch at Lidl.

Then all the way down the Var valley to Nice (east then south), another headwind. Couldn't profit from the descent. Had to fight the wind all the way. By the time we got to Nice Pete was in a bad way with his back after his fall in the bedroom. Sitting behind me for shelter, riding through the pain. But a wonderful welcome from a community of enclosed sisters at Menton on Med coast beyond Nice. One is a trained nurse and gave Pete a special bandage to put on his ribs whilst in bed. There would be so much to tell about our arrival there... let's just say we made friends with the local Gendarme (policemen) at a rainy, cold Menton railway station whilst waiting for 2 of the nuns to ferry us and our bikes in 2 trips up to their mountaintop community 3-4 miles away.

Pete's injury seeming more and more like a cracked rib, but his support + encouragement continues to be priceless. I'm worried about how he is going to feel tomorrow. But he's tough and I get the feeling he would only abandon if he really felt incapable of turning the pedals on his bike. However, right now I need to make sure that he's ok. So we'll see what tomorrow brings...

I knew this would be my toughest sponsored ride yet, but I am very happy with how I've come through physically. Knees = pretty good apart from in rain + cold. Achilles likewise. Shoulders + neck bad for a couple of days only. Now fine. Main problem has been last 2 days. Sciatica type numb pain in right buttock + then down back of whole leg into the side of my foot. Relieved by riding out of saddle. Also, left hand + wrist goin numb. Pete has something similar. 107 miles today in all.

Day 8 - Recco, Italy (127 miles)

Well, Pete seemed to have got a decent night's sleep despite the pain in his ribs (the Sister's bandage seemed to help) and he felt well enough to set off as planned this morning. I was very relieved.

The morning view from Menton convent.

In the descent from the convent, heading for Menton.

Ascension Day... at least in Italy, where they haven't moved it to the nearest Sunday. 127 miles covered. A day of riding along the Franco-Italian Mediterranean coastline... pretty much one long procession of Riviera resorts with occasional headlands to climb over. 2 smelly cyclists passing through the playground of the rich + famous and those who just want to look like they are rich + famous... Pete + I fell into neither category, though we weren't impressed by the standard of bike that the average Italian trundles around on.

Terrific cycle track along the coast through Genoa.

Took great pleasure in overtaking "serious" local cyclists in smart lycra who "ride like tarts" according to Pete. Ascension Day celebrations seemed to include local road race cycling events and a fascinating cycling proficiency competition for very young road racers in full lycra gear riding racing bikes and for which the police had simply closed the main road through the centre of one particular town. We ended up cancelling our planned B&B accommodation for tonight which was further inland (in the hills), so that we could stay near the coast (= a slightly more direct and hopefully slightly flatter route... still conscious of Pete's injury). Found a very nice little hotel in Recco, east of Genoa with a lovely view of the steep-sloped headland that we will have to start by climbing tomorrow. Well, at least it will give us a nice warm up early doors!

The view from our hotel at Recco.

... final part to follow...

Invocation 2011

2011-06-19T22:51:00.000+01:00

Been to Invocation 2011 vocations festival this weekend. Another great success after last year's debut. Inspiring to be with all those young people, priests, seminarians and fellow religious. Uplifting, hope-filled, joyful.

http://invocation2011.wordpress.com/ http://www.invocation.org.uk/home.html

Cycle diary (part 1 of 3) - Southampton to Assisi

2011-06-16T00:43:00.002+01:00

Here's the first part of my diary that I kept each night during our sponsored ride after we arrived at our accommodation:

Prelude: Southampton to Portsmouth (for the overnight ferry), via Wickham (25 miles)

Here's us setting off from St. Mary's College.

We called in to see my good friend Fr. Andrew McMahon at Park Place Diocesan Pastoral Centre in Wickham on the way (it was Fr. Andrew, himself a Franciscan, who inspired me to ride to Assisi with tales of his solo HIKE there about 30-40 yrs. ago). We also called in to see my Aunt Margo + Uncle Ron in Gosport.

Day 1 - Saint-Malo to Solesmes Monastery (Benedictine) (110 miles)

Off the ferry at around 8.30am, then a short ride to our Brothers' community in Saint-Malo (where we have a primary school) for a lovely breakfast. Easy terrain, Pete having to get used to riding on the right. At least that was his excuse for sitting behind me all day... :-) that and the fact that I'm the navigator.

Our first pee stop in France. These often doubled as photo opportunities, as you will see...

Arrived at Solesmes about 1hr earlier than expected at about 5.45pm having done 110 miles, thanks to a cross/tailwind and hard riding to make most of it. Both feeling good. Ritual hand-washing from the Prior of Solesmes Monastery as new guests just before going in to supper in with the 30 or so monks in their large, long refectory together with another 15 or so guests/retreatants. Pete a little unprepared for the rapid pace at which supper was eaten: quails wings (perhaps... they were tiny!) with pale green beans that Pete mistook for pasta. A nice walk around the grounds afterwards (see photo opposite).

Solesmes Benedictine Monastery: one of the most important monasteries in the whole of France.

Day 2 - Sanctuaire de Pellevoisin (113 miles)

Another day of easy terrain: undulating, but nothing too steep and with the possibility of keeping in a big gear and powering over the little "bonks". Arrived at Pellevoisin at 5.05pm having set off 7.30am. Tail/crosswind again but more tail. 113 miles 9 less than planned thanks to taking a few small lanes that made the route more direct. An even faster average speed than yesterday: just under 17 mph. We were very happy with that. Pete had our 1st puncture during the morning, otherwise no drama.

Pete having a stretch at the first pee stop of the day!

Supper at Pellevoisin sanctuary with a group of Belgian pilgrims.

Day 3 - Abbaye de Bellaigue, Virlet (108 miles)

Today we headed through the lower hills of the Massif Central mountain region of central France, with it getting hillier the further we went. High point at 625m. Light head/crosswind but not too much of a problem. It was very sunny + warm: max. at about 28C. The shape of things to come? 14.5mph average = very good considering the wind + terrain.

Guess what Pete's doing? :-)

But, Bellaigue monastery ended up not being where Google Maps had said it was. Had to go about 6 miles further west from our route. In the end this may well add about another 10 miles to tomorrow's stage. Bellaigue is a very traditionalist monastery... they sing in Latin at all their times of prayer together during the day. But, the community is flourishing: about 30 monks, the average age seeming about 30. A warm welcome from the Guestmaster. We ended up having a very convivial evening meal (accompanied by some pretty potent semi-fortified white wine) with Portuguese workers who were there to help renovate the old buildings of this long disused monastery that goes back many hundreds of years, but hadn't been occupied since the time of Napoleon until this community moved in about 10 years ago.

Day 4 - Le Puy En Velay (138 miles)

A tough day in searing heat + sunshine: 30C in the shade. Today 2,300m vertical altitude climbing in 138 mls. to Le Puy En Velay, including a couple of minor mountain passes. Could end up being one of our toughest days. But we're through it. No major injuries or mechanicals.

Arriving at Le Puy En Velay the back way.

Unfortunately, the accommodation wasn't a true B&B as advertised on the website where I did the booking, but rather a youth hostel-style pilgrims' accommodation (or army barracks, as Pete suggested). A bit of a nightmare to find it too up a load of steep cobbled streets. We both could have done with something a bit more homely + comfortable... just one of those things. I think I'll look at tomorrow's planned accommodation (a monastery) before I go to bed tonight and maybe cancel it in favour of something a little more comfortable (... a hotel?). I know this isn't a "holiday" as such, but I think we deserve a little more comfort tomorrow with all the effort we are putting in... call it a moral booster! :-) After all, It's 2 monasteries the next 2 nights (though I know that at least one of them will be perfectly fine = Ganagobie).

Day 5 - Vaison-La-Romaine (121 miles)

121 miles covered. Very strong headwind climbing to top of the Ardeche region this morning. Great high-speed descent though down Ardeche valley, just the kind I really like (topped 40 mph a few times). A bit disappointed that I only managed to overtake one car though :-)

Descending the Ardèche valley

A typical lunch stop! (Lidl or Aldi did the trick... lunch for 2 for about 5€!!)

Drama at the end of the day... the rear pannier stem on my bike snapped just as we arrived at our Hotel this evening. Could have been so much worse if it had happened during the descent and fallen into my rear wheel!! Friendly hotel staff have given us the address of a local bike shop. Will go there first thing tomorrow to buy a new pannier rack. As we climb the Mont Ventoux tomorrow (pannier replacement pending) I'd planned a shorter day - 80 mls - so, despite the late start we will hopefully still be able to get to our planned destination in good time can. It was also fortunate that it happened today and not as we were climbing the Ventoux... And to think that we were originally going to stay in a monastery in the middle of nowhere tonight, i.e. with no bike shop for miles around! I think the prayers of my friends + fellow Brothers came up trumps for us here.

My broken rear pannier rack.

Vaison-la-Romaine old town where Pete + I found a nice pizzeria for supper.

Day 6 - Ganagobie (80 miles)

More drama yesterday evening... Pete slipped after getting out of the shower and fell on the sliding rail of the patio door... banged his ribs badly. Looked painful. He had a rough night I think. Managed to buy and fit a new rear pannier this morning and fit my existing pannier bag to it.

"No, Pete, we can't afford this too!"

Pete falling for a £5,000 one piece moulded carbon fibre bike.

Left Vaison at about 9.40am. Not too bad, all things considered. 21km climbing the Ventoux in drizzle (av. gradient 8%)... actually made it much easier. As expected, Pete got to the top long before me. My extra 3 stone in body weight + extra gear in my panniers/handlebar bag compared to Pete aren't quite balanced out by my relative youthfulness. Plus, he's just bloomin' fit, much more naturally fit than me and does far more riding than me during the year. I do more than hold my own though outside of the longer, steeper climbs when I lead the way so as to navigate. Must say I'm proud to be riding with him. When we tell people what we are doing they look at Pete as if they can't believe an "old guy" like him could do such a thing, but how wrong they are. He's not just super fit, he's as tough as old boots!

Shivering, but happy, having made it up the Ventoux (1,912m).

It was freezing on top of the Ventoux and poor old Pete had to wait about 20 mins till I got there, doing the climb in about 2hr10 to my 2hr30. Also freezing and very windy in the dangerous descent. Couldn't make the most of it. Both of us had to keep stopping as we were shaking so much from the cold and weren't able to hold the handlebars straight. Ended the day with a steep 4km climb to Ganagobie Monastery where I did a 3-week retreat back in 1996 to prepare for my perpetual profession (final vows). An emotional return for me. A wonderful welcome from the monks just as they were finishing supper, many of whom I recognised... 80 miles.

... to be continued...

The sound of hope... according to Building 429

2011-05-10T19:40:00.001+01:00

I came across this testimony today by the lead singer of Building 429 and it really struck a chord (sorry!) with me... what is the sound of hope for you?

"Simon's Cat"... for Easter

2011-04-22T22:28:00.001+01:00

Here's a very cute Easter edition of "Simon's Cat" :-)

Matt Maher on the Last Supper

2011-04-21T22:13:00.001+01:00

Thoughtful, important words on the Last Supper from increasingly successful Catholic recording artist and worship leader (for the LifeTeen youth movement) Matt Maher (whom I met once at a LifeTeen Music Ministers conference in Phoenix, Arizona). A very nice guy and great songwriter/musician.

Simon Of Cyrene

2011-04-19T22:46:00.001+01:00

As we are approaching the Easter Triduum, here once again is a link to the story about Simon Of Cyrene that I wrote on retreat many years ago. I still find it speaks to me, so I share it here in case it may speak to others too.

http://brojames.blogspot.com/2009/04/simon-of-cyrene-short-story-for-easter.html

Carpe diem!!

2011-04-19T22:39:00.000+01:00

This is an ad for a Taiwanese bank, but if they made it into a feature film, I'd go and see it!!

I consider myself to be incredibly lucky to call "friend" a number of older people (within my congregation and beyond) who have the same spirit, lust for life and sense of wonder as these guys and they are an inspiration to me.

I've got another long-distance sponsored cycle coming up for Haiti at the end of May and for the first time on such a ride I won't be alone. (Southampton to Assisi, 10 days, 1,130 miles, including the famed Mont Ventoux, south of the Alps, 13 miles of solid climbing at an average of 8% gradient, with our bags on our bikes!!). A 65 year-old cycling sparring partner and friend with whom I rode on and off for 15 years around North Wales and Cheshire (when I lived in Liverpool), Pete Smith (retired teacher from London, known to all as "Cockney Pete" in the Birkenhead North End C.C.), has decided to ride with me. He is someone who gets out between 3 and 5 times a week to do rides of between 50 and 100 miles, and not just any old ride. I'm talking about North Wales hills and mountains. So he'll be perfectly able to cope with the 10 days riding I'll be throwing at him. If I'm anything like the rider he is when I'm his age...

Here's me and Pete in North Wales 3 years ago during a club weekend in N. Wales.

And Pete in full flow on the same weekend.

Since 2001, a Mars Odyssey :-)

2011-04-13T00:44:00.001+01:00

This breathtaking image is not from here on Earth. It's a composite image of part of the Martian landscape put together from photos taken by the Mars Odyssey probe which was sent to orbit Mars back in 2001 and is still going strong today. Here's the beginning of the Universe Today article from which I pinched the image

10 Years of the Mars Odyssey by NANCY ATKINSON on APRIL 7, 2011 This view across western Candor Chasma on Mars was created with data from the 2001 Mars Odyssey. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University, R. Luk A 2001 space odyssey indeed! On this day in 2001, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft launched, and now, 3,333 days later, the robotic spacecraft is still going strong. In orbit around the Red Planet, Mars Odyssey has collected more than 130,000 images and continues to send information to Earth about Martian geology, climate, and mineralogy. Last December, Mars Odyssey broke the record for the longest-serving spacecraft at Mars, besting the Mars Global Surveyor, which operated in orbit of Mars from 1997 to 2006.

For the rest of the article click here.

Disaster movies + real life - pt. 2

2011-04-04T19:12:00.001+01:00

The below extended passage from an article in The Independent newspaper back in 2004 by David Thomson contains some very interesting points that echo those from my own article. In a third article on this theme, I will look at the idea I referred to in "pt. 1" about the burden of responsibility to "save the world" borne by characters in disaster movies and relate it to the Easter story.

Click here for the full article from The Independent.

Yes, we fear all the great natural disasters: such as global warming raising the level of the seas; the ozone hole making a desert of the Home Counties; the woeful kind of accident (the Intelligence fuck-up) that could let off a nuclear holocaust. But, just like cocksure kid gangsters, we sneer at all those risks, too, and ask the film business to bring 'em on.
We don't really know yet what the use of slaughter as a regular part of "entertainment" is doing to us. We don't know whether we are smart or ironic enough to handle it. There is a case that being allowed to look at so many levels of cinematic torture or cruelty only builds indifference to such things. Maybe we are habituated to TV coverage of 40,000 earthquakes in the "other" part of the world, just as 800,000 dead in Rwanda 10 years ago was more tolerable, more understandable even, than 800,000 dead on the Isle of Wight. We live in scary times, when we have so much to see, and such power of choice. Indeed, there were those who saw the footage of 9/11 "live" and wondered why the early-morning news shows in America were showing clips from Die Hard films.
Don't forget the perilous balance in that ironic or entertaining point of view. And don't minimise the remarkable way in which the most recent advances in film technology - especially computer-generated imagery - have given expression to every archaic scientific prognostication. It is no longer "what if", but "look at this", and on the strength of the trailer, I'd say The Day After Tomorrow has visions of disaster (of unrestrained weather striking civilisation and causing a new ice age) that are as awesome as those films of wax models melting in the first atom-bomb blasts. This movie will show us something we've never seen before, in a way that is not just credible, but persuasive. What that will do for the larger debate over climate change in our time remains to be seen. But the warning of mayhem will be as potent as it is beautiful.
I know "beautiful" is a chilling or creepy word to use if we are asked to look at the subsiding of skyscrapers and the washing- away of streets. Yet I feel it is the right word. For there is a lyricism, a satisfaction, a voluptuousness in destruction on screen that is as great as any that may come from construction, development or erection. And I think it has to do with our most profound loathing or mistrust of order. Yes, most of us are urbanites now, struggling with city problems and enjoying the facilities, but inwardly resentful of so much steel and concrete, so much that is unnatural. Weather is the return of nature, and while heat and rain can be killing things, still a part of us feels cut off from nature, deprived of it, and even betrayers of its pure force. You don't have to see God in that nature, but you can still believe that nature deserves its revenge.
Just as there is enormous charm in those films that show the modern city emptied out - think of Vanilla Sky or 28 Days Later - so there is nothing less than beauty in the abandonment of order. Recently, in America, a large sports stadium in Philadelphia was blown up so that a new and bigger one could be built. The dynamite was placed around the arena like the line of a tune, and the film of its collapse was intoxicating. Television showed it over and over again, as if hypnotised by the sight. All that radiance or perverse miraculousness is at work in disaster films. You can feel it in things as diverse as the Alien's first appearance in that series, breaking out of Ian Holm's (err... that's John Hurt, actually says Bro. James!!) chest; or in the sinister gathering of birds in Alfred Hitchcock's film.
There has been a tendency in disaster films (or "sci-fi projections") for a rather trite moralising that says that we, WE, are to blame for the disaster. So, in a lot of films from the 1950s - such as Them! or Creature from the Black Lagoon - there is the thought that nuclear fallout has bred giant ants to threaten LA, or finned creatures who still gave Marilyn Monroe a thrill. I find that kind of "explanation" less interesting than the unrevealed "plan" in The Birds; the purpose behind The Exterminating Angel; or the pure destruction urging the Alien on. We're guilty enough, surely. To be alive at the turn of this millennium was to have to accept some responsibility for everything from Auschwitz to Rwanda. But just as there is something spectacular in destruction, I think we are more moved if the meaning is implacable but not underlined.
Since the late Nineties, we have seen a great surge of disaster movies bigger even than the Seventies, when we had The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and Jaws. We have earned such scolding by our conduct on the planet, just as much as we now have the technology to deliver the spectacle without any seams showing. And it may be that a fearsome competition develops between the disasters of fiction and the disasters coming our way on the broadcast news. This could be a gruesome climax to our whole civilisation, and one that plays to quiet contemplation rather than lamentation. For, after all, there are reasons enough to wonder whether our Earth has earned its place or its life. And reasons to wonder whether silence and stillness might not be the most merciful conclusions.

Disaster movies and real life

2011-03-30T11:07:00.000+01:00

In recent months I've been living in parallel worlds of desctruction and violence: one, the real world as portrayed by Sky News, BBC 24, CNN, etc... where natural disasters, warfare and the danger of nuclear catastrophe have been dominating screen time, and the second being a world of destruction of apocalyptic (or near apocalyptic) proportions, where corny dialogue, bad (or at best dubious) science, crimes against cinematic good taste, plot and character cliches, etc... reign supreme.

And I am beginning to wonder what it is doing to my soul.

I jest not.

I am referring to the fact that for the last few months I have been teaching about the Disaster Movie genre to my Yr. 11 students (15-16 year-olds) as a compulsory element of their GCSE Film Studies course.I would be lying if I said that the viewing or reviewing of such "classics" of the genre as "The Core", "Dante's Peak", "2012" and "Skyline" had not afforded me any guilty pleasures. The most enjoyment has come from the older films such as "The Towering Inferno" (actually a very good, solidly made, believable drama), "The Poseidon Adventure" (a bit over-rated really) and the timeless parody movie "Airplane!", as well as from much more recent alternative takes on the well-trodden formula, such as "Cloverfield" and "United 93" (one of the most powerful, moving and quietly devastating films I have ever seen).

But all this destruction (real or imagined) has lead me to wonder why we are so fascinated by seeing large scale devastation on screen, whether it be of the fictional kind or "live feed" filmed-on-the-fly footage of, say, the irresistible force that is a tsunami wave.

I mentioned to my students yesterday that watching the recent disaster movie "2012" the other day (for lesson preparation, I hasten to add!) was a strange experience for me. I thought it was well made, with a decent cast generally behaving... well, decently, was not as cliché-ridden as certain other films and made impressive, eye-popping use of CGI. But, I was troubled by the tongue-in-check tone of the some of the humour and dialogue (and not just from John Cusack) during the scenes of destruction. A particular sequence involved "hair-raising" escapes in a cars and planes that were genuinely spectacular, but which played out almost like a sequence from a video game, e.g. a massive earthquake hitting L.A., opening up the San Andreas fault and dragging most of L.A. down into it. And yet, despite the fact that the deaths of thousands, if not millions of people were either visible on screen (though not close-up) or alluded to visually, the whole spectacle left me cold emotionally. The whole sequence felt more like an Alton Towers ride than a death scene. This must presumably have been a conscious choice on the part of Roland Emmerich (Director) and his team. The escaping characters themselves seem at times more awe-struck than terrified by what they witness, the exceptions being the 2 (obligatory) children (boy + girl) who are clearly upset by what they see.

The aforementioned sequence from "2012".

Interestingly, I think this rather accurately reflects the modern-day general inability, and perhaps unwillingness, of our minds to grasp large-scale disaster. It's normally only when such events take on a small-scale human dimension (e.g. a boy's mother dies) that we really start to care (if at all). Hence, disaster movies playing on both the "macro" (large-scale catastrophe) and the "micro" (human relationships) levels. In "The Core", a French scientist, played by Tchéky Karyo, says at a key moment that he is not there to "save the world", but to save 3 people: his wife and 2 children, and that he hopes he will be strong enough and brave enough to do that. Obviously, in saving them, he is also saving the world, but the pressure of such a realisation would be too much for him, and probably for most people, so he blanks it out, or at least tries to.

This puts me in mind of a great line from "The Matrix" during a conversation between Cypher (the "Judas" character) and Neo (the One, the Saviour):

CYPHER: Can I ask you something? Did he tell you why he did it?

Neo looks up.

CYPHER: Why you're here?

NEO: ...yeah.

CYPHER: Gee-zus! What a mindjob. So you're here to save the world. You gotta be kidding me. What do you say to something like that?

Indeed, what can you say? (see the next 2 articles for further thoughts on this)

Ultimately, in our own lives we can do our bit to make the world a better place by helping those whom it is possible for us to help. In so doing, we can genuinely "change the world". Our actions have consequences, the ripples going out from them into the world.

Watching the suffering of others in the midst of disaster on television news can be very depressing and overwhelming. Obviously we can donate to charities involved in relief work. But how about allowing such news to inspire us to go and help those in our immediate vicinity? "If I can't help the old woman in Japan on the tv news who has lost all her family, I can certainly go and visit a lonely old relative in her nursing home and bring her the gift of my time and my love.

Am I strong enough and brave enough to do that?

Now there's something to aspire to for Lent (and beyond!).

"The Way" - Martin Sheen + son's Santiago de Compostella film

2011-03-17T08:34:00.001Z

The Telegraph website is in early with a review and plot summary article about a film I've been looking forward to for some time: "The Way". Here's their "logline" of the plot:

"Martin Sheen plays an American doctor who decides to walk the the 500-mile Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route after his son is killed there. The film is directed by Sheen's son Emilio Estevez."

St. James' statue at the "Glory Door" entrance to Santiago Cathedral.

Having been to Santiago de Compostella 3 times as a pilgrim (twice cycling - from Brittany + from Liverpool - and once hiking) it is a place and a journey that is very close to my heart and to the hearts of fellow Camino pilgrims in my congregation.

The film is being released in the UK on May 13th. Click here for an article page that includes the film's trailer.

Here's the start of another Telegraph article by columnist and author Christopher Howse that is certainly encouraging and gets my hopes up that we've got something special here:

"Normally I run like a startled springbok from tales of the road to Santiago. Duller than holiday snaps, they possess a peculiar self-centredness, as if no one else had ever walked to the pilgrim destination in north-west Spain.

So it was with some relief that I found myself both interested and moved half way through The Way, a film starring Martin Sheen directed by his son Emilio Estevez. Partly it was the landscape. It's a pretty film because the autumn hills and fields of northern Spain, with low sun over ploughed earth and bleached grass, suit projection on a big screen.

But, an hour in, the audience had got over an enormous obstacle. The obstacle is that people who see themselves self-consciously as pilgrims on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela can be very annoying. The characters in this film are no exception.

James Nesbitt, superlative as an annoying screen presence, joins a scratchy Canadian woman and a rebarbatively bonhomous Dutchman in tagging after Martin Sheen like the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion with Judy Garland – a parallel I later found was not new to the director..."

Go here for the rest of Howse's article.

Lamennais Media Team - 2011

2011-03-10T15:48:00.001Z

I am at the moment in our Paris community for meetings with our "Lamennais Media Team" (Commission for information + communication), responsible for co-ordinating communication and information in the Mennaisian Family throughout the world, 18 months after our first series of meetings in Rome.

We are discussing a variety of different issues and ideas relating to, for example, the congregation's new website, the 150th anniversary celebrations of Jean-Marie De La Mennais' death, Lamennais Magazine, collaboration and sharing of ideas + resources between our different Provinces, new initiatives, etc...

If you have any thoughts or ideas yourselves about any of these things, please let us know by posting a comment to this message.

********************************

As part of this year's celebrations to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of our Founder, our Canadian Province had an idea which we communicated to all our Provinces, inviting schools to interview pupils in our schools and ask them to say what they like about life in their school. 9 have now been sent to us and are being publicised on the latest issue of Lamennais Magazine. There are now links to the first five of them on the congregation's website (click here).

Three 15 year-old Film Studies pupils of mine in Southampton produced 2 clips, one more serious in nature.....

... and one not so serious :-)

Desire change

2011-03-07T23:58:00.001Z

It's been a while since I posted on here. I suppose I've been having a bit of "time off" from certain activities in the aftermath of our school production (see a previous article from Feb.). Needing to "chill" for a couple of weeks.

During this time we had our half-term break. I attended the cremation of a cycling friend of mine in the Wirral (nr. Liverpool) and while I was there took the chance to visit some old friends of mine from my 17 years living there, one of whom has just been diagnosed with malignant throat cancer. Those few days were nonetheless a joyous time of friendship and laughter.

****************

I was sent the below poem recently and it struck a chord with me. Change can be frightening, but openness to change is a prerequisite of letting the Spirit work within you, modelling you ever more closely into the image of Christ.

SONNETS TO ORPHEUS: II, 12 (stanza 1)

Desire change. Be enthusiastic for that flame
in which a thing escapes your grasp
while it makes a glorious display of transformation.
That designing Spirit, the master mind of all things on earth
loves nothing so much in the sweeping movement of the dance
as the turning point.

link: Sonnets of Orpheus II 12, stanza 1, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Br. David Steindl-Rast

How science is showing us the beauty of creation

2011-02-17T21:41:00.001Z

For many years now I have used the internet to collect images from the Hubble space telescope and other space observation devices (as well as from an ever growing number of amateur space photographers who are producing results of a quality NASA could have only dreamed of 15 years ago). I have used such images in R.E. lessons when discussing creation, the origins of the universe, etc... with pupils.

I have no problems accepting the current wisdom in the scientific community on the universe's age (reckoned to be 13.7 billion years), though such wisdom is being continuously refined. I suppose, therefore, that I am not much of a Creationist, and this would be true. Actually, accepting such an age for the universe and therefore the length, scale and detail of the cosmic evolutionary process that must have taken place to arrive at where we are now, is for me simply further evidence (I would not be so arrogant as to say proof) to sustain the argument that a Creator is ultimately behind it all. For me, Genesis 1-3 has always been much more about our place as humans in creation (Gn 1:31 "and it was VERY good") than about an attempt to explain the creationary process.

Back to the images...

Lately, I have been knocked for six by the beauty of the images coming from the Spitzer Space Telescope, combining infrared light with light from the visible spectrum. Here are 2 of my favourites, both being of an area of space know as the North American nebula because of the shape of part of it (in visible light): the predominantly green one showing infrared light, the other being a mixture of visible + infrared light. Simply breathtaking!

Here is the original NASA article from which I took them.

Such images make my heart and soul rejoice, just as the vision of the stars in the heavens seem to have done to the writer of the book of Daniel.

"And you, sun and moon, O bless the Lord.
And you, the stars of the heavens, O bless the Lord." (Daniel 3)

And when you think that these photos are snapshots of parts of the universe as they were millions, even billions of years ago (the light from them taking that long just to get here), it makes the mind boggle. I think this is about as close to time travel as I will get in my lifetime!

Switchfoot win a Grammy!

2011-02-15T00:03:00.001Z

To commemorate Switchfoot's win at the Grammy's over the weekend (their wonderful 2010 album "Hello Hurricane" won Best Rock/Rap Gospel Album), here's a track from their 4th (+ breakthrough) album, 2003's "The Beautiful Letdown". The track is the beautiful "On Fire". In my iTunes library it comes in at 24th position in my all-time most played tracks (120 plays!! :-) out of nearly 6,000 tracks (including rock/pop, Christian rock/pop, classical, folk, monastic chant, etc...).

The video is an unofficial slideshow that someone has done for the song which I rather like (there are lots of others for the song on YouTube). The lyrics (which I love) are reproduced below.

I should really do this song at communion in a school Mass with our student liturgy band sometime.

On Fire by Switchfoot

They tell you where you need to go
They tell you when you'll need to leave
They tell you what you need to know
They tell you who you need to be
But everything inside you knows
There's more than what you've heard
There's so much more than empty conversations
Filled with empty words

And you're on fire
When He's near you
You're on fire
When He speaks
You're on fire
Burning at these mysteries

Give me one more time around
Give me one more chance to see
Give me everything You are
Give me one more chance to be... (near You)
Cause everything inside me looks like
Everything I hate
You are the hope I have for change
You are the only chance I'll take

When I'm on fire
When You're near me
I'm on fire
When You speak
And I'm on fire
Burning at these mysteries
These mysteries...

I'm standing on the edge of me [x3]
I'm standing on the edge of everything I've never been before.
And i've been standing on the edge of me
Standing on the edge

And I'm on fire
When You're near me
I'm on fire
When You speak
(Yea) I'm on fire
Burning at these mysteries... these mysteries... these mysteries
Ah you're the mystery
You're the mystery

"The Demon Headmaster" - our school musical

2011-02-10T14:19:00.001Z

After many weeks of rehearsals and preparation, tonight sees the first evening performance of this year's school production (a musical): "The Demon Headmaster" (don't worry about the subject matter - the good guys win in the end!!). It's based on a popular children's novel which was turned into an equally popular children's tv series and subsequently into a stage musical production. In total, about 35 pupils are performing on stage (mostly aged 11-14), with over 20 other pupils involved in lighting, sound, stage management, props, etc... and a further group helping with costumes and make-up.

I'm one of a 3-member staff team running things, my job being Musical Director + sound co-ordinator (backing tracks, 2 live keyboards, soundtrack music, sound effects...) and occasionally waving my hands around from a desk in front of the stage (see photo of me in silhouette below).

As you can imagine, much hard work has been put into it and it has been great to see it all come together over these past few weeks. Yesterday afternoon, we gave the first public performance to primary school children. As well as tonight's show, there are 2 other evening performances on Friday + Saturday.

Here are a few souvenir photos taken by one of the parents after yesterday's performance.

"This Little Light" - Addison Road

2011-02-07T19:29:00.000Z

In the Mass readings at the moment the theme of light/light of the world/being a light to others is very present. Here's a song that I keep coming back to at the moment that acts as a personal response to the call from God to let our light/his light shine out to others through our actions, attitudes, etc... through the way we live our lives. It takes the words of the chorus from the well-known sandles + candles folk hymn and does its own thing with it.

"This Little Light" - Addison Road

There’s a little flame inside us all
Some shine bright, some shine small
The rains will come and the waters rise
But don’t you ever lose your light
In this life you will know
Love and pain, joy and sorrow
So when it hurts, when times get hard
Don’t forget whose child you are

Chorus
This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine,
gonna let it shine

May you live each day with no regret
Make the most of every chance you get
Let your eyes get wide when you look at the stars
With the same sense of wonder as a child’s heart
With the ones you love treasure the time
And for those who are gone keep their memories alive
Hold on to your dreams don’t ever let go
There’s a fire inside you burning with hope

Repeat Chorus

There will be days when you want to give up
When the clouds settle in
But after the rain comes the sun
Don’t you ever forget
One day there will be no more pain
And we will finally see Jesus’ face
So until then I’m gonna to try
To brave the dark and let my little light shine

Repeat Chorus

There’s a little light inside us all

"The King's Speech" - a personal reaction

2011-02-02T21:31:00.001Z

Well, any self-respecting Film Studies teacher simply has to go and see those films that are being acclaimed by the critics and are up for awards, if only to better inform his/her students and perhaps encourage them to see the film in question. So, off I went to see what all the fuss was about.

"The King's Speech" is full of very British wry, self-deprecating humour, affectionate digs at the royal family and tremendous performances. I never got the sense that Colin Firth was playing his character's handicap to the gallery, nor was he simply baiting the Academy Awards voters with yet another Oscar-friendly performance involving physical handicap. In fact, his handicap was much more an emotional one. I felt there was a real emotional honesty and depth to his portrayal (and the swearing is hilarious!). Both Helena Bonham-Carter and Geoffrey Rush are worthy of awards too. I loved B-C's knowing humour and intelligence as Bertie's wife (who for people of my generation and older was simply the "Queen Mum") though how close to reality this was is anyone's guess!

But ultimately, for me at least, the film was a story about friendship + courage: the friendship being between "Bertie" (the future, then actual King George VI) and Lionel Logue (the always wonderful Geoffrey Rush), his speech therapist, but more importantly his closest and most trustworthy friend, someone who believed in Bertie totally and gave him the strength to believe in himself (they remained friends for life, Logue being present at every public speech that King George VI gave thereafter).

I found the ending very moving. This final section is brilliantly shot and choreographed. It is also wonderfully scored to the sombre slow mvt. from Beethoven's 7th Symph. (an inspired choice, for Beethoven's increasing deafness had by then really taken hold). So the frustration of a now deaf composer accompanies the climactic battle of a stammerer to overcome his inner demons with the help of a close friend.

.... and I'm not at all a Royalist, in case you were wondering!!

Gary Lightbody (Snow Patrol), poet and songwriter

2011-02-02T20:51:00.000Z

It's always a joy when you make a chance discovery of a song or album that turns out to be a real gem. That happened a couple of months ago.

Gary Lightbody, the lead singer and central creative force behind Snow Patrol released a side project under the name of Tired Pony, for which he gathered together friends and fellow musicians such as former Snow Patrol member Iain Archer, Pete Buck (REM), Jacknife Lee, Scott McCaughey (part-time REM) and Tom Smith (Editors). The result is an intoxicating collection of generally mellow, slightly countrified songs that grew in the studio through the guiding hand of Lightbody and the alchemy of the musicians there present. They very effectively showcase Lightbody's beautiful relationship-centred lyrics.

I find the following song particularly appealing with its wonderfully evocative words, its slow build up around a repeated chord progression leading to a transcendent conclusion (the type of thing that Sigur Ros do on many of their songs, including the song used in the climactic sequence of Danny Boyle's wonderful film "127 Hours") and the lovely vocal harmonies in the outro, where Lightbody is joined by actress/singer Zooey Deschanel ("500 Days Of Summer").

Kick back, close your eyes and let this wash over you, preferably at dusk, either on headphones or in a large room with the stereo on loud and a nice warm bass sound (it's quite long, but persevere and you get a wonderful payoff in the outro).

:-)

Held In The Arms Of Your Words

This light at the end of the day
When even the highways seem still
The map in my hands folded shut
There isn't one magical word
But a carnival of them instead
Like an old, silent cinema screen

In this light you are framed classically
Just a painting that hangs in my head
That I know like the back of my hand
And with the sun set, the neon awakes
And the cold colours dance on your skin
Finally the modern makes sense to me

You're effortless, you know you are
And all I want to do
Is let you lead me off into the dusk
Our shadows kiss before we do
Right here in the dark
I revel in the calm before the storm

The garden is haunted by us
And every mistake that we've made
Is at peace coz it led us both here
The thought that just burns into me
Of you in the ink of the night
Is the breath-taking danger of you

You're effortless, you know you are
And all I want to do
Is let you lead me off into the dusk
Our shadows kiss before we do
Right here in the dark
I revel in the calm before the storm

This is life
This is all I want from life
It's the fervour and the tenderness combined.
In the dark, in the ever-falling dark,
we are anchorless adrift but barely notice

You're effortless, you know you are
And all I want to do
Is let you lead me off into the dusk
Our shadows kiss before we do
Right here in the dark
I revel in the calm before the storm

The Apollo space program an anomaly?

2011-01-30T21:56:00.001Z

This very interesting article from Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today looks at the US Apollo space program in the context of current US space program cutbacks, as one motivated more by politics than by the desire to "boldly go where no-one has gone before".

*****************

How often have you heard (or thought) the sentiment that all NASA really needs is a President who will issue a bold challenge for the space agency, like Kennedy did in 1961, initiating the Apollo program to the Moon? Can we ever expect to witness such a call to action again?

“It is very unlikely,” said space historian and author Andrew Chaikin, who believes Apollo was an historical anomaly. “I think for many decades people saw Apollo as a model for how to do a space program; that you get a President to get up and make a challenge and the country follows along and does great things. But that was only true that one time in the context of the Cold War.”

We went to the Moon when we did not because we were a nation devoted to exploration, Chaikin believes, but because it seemed a politically important course of action in the context of our Cold War with the Soviet Union. “Once that was accomplished, then that political imperative evaporated,” he said.

Click here for the rest of the article.

St. Diadochus of Photike

2011-01-22T13:52:00.001Z

Although Friday 2 days ago was the memorial of St. Agnes, and therefore we had prayers and readings for Divine Office that were specific to her feast, I happened to look in the Office of Readings at the ordinary readings from Friday of Week 2, instead of those for St. Agnes. I came across a wonderful text by a certain St. Diadochus of Photike (or Photiki). He is especially venerated in the Orthodox Church.

From the Treatise by St. Diadochus of Photike, "On Perfection" (Ch. 14)

"He who has a heartfelt love for God is known by him. For a person grows in the love of God in the measured in which he takes that love into his inmost soul. Which is why, afterwards, such a one passionately longs for the illumination of knowledge to the point of feeling in his very bones, no longer aware of himself but wholly transformed by the love of God. Such a one is in this life without being in it. He still lives in his own body but unceasingly goes out to God through love by the very momentum of his soul. Hence forward, his heart to burning with the fire of love he adheres to God with a sort of irresistible desire, as if quite torn away from the love of self by the love of God."

St. Diadochus of Photike

According to Wikipedia:

"Saint Diadochos of Photiki was a fifth century ascetic whose work is included in the Philokalia. Scholars have acknowledged his great influence on later Byzantine saints such as Maximos the Confessor, John Climacus, Symeon the New Theologian, and in general the Hesychast movement of the 14th century. He has also had great influence in the West via the work, "On the Contemplative Life" (De vita contemplativa) of Julian Pomerius (†498). His feast day is commemorated on March 29. Diadochos was born c. 400 and died sometime before 486. He became bishop of Photiki, a small town in the province of Old Epira, in the northwestern part of present-day Greece. In 451, he took part in the Council of Chalcedon as Bishop of Photiki... His exact date and place of death are thus unknown, although it is assumed he died before 486."

More detailed information about his life and writings can be found here and here.

"How Wonderful" - Leeland

2011-01-20T17:09:00.001Z

Since I first heard this song a couple of years ago I have used it frequently in personal prayer and also as a pick-me-up. I find it uplifting, inspiring and quite beautiful. It is by the successful young US Christian band Leeland.

"How Wonderful" - Leeland

Lifting hands in song and dance
Humbled by the glory of the cross
We've been redeemed and reconciled
Caught up in the splendor of it all
Eternal life You gave
So we will bring song of praise

How wonderful
How lovely is Your name
You captivate our hearts
You save us by Your grace

God of mercy, God of love
How we marvel at Your majesty
As we kneel before Your holy throne
In the beauty of Your mystery
We are children of the King
Father, of Your love we sing

How wonderful
How lovely is Your name
You captivate our hearts
You save us by Your grace

And You are
Closer than a brother, Jesus
Closer than a brother, Jesus
Oh, the name of Jesus
Oh, the name of Jesus
Oh, the name of Jesus

How wonderful
How lovely is Your name
You captivate our hearts
You save us by Your grace

Friendship + God's grace

2011-01-18T23:46:00.001Z

Friendships have been a source of tremendous consolation in my life and have also been channels for God's grace. It never ceases to amaze me how just when you need it most a friend can be there for you with a kindly gesture, word, message... I try to offer that same presence to those same friends and make sure I am with them in their time of need.

Ultimately, such relationships are what life is about.

And since Christmas, a particular friend has been a true channel of grace, acting in such a way towards me that I have felt God's love most deeply through that person: as if they were my guardian angel sent by God to look after me.

I pray that all of you who might read this might have hearts open to receive (and/or continue receiving) the gift of such a person into your lives, and that you may allow yourselves to be "sent" by God to those friends of yours who, in turn, are in need of a guardian angel right now.

A good news story about Muslims + Christians together

2011-01-09T19:04:00.001Z

Thanks to Fr. Ray Blake for the hat tip. It makes a change to hear a positive news report about relations between Muslims and Christians, though the wonderful film "Of Gods And Men" seems to have done a lot of good work to bring Muslims + Christians together in places like France (its country of origin) where it was a massive box office hit.

Muslims protect churches

Hassen Jouini, Agence France-Presse; with files from National Post · Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011

Muslims offered themselves as "human shields" on Friday to protect Coptic Christians celebrating their Christmas in Egypt just a week after a church bombing that killed 21 people.

Armoured cars were also stationed near churches filled for Christmas services and drivers were banned from parking in front of churches, which were being tightly monitored by explosives detection teams and police, said a police official.

Under the Coptic calendar, Christmas Day falls on Jan. 7.

Dozens of police were deployed around the Saints Church in Alexandria which was targeted in Saturday's attack.

Security officials said at least 70,000 officers and conscripts had been deployed across the country to secure churches as Copts, who account for 10% of Egypt's 80-million population, attended mass.
Egypt's Ahramonline reported that droves of Muslims had turned up at Coptic churches to act as "human shields."

It quoted Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon credited with first floating the "human shield" idea, as saying, "We either live together, or we die together."

"This is not about us and them," Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly, told Ahramonline.

"We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together."

The Daily News Egypt reported that the front pew at a church in the Cairo district of Omraneya was filled with prominent Muslims from the neighborhood.

In his sermon, Father Hanna thanked the Muslims for attending.

"This is the way our Egypt climbs new heights and become prosperous," the paper quoted Father Hanna as saying.

At the Cleopatra Church in Heliopolis Khaled, a Muslim attendee, said, "It's an honor to be among you today and [to] celebrate [Coptic] Christmas with you."

On Thursday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's two sons Alaa and Gamal attended a Christmas Eve mass at Saint Mark's Cathedral in Cairo, where the head of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenuda III, conducted the service.

On Friday, about 100 opposition group members in Cairo gathered in a demonstration of solidarity with the Copts.

"One people, one blood," they chanted...

*********

You can read the rest of the article here

The Meaning Of Christmas

2010-12-27T22:26:00.001Z

I hope you're all having a wonderful Christmas. I say "having" because the Christmas season goes on till the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, this year on Sun. Jan. 9th. I feel it is important to remember this. The Mass readings and Divine Office prayers between now and the Baptism feast help us to put Christ's birth in the context of his Incarnation as God made Man, of his life, death and resurrection. In his birth the Passion is foreshadowed through the feast of the Holy Innocents (children massacred by King Herod in his failed attempt to root out and kill the prophesied threat to his throne) and obviously in the gift of Myrrh which was used for embalming the dead.

That's not to say that we should dampen peoples' spirits at this time of year by getting all morbid. But I think that being able to see and celebrate Christmas in its wider liturgical context can help people to overcome the inevitable feeling of let down that follows the "high" of carol services on crisp winter nights, mince pies around the fire, Christmas trees + decorations + presents + Nintendo Wii games played in a drunken stupor...

This is also one of the reasons why I always look forward to coming here to our Mother House in Ploërmel, Brittany (where I write this) 2 days after Christmas, not that we too get the Nintendo Wii out, but rather that the talks + discussions that we have together during our Study Session (whatever the theme is that year), and especially the fraternal warmth of our time together, help allay those post-Christmas blues.

On the theme of Christmas in the context of the liturgical year, here's a wonderful reflection on the meaning of Christmas by Andrew O'Connell in Ireland:

***********************
The Meaning of Christmas (The Irish Catholic, 23rd December 2010)

It happens sometime around six o’clock every Christmas Eve. The Angelus bell rings. The shops close. Everyone goes home. The hustle and bustle ceases. And Christmas finally arrives.

A strange stillness descends on the land and for a few hours there is a peace which we’re not used of. It’s in these rare hours that the meaning of Christmas becomes a little clearer, far removed from tinsel and Toy Shows and the nostalgia of “what’s another year”.

My family lives in the countryside near Tralee. Our tradition on Christmas Eve is to attend the 10 o’clock Mass in our parish church, Our Lady and St. Brendan’s.

We live on a hill which looks out over the countryside of North Kerry. As we drive to Mass the houses in the distance seem to be dancing. From Ballyheigue to Listowel Christmas candles flicker in the windows. They’re placed there as a sign of welcome to the Holy Family should they happen to pass through Kerry this night. Twinkling at us in the skies above as we make our way are the lights of another Kingdom.

The Mass begins and in the packed church we try to comprehend the great mystery of the Incarnation. Tonight, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Nancy Griffith got it all wrong. “God is watching us from a distance,” she sang. He’s not at a distance. He’s here with us.

He’s with us as a baby. It’s a measure of the greatness of God that he can become so small. Later in the Mass he’ll do it again. He will give himself to us in the humble appearance of the host, a small piece of bread.

Bethlehem in Hebrew means “house of bread” and it is here that the Messiah is born. He will say of himself, “I am the bread of life”. So on this Holy Night, in the words of the Great Pope, John Paul II, adoration of the Child Jesus becomes Eucharistic adoration.

We look at the crib. See who has been given front row seats to witness this moment- the shepherds. We’ve always looked on them as avuncular friendly types. But, in the world of their time, shepherds were looked down upon; they were considered untrustworthy. And on this night when man has no room for God in the inn, God finds room for these outcasts in his stable.

We look at Mary. There’s a strange sadness about her, a melancholy. It’s more than the exhaustion of child birth. Tonight she looks as though she has already heard the words of Simeon and seems to know that this child will one day pierce her heart.

Beside her is Joseph. Strong and silent. He reminds me of another Joseph- the man from Arimathea, who will take the thirty three year old Christ from a cross and place him in a tomb.

And in a few months time we’ll be back in this church late at night again. Then it will be to celebrate an empty tomb. This baby in Bethlehem is also the Christ of Calvary.

The crib points to the cross and the cross to the empty tomb of resurrection and new life.

“Born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth” rings the third verse of Hark the Herald Angels Sing. And for me, this is the meaning of Christmas. This is why we are joyful tonight. For tonight begins the story that will defeat death.

They say the gates of Heaven are thrown open on Christmas Eve. And so our thoughts wander to our loved ones who are no longer with us. We think of the happier Christmases of other years. And though our hearts are sad they don’t despair since Christ has changed death from a curse to a blessing.

This is the night which captivated us as children and enthralls us now as adults.

On this night, in a stable in Bethlehem, Heaven meets Earth.

And after this night nothing, nothing, is ever the same again.

Downhere: "How Many Kings"

2010-12-26T00:45:00.000Z

Last year, one of my favourite bands, Canadian Christian group Downhere, released a Christmas album of original songs and reinterpretations of old classic carols. This song is my favourite on the album and I've listened to it (and sung along) a lot this Advent + Christmas. It's a tremendous song with uplifting music and powerful lyrics... and to cap it all, singer Marc Martel doing his usual Freddie Mercury impersonation.

Love this.

Hope you do to.

"How many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many Gods have poured out their hearts
To romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?
Only one did that for me

All for me
All for you"

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

The Great "O" Antiphons

2010-12-20T13:25:00.001Z

Here is some information about antiphons that are sung at this time of year in the Divine Office prayers of religious communities (inc. my own) and monasteries around the world Thanks to friend Richard Emblem for the hat tip.

(This sketch of the Seven Antiphons courtesy of Fr. Maurice Gilbert and Sandro Magister of Chiesa.Com) Read more here.

The "O" Antiphons

They're sung one per day, at the Magnificat during vespers from 17 December until the day before Christmas Eve, all of them beginning with an invocation to Jesus, although he is never called by name.

The antiphons are very old, going back to the time of Pope Gregory the Great, around the year 600. They are in Latin, and are inspired by the texts of the Old Testament proclaiming the Messiah. At the beginning of each antiphon, in order, Jesus is invoked as Wisdom, Lord, Root, Key, Star, King, Emmanuel. Read starting from the last, the Latin initials of these words form an acrostic: "Ero cras," meaning: "I will be [there] tomorrow." It is the proclamation of the Lord who comes. The last antiphon, which completes the acrostic, is sung on December 23, and the following day, with first vespers, the feast of the Nativity begins.

Here, then, are the complete texts of the seven antiphons, in Latin and in translation, with highlighting of the initials that form the acrostic "Ero cras," and in parentheses the main references to the Old and New Testament:

I – December 17 O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, who come from the mouth of the Most High (Sirach 24:5), you extend to the ends of the earth, and order all things with power and sweetness (Wisdom 8:1): come and teach us the way of wisdom (Proverbs 9:6).

II – December 18 O Adonai, dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extenso.

O Lord (Exodus 6:2, Vulgate), leader of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2) and on Mount Sinai gave him the law (Exodus 20): come and free us with your powerful arm (Exodus 15:12-13).

III – December 19 O Radix Iesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, iam noli tardare.

O Root of Jesse, who stand as a sign for the peoples (Isaiah 11:10), the kings of the earth are silent before you (Isaiah 52:15) and the nations invoke you: come to free us, do not delay (Habakkuk 2:3).

IV – December 20 O Clavis David et sceptrum domus Israel, qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: veni et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris et umbra mortis.

O Key of David (Isaiah 22:23), sceptre of the house of Israel (Genesis 49:10), who open and no one may shut; who shut and no one may open: come, free from prison captive man, who lies in darkness and the shadow of death (Psalm 107: 10, 14).

V – December 21 O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae: veni et illumina sedentem in tenebris et umbra mortis.

O Star who rises (Zechariah 3:8; Jeremiah 23:5), splendour of the eternal light (Wisdom 7:26) and sun of justice (Malachi 3:20): come and enlighten those who lie in darkness and the shadow of death (Isaiah 9:1; Luke 1:79).

VI – December 22 O Rex gentium et desideratus earum, lapis angularis qui facis utraque unum: veni et salva hominem quem de limo formasti.

O King of the nations (Jeremiah 10:7) and their desire (Haggai 2:7), cornerstone (Isaiah 28:16), who reunite Jews and pagans into one (Ephesians 2:14): come and save the man whom you formed from the earth (Genesis 2:7).

VII – December 23 O Emmanuel, rex et legifer noster, expectatio gentium et salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Dominus Deus noster.

O Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14), our king and lawgiver (Isaiah 33:22), hope and salvation of the peoples (Genesis 49:10; John 4:42): come to save us, O Lord our God (Isaiah 37:20).

The journal in which the article by Fr. Maurice Gilbert, "The great Advent antiphons," was published is La Civiltà Cattolica. English translation by Matthew Sherry, Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.

"Of Gods And Men" ("Des Hommes Et Des Dieux")

2010-12-19T01:39:00.000Z

I at last saw this remarkable film this evening. It is set in and around a real-life French-founded Catholic Cistercian monastery in the Algerian Atlas mountains. It tells the story of 8 monks who lived there and events that took place during the winter of 1996. This was while I was studying in Paris and I remember all too well the news breaking.

MILD SPOILER ALERT (I don't give away much, to be honest)

Having heard all about the film from French confrères over the past few months and having read reviews and French magazine articles interviewing the cast (who all said what a profound effect the making of the film had had on them), I braced for disappointment. And, to be fair, during the predominantly wordless opening 15 mins. which slowly built up a feel for the characters and for their way of life, I feared that it had all been much ado about nothing. Wordless... well, almost. We hear and see the monks in prayer singing the Divine Office, and it is the actors themselves who do the singing live on set (no overdubbing). And a fine job they do too. In fact, this is the only "soundtrack" music in the whole film. It is this attention to detail that started to win me over. The film is painstaking, but not overly forced, in its attempt to reach a level of authenticity in its representation of the life of the monks in their monastic community

Gradually the drama kicks in. We start to hear snippets of conversation between the monks, we see them interact with local villagers who depend heavily on the monks in many ways (especially for medical care), we see glimpses of Islamic terrorists and their actions, we witness the violent murder of Croat workers... but most importantly we eavesdrop on the monks as they debate whether they should stay or whether they should flee the ever escalating violence. As a member of a religious community myself, I could very much empathise with the soul-searching that the monks undertook and also with the rationale behind their final decision.

The cast do a tremendous job throughout without ever trying to seem "saintly". These were simply men who had been attracted by a "greater love" (as one character says in a touching conversation about love with a young local woman) than that which can come through human relationships. The film seems to have borrowed a few ideas from the wonderful documentary from a few years ago, "Into Great Silence", about a year in the life of a Carthusian monastery, La Grande Chartreuse, high up in the French Alps. In particular the film's use of close-ups of the monks' faces that seem to give us glimpses into their souls and through which we see all at once the very believable simultaneous mixture of fear, love, trust, deep peace and the mutual bond that grows ever stronger as their lives become ever more threatened.

There are many scenes that moved me to tears and will haunt me for a very long time (in fact I spent most of the 2nd half of the film with tears about to fall), none more so than when the monks hear a helicopter approach overhead whilst they are in silent prayer in their chapel: the Abbot (the elected leader or "shepherd" of the monastery) stands and begins to intone a hymn. The other monks join him and put their arms around each other's shoulders in a sign of mutual love and support, but also of defiance.

As I have been writing this, the words of a song by Switchfoot came to me. I think they suit very well the scene I have just described and what the monks go through in the last part of the film:

Switchfoot: "Sing It Out"

I'm on the run
I'm on the ropes this time
Where is my song?
I've lost the song of my soul tonight

Sing it out
Sing it out
Take what is left of me
Make it a melody
Sing it out
Sing out loud
I can't find the words to sing
You'd be my remedy
My song, my song
I'll sing with what's left of me

Where is the sun?
Feel like a ghost this time
Where have you gone?
I need your breath in my lungs tonight

Sing it out
Sing it out
Take what is left of me
Make it a melody
Sing it out
Sing out loud
I can't find the words to sing
You'd be my remedy
My song, my song
I'll sing with what's left of me

I'm holding on
I'm holding on to you
My world is wrong
My world is a lie that's come true
And I fall in love with the ones that run me through
When all along, all I need is you

Sing it out
Sing it out
Take what is left of me
Make it a melody
Sing it out
Sing out loud
I can't find the words to sing
Come be my remedy
My song, my song
My song
I'll sing with what's left of me

..... I love these words: "I can't find the words to sing
Come be my remedy
My song, my song
My song
I'll sing with what's left of me"

Whenever I hear this song I will think of that scene and those monks. This line: "And I fall in love with the ones that run me through". These men of God had indeed fallen in love with Algeria and the local people whom they served. It had become their home and the people there had become their brothers and sisters. But the local people themselves became victims of the extremists who were at war with the Government. The film pointedly distinguishes between these Muslims villagers and the Islamic extremists who "kill their brothers".

I'm taking Fr. Andrew to see the film on Tues. I may well go back and see it a third time if I can.

Here are 2 images of the real-life monks of Tibhirine monastery.

See below for further info:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/ofgodsandmen/
http://bit.ly/hf2URK

Advent and associated events

2010-12-11T18:20:00.001Z

This is the busiest time of year for Music teachers and probably for teachers in general. In my case as Head of Music it means organising and leading an Advent Festival concert which took place on Dec. 7th (a mixture of religious + secular music + readings performed by an assortment of Choir, Orchestra, rock bands, soloists, etc...) and our official Carol Service (Choir, Orch. + vocal soloists) next Monday.

When you factor in all the rehearsal time for these events, the end of term exams that require marking and then the individual pupil reports, that makes for a very busy + hectic few weeks

Add to that a bout of heavy 'flu that left me in bed for 3 days last week and a cold that has taken 2 weeks to shake off, you can understand how I now feel rather zombified. I'm hoping and praying that Christmas, the trip to Brittany for our annual post-Christmas study session and the few extra days break I will have in France will help me recharge what are very run down batteries.

Really looking forward to getting on my bike and going for my first club cycle in 3 weeks.

Ouf!! (as they say in French)

Fr. Andrew McMahon ofm: friend + film companion

2010-12-03T21:22:00.001Z

(See previous article)... It didn't take long before I was recommending films to Fr. Andrew and taking him to the cinema to see them, after which we would discuss them over a pint and a bite to eat. He seems genuinely grateful that someone such as myself would want to take the time to open his mind up to new cinematic treats (just don't mention "Inception" or science fiction to him!! ;-) And it wasn't long before he was phoning me up with the latest tale of woe over his computer and asking me to bail him out, which, of course, I gladly agreed to do, in return for food and drink!

Bumping into him at work during our pupils' day retreats at Park Place

Last March, he invited me to do a party piece (a couple of Irish drinking songs + a bit on the clarinet) at the Friends of Park Place St. Patrick's Night, amongst a variety of "turns" that included Irish dancing, song, recitation, instrumental music... I also joined Andrew and a longtime friend of his for a rendition of "The Irish Rover". Later that evening I ended up getting booked to do a paid gig singing + playing guitar at someone's 70th birthday party in Portsmouth which ended up being a nice little earner!

At the St. Patrick's Day event, just after we'd sung "The Irish Rover".

He celebrates Mass every Sunday at Park Place, and though it is not a Parish as such, people come from miles around to hear him preach. Through him, I have got to know former musician friends of my Dad from the area (his folk band for which he played drums) and also made new friends - for example, at his 75th birthday meal the other week. He had been speaking to some of those who come to his Mass about the films we would watch and discuss. One such person asked me if I would be willing to start a Film Club at Park Place, as many people who go there would be very interested in such a venture.

I had developed an interest in films myself by attending option courses in film appreciation at Centre Sèvres in Paris (the home of the "Ciné-club") and joining 2 Parisian Ciné-clubs during my 4 years studying Theology + Philosophy there in the '90s (the courses + clubs run by the same retired French film critic, Jean Collet, who himself became a firm friend of mine). This led to me teaching A-Level Film Studies in Liverpool for 8 years and now teaching GCSE Film Studies for the first time here in Southampton. So, to be asked to run a monthly film club myself I considered to be rather an honour. We are having a preliminary meeting with the interested parties before Christmas, to make sure that my choices of films are appropriate for the clientele, amongst other things, and then look to have our first gathering in the New Year. A few of my pupils are hoping to get involved too, which would be great.

A couple of weeks before Easter I intend to bring our school Choir, Orchestra, rock bands, ensembles and soloists to perform a charity concert at Park Place to raise money for the Indian sisters' missions and for my congregations schools in Haiti.

As you can see, bumping into him during the day retreats has enriched my life in unforeseen ways, on top of finding a loyal, affectionate spiritual guide and friend.

Fr. Andrew in our primary school, Charlton House, together with one of the Park Place sisters who had come to perform traditional Indian dance for the pupils.

He is someone who can count people like Lawrie McMenemy (most famous and revered Saints manager - with the possible exception of Ted Bates - of all time) and Matt Le Tissier (most famous and revered Saints player of all time without exception - and occasional England international... Glen Hoddle, hang your head in shame!!!) as close friends, but who treats each person he meets as being of equal worth and dignity.

He has green fingers and a typically Franciscan love of and reverence for nature, a wicked sense of deadpan humour (very "pince-sans-rire" as the French would say), a cuddly old sheepdog named Laddie, an iPod Touch (mainly for listening to spoken word cds which he gets me to transfer onto the iPod for him), a tv aerial that annoyingly plays up just as a goal is about to be scored when you are trying to watch Europa League games between Liverpool and whoever, and most importantly a deep, I would say Christ-like, pastoral sensitivity which draws people to him.

Thank you for everything, Andrew. Do you want to see a film next week?

Free will + determinism: God's Divine Providence and finding a new spiritual guide

2010-12-02T18:57:00.000Z

Oh the joys of enforced school closure due to heavy snow! I can now do a little blogging :-)

*****************

When I transferred from our Liverpool community to our Southampton one (in my home town, attached to my old school) 18 months ago, I had as a priority the desire + need to seek out someone whom I felt would be the right kind of spiritual "guide" for me, someone who would also be a friend and with whom I would therefore feel very comfortable talking about the "difficult stuff" of life.

I hesitate to use the word "director" because nowadays many spiritual "directors" seem to dislike the term themselves as suggesting too much of a uni-directional relationship. The French talk of "un accompagnateur spirituel", a spiritual "accompanist" and I think this term suits far better the role itself.

So. how was I to find such a person? Well, that's just the point... I felt it wasn't really up to me. I was convinced that it was God's will that I change communities and that in going back to my home town I was going where he wanted me to be at that time. So, I kind of saw it as his problem, not mine. But, in reality, the individual still has a big part to play in such a process.

A fellow blogger points out how 2 spiritual heavyweights of the past spoke about this creative tension (if I may describe it as such) between depending on God's Providence and human responsibility/free thought/free action:

'In the fifth century St. Augustine wrote the following, “Work as if everything depends on you and pray as if everything depends on God.” Sounds like a typical message from the saints: direct, clear, yet all too conspicuously religious. However, St. Ignatius throws a monkey wrench into St. Augustine’s well calibrated machine when he switches it around, saying, “Work as if everything depends on God, and pray as if everything depends on you.”'

Either way, there is a paradox here that fans of the debate on freewill + determinism (oh I loved teaching that in 6th Form R.E.!) would find fascinating. One cannot just sit back and wait for things to happen, one has to engage the mind, the discerning will, one's own energies and actions, but at the same time depend - in prayer and abandonment to God - on God guiding your spirit to do the right thing at the right time, to be in the right place at the right time.

The fact that I have been lucky enough to feel God's guiding hand in this way on numerous occasions since my teenage years helps me to generally find it something that I can allow to happen. In the case of the need for a new spiritual guide, I decided to try and be proactive: I went to a few different parish churches for Mass over the first few weeks, I listened to people speaking about local clergy (my preference was for a priest simply because of wanting to kill 2 birds with one stone in terms of also being able to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation - though in reality the 2 roles have since been fulfilled by 2 different people).

No obvious signs from God in those early days and weeks, so I let things ride... things would happen in their own time, I felt (God's time is not our time). Then, by the end of September it came time to start organising day retreats, one class at a time, at a nearby by diocesan spiritual centre, Park Place, run by a community of mainly Indian nuns. As acting Head of R.E. for a year (during a maternity leave) I ran the days with the much appreciated assistance of our school Chaplain, Fr. Michael.

On a number of occasions during these retreats in the autumn term, I bumped into the centre's live-in Chaplain Fr. Andrew McMahon ofm (a 74 year-old Franciscan friar - now 75). I had known of Fr. Andrew for many years, in fact since my teens and the sponsored 10 km runs that I used to take part in organised by the charity that he founded and directed, the St. Dismas Society, that ran homes for ex-criminals and other social "outcasts". I had always had the greatest of admiration for him and his work, but had only ever spoken to him very briefly during the odd recollection day that me and my fellow Brothers had in the centre over the years, for example our Christmas recollection day (we take turns in going to each others' communities each year for Christmas - Liverpool + Southampton).

During these encounters at Park Place last autumn, I was surprised and pleased that he actually seemed to remember me or know of me (maybe it was just politeness on his part). It quickly became apparent in my heart that this was a person with whom I would be most comfortable talking about the deepest issues and with whom I also had some shared interests: sport (especially football, he was Chaplain to Southampton F.C. during the glory years of the '70s + '80s), film, the arts in general (he is a painter and sculptor).

And so one day I asked him if I could come round sometime for a chat and whether, in the long term, he might consider becoming my spiritual "director"? He seemed quite happy with the idea, but rejected the notion of being a "director", preferring to be considered rather as a friend. This felt more and more right for me and I did indeed feel as if God was guiding me to him...

To cut a long story short, we have indeed become firm friends over the past year and a bit.... see next article for more on Fr. Andrew.

"Of Gods And Men" - articles

2010-12-02T16:42:00.001Z

If you needed any further reasons to go and see this film, read these two articles, especially the second one:

O brother, we're arthouse: the monks taking France by storm | Film | guardian.co.uk

Of Gods and Men – review | Film | The Guardian

"Severe, austere and deeply moving, Xavier Beauvois's film about monks threatened by fundamentalists is one of the year's highlights, says Peter Bradshaw."

Quote for the day

2010-11-24T00:44:00.001Z

Something my brother sent me which I really like:

Quote for the Day

What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.

Chris Abani Professor at the University of California, Riverside

"Of God's and Men" ("Des Hommes et des Dieux")

2010-11-23T08:48:00.001Z

Many of my confrères in France have been to see this film and unanimously sing its praises. It won the Grand Prix (2nd prize) award at this year's Cannes Film Festival and it charts the dramatic events during the final days of a French-founded Cistercian monastery in Tibehirine, Algeria. I was studying in Paris when these real-life events took place (the mid-'90s) and they were front page news for a good while afterwards. Sounds like the film does a very good job, although the heading for the article is rather misleading ("monastic murder mystery". It is so much more than that.

It comes out in Britain on Dec. 3rd.

************************

Of Gods and Men: monastic murder mystery

A haunting film about a group of monks whose faith is tested in the most terrifying way has become a surprise hit in France. Jasper Rees talks to its writer.

By Jasper Rees 11:12AM GMT 05 Nov 2010

One of the big hits in French cinemas this autumn has defied all known box-office rules. Of Gods and Men is an all-male film about religion or, more specifically, religions. It’s set in, of all the uncinematic locations, a Cistercian monastery in North Africa, from which it derives its muted aesthetic tone and careful pace. Its ultimate theme is the price of Christian faith. But, before anyone of a secular bent crosses it off their to-see list, please be advised that it is as gripping as it is heart-rending.

Of Gods and Men is based on events that took place in Algeria in the mid-1990s. This was the period in the country’s history when Islamic fundamentalism had started to introduce severe instability. Among their many victims, roving militants were targeting foreign nationals. As a result, a Cistercian abbey, a benign remnant of French colonialism in a village called Tibehirine in the Atlas Mountains about 60 miles from Algiers, came under threat, and for three years the small group of eight monks lived in fear of their lives.

On one level it would be desirable not to reveal their fate. The experience of watching the narrative unfold in ignorance of its haunting denouement adds an extra layer to the film. That privilege was not vouchsafed to French audiences. “In France, they took it as a tragedy because they knew the end,” says Etienne Comar, the film’s co-author and producer. Regrettably, it’s impossible to discuss the reasons for the film’s impact without the following spoiler.

Precisely what happened has never been established. But, in 1996, the heads of seven monks were found not far from Tibehirine. There is still no proof – a French inquiry was inconclusive – but their murderers are presumed to have been Islamic fundamentalists, although the film also alludes to the reality that the monks were also at loggerheads with Algerian security forces.

So the power of Of Gods and Men is located less in an opaque ending than in the intensely moving agonies of doubt endured by the monks as instinctive fear of death tests their faith to the limit. Should they give in to threats and leave? Or should they trust in God to deliver them from evil?

Comar, whose regular job in film is as a producer, began working on the script in 2006 . “I was fascinated by this epic drama they were living out, which was quite universal. It was the Christ Passion but also a story about faith, humanity, politics and religion. It was evident that it could be a very powerful tragedy.”

He worked on it for two years, keeping Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai quietly in the back of his mind, then reworked it with the director Xavier Beauvois, who promptly excised the back stories explaining why some of the men had chosen the monastic life. “It was too psychological,” concedes Comar, “but I was fascinated because they had had incredible lives. Some were students in ’68, others were workers in Marseilles on the docks, one was a mayor in Savoie. Two were in the Algerian war.”

As is revealed in an afterword, two monks managed to escape abduction. (Although the monastery had only eight residents, a visiting brother had arrived a few days before from another abbey in North Africa.) One of them is still alive at 87. Comar visited him in his Moroccan monastery. “He is still traumatised. We didn’t discuss the subject, but it’s absolutely something he can’t forget. After that everybody told him he needed to come back to France, but he wanted to stay in a Muslim country as a continuation of what he had done in Tibehirine.” Not long before production started, they also met the monks’ families.

“We didn’t want to go and see them too early because we didn’t want to mix their point of view into what we were doing, because it’s not a historical piece. Some of them were quite questioning, saying that 14 years is too soon.” But when they saw it, says Comar, they were “relieved”.

A process of fictionalising happens with all films based on real events. In the case of Of God and Men, it mainly meant blurring the identity of the country. The filmmakers’ motives for doing so remain open to interpretation. Could it be taken as a sign of lingering French colonialism that, in dramatising a period of turmoil that claimed 150,000 Algerian lives, the victims in this narrative are all French?

“This is a very problematic question,” says Comar. “I can imagine it can be taken like that, but this is absolutely not the purpose of the film. The monks were not missionaries. It would be very difficult to tell a story about people who tried to convert. It’s more a testimony of the love they had for this country. It’s more a message of peace and friendship and humanity between France and Algeria than a discourse about colonialism.”

Another of the imaginary elements of the film takes place near the end. The cast spent time in an abbey in Savoie to familiarise themselves with monastic life. They also learnt to sing the psalms that play the role of a kind of Greek chorus. Comar invented a scene, designed to illustrate the monks’ spirit of community, in which they would sing Jacques Brel, as the monks did when washing dishes.

“Xavier phoned and said, 'They are tired of singing. This moment will be something more contemplative. They will be listening to something.’ He had the idea of Swan Lake but didn’t say anything to the actors, and then the day of shooting he said, 'No, it’s changed and we’re going to put some music on that will make you laugh and cry.’” The resulting scene, symbolically featuring bread and wine, is the moral and emotional heart of a remarkable film.

'Of Gods and Men’ is released on Dec 3

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmmakersonfilm/8112419/Of-Gods-and-Men-monastic-murder-mystery.html

Pope Benedict: abuse crisis was like 'a tremendous cloud of [volcanic] filth which darkens everything'

2010-11-23T00:26:00.000Z

Below are some extracts from an article in the Catholic Herald. The book of Pope Benedict's interviews with a German writer that has just been published looks like it has given him the chance to speak freely and openly about a variety of important issues.

I get the impression that the abuse scandal (in particular) has convinced him of the need to be more open and communicative in his role as Shepherd of the Church in response to the accusations that have been levelled at the Church. As a result, five years into his papacy, I think we are now seeing a very different Benedict from the one that the world's media has been allowed to put forward for much of that time: we are seeing the real him that those in the know always knew was there and hoped would have the courage to show himself. I, for one, am delighted to see him winning over hearts and minds wherever he goes. Who would want to be in his position? Imagine the stress, the worry and anxiety? And yet, this 83 year old seems to be inhabited by a genuine inner peace and strength that speaks volumes of his faith, his courage, his closeness to God. I always thought that surely the Cardinals where enough men of prayer and that the Holy Spirit knew what it doing for Joseph Ratzinger to be the right man at the right time for this unenviable task. I humbly point out :-) that it looks like I (and many others) may have been right all along.

**************

(article extracts)

The book reveals a less formal side of the Pope, as he responds simply and directly on topics as diverse as the joy of sex and the ban on burqas. Much of the conversation focuses on the Pope’s call for a global “examination of conscience” in the face of economic disparity, environmental disasters and moral slippage.

The Pope repeatedly emphasised that the Church’s role in a largely broken world is not to impose a “burden” of moral rules but to open the doors to God.

The book reveals a less formal side of the Pope, as he responds simply and directly on topics as diverse as the joy of sex and the ban on burqas. Much of the conversation focuses on the Pope’s call for a global “examination of conscience” in the face of economic disparity, environmental disasters and moral slippage...

The Pope repeatedly emphasised that the Church’s role in a largely broken world is not to impose a “burden” of moral rules but to open the doors to God.

An entire chapter and parts of others were dedicated to the clerical sex abuse scandal. The Pope called it “a great crisis” that left him “stunned by how wretched the Church is, by how much her members fail to follow Christ”.

“It was really almost like the crater of a volcano, out of which suddenly a tremendous cloud of filth came, darkening and soiling everything, so that above all the priesthood suddenly seemed to be a place of shame,” he said.

He expressed optimism about the Church’s recovery from the scandal, saying God continues to raise up Catholic saints. But he also said he understands why some Catholics, particularly victims, have responded by leaving the Church in protest.

“It is difficult for them to keep believing that the Church is a source of good, that she communicates the light of Christ, that she helps people in life – I can understand that,” he said.

The Pope said media coverage of the abuse scandal was partly motivated by a desire to discredit the Church. But he added that the Church must be “grateful for every disclosure” and said the media could not have reported in this way “had there not been evil in the Church”.

The Pope pointed to the Church’s new rules and policies on sex abuse, but he appeared to acknowledge that more might have been done. He noted that in 2002, the Vatican and US bishops established strict norms to curb sex abuse in US dioceses.

“Would it have been Rome’s duty, then, to say to all the countries expressly: find out whether you are in the same situation? Maybe we should have done that,” he said.

An entire chapter and parts of others were dedicated to the clerical sex abuse scandal. The Pope called it “a great crisis” that left him “stunned by how wretched the Church is, by how much her members fail to follow Christ”.

“It was really almost like the crater of a volcano, out of which suddenly a tremendous cloud of filth came, darkening and soiling everything, so that above all the priesthood suddenly seemed to be a place of shame,” he said.

He expressed optimism about the Church’s recovery from the scandal, saying God continues to raise up Catholic saints. But he also said he understands why some Catholics, particularly victims, have responded by leaving the Church in protest.

“It is difficult for them to keep believing that the Church is a source of good, that she communicates the light of Christ, that she helps people in life – I can understand that,” he said.

The Pope said media coverage of the abuse scandal was partly motivated by a desire to discredit the Church. But he added that the Church must be “grateful for every disclosure” and said the media could not have reported in this way “had there not been evil in the Church”.

The Pope pointed to the Church’s new rules and policies on sex abuse, but he appeared to acknowledge that more might have been done. He noted that in 2002, the Vatican and US bishops established strict norms to curb sex abuse in US dioceses.

“Would it have been Rome’s duty, then, to say to all the countries expressly: find out whether you are in the same situation? Maybe we should have done that,” he said

A code of conduct for film goers...

2010-11-22T14:45:00.001Z

... from BBC Radio 5's wonderfully entertaining Film Review programme with Mark Kermode + Simon Mayo. Funniest thing on either tv or radio, and great film reviews to boot! But as my film studies pupils have pointed out, they could do with adding something about arm rest protocol and the need to perhaps negotiate the designation of the aforementioned rests with adjacent clients prior to the start of the film.

"Mike Leigh's Mary: a bogeywoman for middle-aged females": The Guardian

2010-11-15T19:35:00.001Z

Here's a very interesting article about my aforementioned film of the year (thus far): Mike Leigh's "Another Year", which, BTW, I'll be going to see for the third time tomorrow (visits 2 + 3 = taking friends along to see it who otherwise wouldn't have bothered). It makes me want to get a copy of "Happy-Go-Lucky" which I never got round to seeing when it came out (update: I have now ordered it on Amazon).

*************************************

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen.

In Another Year, Mike Leigh creates a ghastly femme d'un certain age in Lesley Manville's character, Mary. But does it have the ring of truth, or is it misogynist?

Are there any women over 35 who will have watched Another Year without a shudder? Mary, Lesley Manville's character – who bowls her way self-pityingly into the lives of the central couple, Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) – is a brilliant and horrific creation. She is a bogeywoman with whom we women d'un certain age can scare ourselves stupid; a spectre of wine-soaked, self-regarding, middle-aged femininity that is all the more horrendous for its recognisability. Who among us hasn't known a Mary weeping into the lees of her wine, bemoaning singledom/heartbreak/bad luck? Who among us hasn't – at one point or another – been dangerously close to being Mary? My most fervent atheistic prayer on watching Another Year was "Don't let me ever, ever become like her (again)."

Lesley Manville as Mary (centre), with Ruth Sheen and Oliver Maltman in Another Year.

Does Leigh's representation of Mary border on the misogynist, as David Cox suggested in a blog on the film site this week? For my money, no. It's mostly because, actually, Mary rings so true. It's partly because Leigh distributes the nuttiness fairly even-handedly between the genders. (I don't want to give away the plot, in so far as it has one, but there are three men who are, shall we say, deeply troubled in the film, and two perfectly sane and delightful women, not that it's a numbers game). I think, too, that the crucial point is that Another Year should be seen in apposition to Leigh's previous film, Happy-Go-Lucky. As Peter Bradshaw pointed out in his Guardian review of the film, Mary is the other side of the coin of Happy-Go-Lucky's central character, Poppy. Poppy is single, contented, self-possessed and enjoys happy relationships with friends. In that film, it is those in family units – notably Poppy's sister who is expecting her first child in supposed suburban bliss – who are angst-ridden and discontented. In my view, that film earned Leigh the right to create a Mary. The two films are companion pieces in many ways. The intertextuality alert (as Bradshaw points out) is surely Mary and Poppy's contrasting involvements with automobiles. (For an insight into Leigh's creative process, turn to Xan Brooks's recent interview with the film-maker.)

Among women of my acquaintance, I was interested that one, a psychotherapist found that Another Year "mirrors middle-class life as I know it and see it. It shows explicitly why some people are miserable and others not." She added: "Mary prefers to live in denial of what she is rather than change herself," citing Mary's oft-repeated, and clearly absurd assertion, "I don't really smoke." In this state of denial, argued the therapist, "The problem will always be perceived to be external ('I have bad luck')." At one point, Gerri counsels Mary to "see somebody" and get some help. In my own imagined version of the continued story, that's just what Mary does. In good news, I've known few people who've been Marys for ever – thank god.

Charlotte Higgins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2010/nov/09/mike-leigh-another-year-women

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

"In the shelter of each other we will live" - "The Shelter" by Jars Of Clay

2010-11-07T01:10:00.001Z

This US band that I first listened to back in about 1997 were one of the first modern era Christian bands to breakthrough into the mainstream. I've bought each of their albums since then, all of which have had great individual tracks, but their latest album "The Shelter" surpasses anything else they have done, in my opinion.

It has so many standout tracks and is an album that also feeds me spiritually. There is a genuineness and a focus to the lyrics across the album that give it a real coherence. It is a wonderful album to listen to and I thoroughly recommend it. Of the standout tracks, the above one is that which I have listened to the most, and which I hope to perform at a school Advent Festival concert in early December with my pupil worship band and the school Choir which I have had to take over running this year. Can't wait. Gives me a buzz every time I sing it to myself... and not because of my performance!!!

"The Big Silence" - on BBC iPlayer

2010-11-06T09:34:00.001Z

Just 6 days left to catch up with this excellent series if you missed it first time:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vkk77

60 years of marriage

2010-11-01T01:01:00.002Z

I got back last Monday from spending a long weekend in Ireland with my Mum+Dad for their 60th wedding anniversary. Quite an achievement in itself, but even more so when you know that the 2 of them have been through over the years. A quiet celebration took place on Sunday in their nursing home in Kilmallock, Co. Limerick, with relatives from Limerick, Tipperary + Cork dropping in. I marvel at and am humbled by the love my octogenarian, wheelchair-bound parents have for each other. Physical fragility (especially that of my father who has been struggling to fend off Parkinson's for 4 or 5 years and is now much diminished) seems to have brought them closer together.

My mother has in recent months taken to serenading the residents + nursing staff with high-spirited renditions of Molly Malone and How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? in a very high, pretty, but ultimately tuneless soprano. See below for photographic evidence... God bless her little cotton socks! Dad (who has Parkinson's) was in a bit better form than last I saw him 3 months ago. Speech a little less mumbled and more coherent. Enjoyed a whisky miniature I brought him. Mum had a sip of a Baileys mini... for old times sake (but couldn't finish it, so I helped her out). Fruit flan/cake provided by nursing home. Mum + Dad loved the balloon, the chocs, the cards... all the attention (low-key though it was) cheered them up, Dad especially.

A beautiful morning drive from Ballyporeen, Co. Limerick, where I now stay with an uncle + aunt during my trips over, to Kilmallock, Co. Limerick and Mum + Dad's nursing home.

Mum in good voice. "In Dublin's fair city..."

Dad thinking, "I'm not with her!"

Dad thinking: "Ah, some peace and quiet at last!"

"Oh no, she's off again!" Bless.

5 of my 39 Hayes first cousins: these from Limerick (originally)

"Another Year" (Mike Leigh) - pure cinematic pleasure

2010-10-19T00:22:00.001+01:00

Just saw this tonight at a preview screening. I laughed out loud, I cried. One of the mostly deeply human, warm, sad, happy, life-affirming, yet melancholic films I have ever seen. Mike Leigh and a wonderful cast at the very top of their collective game. Pure enjoyment and food for thought. What more can one ask for in a film? A candidate for film of the year.

Chilean mine rescue - an incredible human story

2010-10-13T23:25:00.001+01:00

I've been totally enthralled by what I've managed to see of the Chilean mine rescue. Very impressed with not just the Chilean organisation, but also the character of the miners themselves. It would seem that the religious faith of many amongst them has helped them cope. Can't help but be moved by it all. I just pray that the media lets them get on with their lives after it's all over. What a bond they will have between them from now on!

Here's an interesting summary of their whole experience and how they've coped.

Love this detail: "One of the miners' most relished gifts was a small high-definition video camera with which they've recorded a large part of their ordeal. Despite the hazards they confront, the men have maintained high spirits and the most distinguished humorists among them have dispatched eight hours of their favorite jokes on film. "

Celebrate Charismatic Conference - Oct. 2010 + a special birthday

2010-10-11T17:11:00.000+01:00

The weekend just gone saw us welcome once more in our school a weekend charismatic conference organised by Celebrate. There were over 300 participants (inc. myself), about 85 of whom were under 18. These were split into "streams" each with their own activities/talks/games/prayer times, etc... We all came together for the Sunday Mass.

What a life-giving, spirit-filled, joyous, uplifting 2 days, the first of which was my birthday. In actual fact, I spent the afternoon of my birthday (Saturday) with Bernard Weaver, the 82 year-old husband of one of the mainstays of the Southampton Catholic Charismatic scene, Frances Weaver. The two of them are old friends of our family (see here).

Two days earlier, Bernard had been diagnosed with cancer (he'd already had a cancerous thyroid removed a couple of years previously). As yet, it is not known the extent of the cancer. He has to go for a full body scan in the next few days. Frances was understandably worried about him and did not want to leave him on his own for 2 days during the conference. Their daughter had offered to take Bernard (who was trying his best to be his usual carefree, joyful self) round to her house for the Sunday. But no solutions had presented themselves for the Saturday. So I offered to go round to Bernard once the conference had got underway, thereby freeing Frances to come to Celebrate. I needed to be on hand at the start in particular for any equipment/electrical issues, etc... given that they were using our school. Though Bros. Francis + Augustine were also able to help, they weren't participating in the weekend and so weren't immediately on hand.

So, the day of my birthday from 1pm till 9.30pm that night, I was with Bernard. First up, a pub lunch in a converted 16th century house in Romsey. Lovely jubbly! Then back to the Weavers' house for some Commonwealth Games action on tv (Bernard, like me, is a keen sports fan - see below photos), followed by a wonderful little British film on dvd "Sixty-Six", which tells the semi-autobiographical of the film's Jewish director's Bar Mitzvah which happened to fall the day of the '66 World Cup Final. A comical and touching film, ultimately about father-son relationships (which so many films seem to be about when you think of it). When Frances came back in the evening, full of the spirit, she was delighted to find Bernard bubbly and cheerful having had a wonderful day. It had been a real pleasure for me too. In fact, what with the morning spent at the conference, I'd have to say that it was one of the loveliest birthdays I've ever had!

Here are a few photos. The first few are from when I invited Bernard + Frances around to our community for a meal a few months ago. They used to come here back in the '70s when a Brother who was in community here at the time, an American, Bro. Ernest Paquet, used to host their regular charismatic prayer group sessions. The others are from a day out at Wembley back in the Spring when I took Bernard to the Saints' glorious win in the final of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy (cup for clubs in the 3rd + 4th divisions.

"You Are My Foundation" (2010)

2010-10-11T16:22:00.000+01:00

Here is a new recording of a song 'wot I rote' about 8 years ago: "You Are My Foundation". I recently re-recorded it for use in conjunction with the 150th anniversary celebrations of Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais, at the request of other members of our media commission that I am part of.

http://www.myspace.com/music/1060199/songs/74569169/?ap=1&sms_ss=email&at_xt=4cad019908b8c0ff,0

UPDATE: "The Big Silence", not "Silence In The City"

2010-10-06T17:06:00.000+01:00

There's now some updated info available on the BBC 2 series I mention in my previous article: the BBC have changed its name to "The Big Silence" from "Silence In The City" (its working title). They have also put on their website an updated press release.

See here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/2010/wk42/feature_big_silence.shtml

"Silence In The City" - starting Fri. Oct. 22nd on BBC 2

2010-10-05T23:45:00.001+01:00

This promises to be very good. It's by the same team that produced "The Monastery" (Big Brother meets Benedictine monasticism), with former Abbot Christopher Jamison (Worth Abbey) again a prime mover behind the project.

I had an e-mail from Fr. Luke at Worth the other day saying that the BBC have at last confirmed the dates of its airing. It will be broadcast in 3 parts (like The Monastery), starting on Fri. Oct. 22nd at 7pm, the other 2 parts airing on the subsequent Fridays. One to put in your diary!

Here's the blurb from the BBC website:

SILENCE IN THE CITY

Father Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth, emerged as the key figure in the BBC Two series The Monastery broadcast six years ago. He believes that if people can learn to be silent they can communicate with God, and rediscover their souls.

In a new three-part documentary series, Silence In The City, five people attempt to put silence at the heart of their everyday, busy lives and learn what to do with it once it's there.

The series investigates just why "peace and quiet" is so elusive, and in doing so opens up a debate about why some people try to avoid silence because of the reflection that it may bring. Do people construct layers of noise, or "busy-ness" to dull the anxieties of the modern world? Silence In The City looks at what might happen to the inner self when people keep quiet.

Featuring a number of individuals on the verge of making crucial life decisions, Silence In The City asks whether the power of prayer can help them change their lives.

Enceladus, the Jet-Powered Moon

2010-10-04T19:58:00.001+01:00

A quite incredible view of one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus.

Sent to you by bro_james via Google Reader:

Simply Astonishing: Enceladus, the Jet-Powered Moon

via Universe Today by Nancy Atkinson on 01/10/10

The plumes of Enceladus are highlighted in this Cassini image.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

What an astonishing view of Saturn's moon Enceladus, as seen by Cassini! At least four different plumes of water ice are spewing out from the south polar region, highlighted because of the black space behind the Moon. On Twitter, Carolyn Porco said that we see four jets because we're looking down the four tiger stripe fractures crossing the south pole. "How lovely it is to know!" she added.
Cassini was about 617,000 kilometers (383,000 miles) away from Enceladus when it captured this image.

More info: Cassini website

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The Brothers Of Funk Instruction

2010-09-28T00:56:00.000+01:00

Today I taught the other members of my staff/pupil band, "The Brothers Of Funk Instruction", some top tunes for our next "gig"/school concert: All These Things That I've Done (The Killers), About You Now (Sugerbabes... yes, the Sugarbabes!! Sounds great in a rock format), Sit Down (James), Deeper (Delirious), Run (Snow Patrol) and a personal fave, All Kinds Of Time (Fountains Of Wayne). They picked them all up really quick which is terrific, considering that other than myself, the band members' ages range from 12 to 15.

The band is a floating collective of about 8 musicians, swapping in and out members for different songs, eg. drums... those not playing the main parts chip in on tambourine, backing vocals, etc...

We learned the songs in an open rehearsal during tonight's Open Evening in the school. Prospective pupils and their parents could wander in and out on their way around the school. Two other pupils also came and performed (both female singer-songwriters, one only 11 years old but already a most accomplished performer - both are, actually).

Three already have their own band and have started gigging in the local area. For last year's school concerts they got me to sit in with them on their wonderfully inventive cover version of One Day Like This (Elbow) that even had a ukelele part. Our performance of Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol) apparently had one parent in tears .

P.S. Our Sugarbabes rendition sounded frighteningly good!! :-)

"Scott Pilgrim vs. THE WOOOOOOORRRRRRLLLLLDDDDD!!!!!!"

2010-09-25T10:29:00.001+01:00

I am really liking "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" (saw it last night). At the same time gloriously silly (concept), wildly imaginative (visuals), wonderfully funny (dialogue) and just plain adorable. "Step up your game Scott, time to break out the 'L' word..."

Papal Vigil - Hyde Park: another Team Win triumph!!

2010-09-19T10:22:00.000+01:00

It's been a VERY busy start to the school year (new job...) but I have to write about events yesterday at Hyde Park.

I took a group of young adults from Southampton and Liverpool (the latter coming down to meet us in London) aged between 14 and 22 and a family of friends from Liverpool to the event at Hyde Park that culminated in the Papal prayer vigil. All of our group absolutely loved it, and so did all those around us, it seemed. The day just flew by. The music + dance... yes, was at times gloriously cheesy, but also at times quite beautiful and mostly very well performed. Young Liam McNally sung his heart out and the arrangement + performance of "You Raise Me Up" (most definitely NOT a fave song of mine) actually had me (and loads of people near me) choking up.

As did the wonderfully moving testimonies of faith from people during the "Heart Speaks To Heart" section at the end of the afternoon, esp. from the parents of the young Catholic murdered a couple of years ago, Jimmy Mizen (what lovely people his parents are). Hosts Carol Vorderman + Frank Cottrell Boyce did a good job on the whole, though Carol was noticeably more at ease (only normal).

Making our way through Hyde Park to the arena.

In the crowd. The arena terrain looked pretty full (on the giant screens) by the time the Pope arrived. There must have been close to the 80,000 that had originally been planned for (despite the critics saying it would be half full!).

Me + Robbie Ross, an old Scouse friend of mine. He came down from Liverpool with one of his daughters, her husband and their youngest daughter - an amazing character and a tremendous apostle for the Lord, someone with whom I have had the joy of sharing a spiritual journey these past 10 years which has helped both of us grow in our faith.

Robbie + grand-daughter Katie.

Anna, Matthew + Sophie. 3 more Scouse friends in our group, alumni of the LifeTeen youth ministry in St. Austin's parish, Liverpool, that Is was involved in for 9 years and through which i first met Robbie. Matthew is also a former pupil of our Liverpool school, St. Francis Xavier's College and Sophie has been Team Win Mother on umpteen youth gathering trips to France (too many to count), WYD 2005 and 3 trips to Africa.

The Priests, who were among those performing during the day.

The prayer vigil itself was very... prayerful!! During the silence that accompanied the first part of exposition you could have heard a pin drop. Benedict's words were very well received and I thought his words to the young people there in particular were much better aimed and far more inspiring than at World Youth Day in Cologne, 2005. He seemed relaxed, happy and ready to respond spontaneously with little smiles and gestures when his words struck a chord and generated a response from the crowd. As Damian Thompson (Daily Telegraph Religion blog) says, his shyness has become an asset and people do warm to him the way you would to a slightly frail but mentally sharp as a pin elderly relative towards whom you feel protective and would love to hug and look after. His tone was indeed that of a kindly, loving grandfather giving advice to younger family members, not from a position of superiority, but from one of love, affection and experience, wanting to share his acquired wisdom with them for their benefit so that they could share in the graces he has received and in turn share them with others.

The prayers and readings were well chosen. In the context of everything Benedict has been saying during this state visit about our responsibility to stand up for justice, to love our neighbour, to live in peace, the Beatitudes have never sounded as vital and as potent a rallying call for all Christians as they did today.

Former St. Mary's College, Southampton (where I now teach) pupil Jacob, me + current pupil Chris.

I (+ 3 of my group who were with me in Cologne) found today an all together more successful event than the last night + day in Cologne. There was a great atmosphere amongst the assembled people, young and old and the pacing of the "animation", as the French would say, was just about right. The studio director in charge of the giant screen images chose to fill the transitional moments with highly humorous candid camera close-up shots of pilgrims around the crowd, suddenly realising that their face was on the giant screen and reacting in all sorts of excited/embarrassed/shy/extrovert ways. Everywhere there were young children begging to be lifted on to older relatives' shoulders, pilgrims telling each other their stories (myself + Scouse friend Robbie in fact ended up praying with a couple who were stationed just in front of us).

Yes, we came to "see" Benedict and he has set the overall tone of the weekend's events, but in reality he was simply the catalyst for a shared pilgrimage experience of faith, a proclamation and witness to what we believe as Catholics.

I had my doubts about how yesterday would go. I needn't have worried. A resounding success and hopefully one that will indeed inspire the young people present (and those who attended the other events) to give their lives to God, whether it be through married family life, celibate single life, consecrated religious life or the priesthood.

I've missed you!

2010-08-27T21:56:00.001+01:00

At least that's the impression I get from our cat Boomer since I came back to our community after 6 weeks in France. The first evening back she took the earliest opportunity to fall asleep across my wrist, as per usual, whilst I was working at my computer. This can be awkward because it requires me to type one-handed, but I haven't the heart to move her. Bless!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Gotta have faith: what's your relationship with God at the flicks? | Catherine Shoard

2010-08-25T22:00:00.000+01:00

An interesting article here from the Guardian newspaper's film blog:

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Gotta have faith: what's your relationship with God at the flicks? | Catherine Shoard
Faith films are burgeoning in the United States, but would you welcome them here in the UK? Or is religious scepticism the key to cinematic excellence?

Feature: Faith films perform a marketing miracle

There is, I think, something really curious happening at the moment, which I explored in a recent feature. A drop-off in conventional funding methods, together with a rise in the United States of devout Christianity and an increasing dislike of Hollywood's baser fixations, has paved the way for a new wave of super-profitable faith-based films. And though they've not washed up on these shores yet, the actions of UK distributors, in tapping church audiences for custom with mainstream releases they feel might strike a chord, suggests there's a hunger over here too.
But how far is this true? There are a few complicating factors. The first is funding. A reliance on the munificence of others leaves faith films vulnerable to parties whose interest isn't wholly holy. The Ultimate Gift, for instance, FoxFaith's one big hit, was actually, it turns out, bankrolled by the Stanford Financial Group. Its head, Allen Stanford, showed it to clients at private screenings just two years before his arrest and imprisonment. Forbes quoted an executive at the time proudly reporting they'd "tracked a good bit of multimillion-dollar relationships" as a direct result. Personally, I think that's a bit of a problem; in a similar way to the unease I felt on learning that Shane Meadows's Somers Town had been backed by Eurostar. But money's money, right? Am I just being hopelessly naïve? Is bending editorial integrity just a necessary part of getting a film made? After all, Stanford's involvement in The Ultimate Gift has not, in fact, discredited the faith films market – indeed it's barely gone noticed.
The second is quality. One thing that unites both Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (which did have a certain grisly something, as a movie) and what I'd deem as quality faith films – the back catalogue of Robert Bresson, Ermanno Olmi's The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Carl Dreyer's Joan of Arc – is that they tend to be the work of one man's vision. None are films that could have come off an assembly line. None are films whose modern-day equivalents will, I suspect, easily emerge from the new wave of faith films.
But maybe I'm being too harsh. Greg Wright of Hollywood Jesus, a really cogent site analysing pop culture through a Christian filter, wasn't impressed by Letters to God, but did like the gloss and complexity of To Save a Life: "You could tell that the director, Brian Baugh, has some actual chops," he told me. The LA Times delivered a similar endorsement.
Angela Walker of ChristianCinema.com (also well worth a look) reports that so edgy were elements of To Save a Life (not just realistic teen behaviour such as sex and drinking, but also the dodgy minister in charge of the local church) that some of her friends banned their children from seeing it. "But that's one of the reasons I liked it," Wright says. "Nothing was gratuitous or overdone, but it put it right out there – and kids see and deal with that every day of their lives. I think the film had more credibility with general audiences because of that." Wright thinks a new generation of professional film-makers raised in the church but weaned on mass media, rather than Billy Graham flicks, will also change the dynamic.
The other issue is Britain itself. Surely, in so secular a country, whereTony Blair's Faith Films awards are just meant as a means for greater multicultural understanding, and where the critics suck up the last scene of There Will Be Blood ("I am a false prophet and God is a superstition") like so many milkshakes, hearts and minds are going to be harder to find?
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"Inception" soundtrack - love it!

2010-08-20T22:22:00.001+01:00

Right now, I can't stop listening to the "Inception" soundtrack. Clever how the composer uses 3 simultaneous musical motives of varying rhythmic speeds to suggest the relative speed of time in the 3 dream layers (normal, slower + slowest - at least that's my theory!). Love the film, by the way. Seen it twice so far, going for a 3rd next week.

I realised today what the final track (12 - Time) reminded me of... a favourite moment from the wonderful "The Thin Red Line" (T. Malick), a sequence which I have used for years in Film Studies A-Level lessons as an tremendous example of the use of sound (sound effects, soundtrack music, voice-over...). First up, they are in the same key, secondly there's the same rate of chord change (with similar-ish chords), thirdly they are roughly the same speed, fourthly they both make use of a 'pulse' motif, fifthly some motivic + orchestration similarities, and sixthly and finally they are both slow burn minimalist constructions based on repetition of the same basic 4-chord pattern, starting quiet with a thin texture, building up to a harrrrrumphing climax, then falling back down again...

But hey, what I didn't tell you is that they are by the same composer, Hans Zimmer! So we'll let him off. I don't mind someone plagiarising himself. Even the greatest composers do that.

Here, listen to the 2 tracks and make your own mind up.

My dear children,... come to us, stay with us. We will be the guardian angels of your innocence. (Sermon, VII 2271 - Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais)

2010-08-12T13:34:00.005+01:00

The title of this post is a quote from a sermon by the Founder of my congregation, Father Jean-Marie De La Mennais (1780-1860). This is the full quote:

"My dear children, whom Jesus, our Saviour, has loved so much, whom he bends down to embrace and bless, come to us, stay with us. We will be the guardian angels of your innocence."

(Sermon, VII 2271)

It is one of a number of quotes that I had been asked to translate for a forthcoming document from French into English whilst here at our study session. I couldn't help but think what Fr. Jean-Marie would have thought of the actions of those priests and religious who over the years have abused the trust that children (+ adults) have placed in them.

"We will be the guardian angels of your innocence."

I could cry when I read these words, knowing how passionate our Founder was for the well-being of children. It is our job as Brothers today to be such guardian angels.

Here are some other passages from amongst those I have translated which I would like to share, so as to give people an idea of our Founder's priorities and his sensitivity to the needs of the Brothers in his congregation, as well as those of young people.

"God created me for his greater glory; therefore, I must dedicate to him all my actions, consecrate my whole being to him; and I must strive with all my mind to know him, with all my heart to love him and with all my strength to serve him."

(Sermon I p. 15)

"When the Word became flesh and lived among us, did he not use his divine mouth to instruct those who followed him? Did he not gather little children round him to teach and bless them? And what of ourselves, his disciples? Should we not imitate his example?"

(S II p. 799)

"Be careful not to mistake God’s voice for the voice of your own desires. So that you may be able to discern one from the other, pray much and always submit yourself to the jugement of those who have the grace to be able to distinguish between that which comes from Heaven and that which comes from the spirit of lies, who often appears in the form of an Angel of light so as to seduce us."

(S VIII p. 2286)

"My children, you are having to fight very hard during these difficult times. […] How are you going to sustain your vocation, on which your own salvation and those of your poor little children depends? How will […] the beautiful and great endeavour to which you have dedicated yourselves support itself? Should you count on your own talents?… No, for that would be a vain hope; listen rather to these words from the Holy Spirit: it is our faith that will defeat the world, and this faith of ours is founded on knowing none other than Jesus Christ, the crucified Christ."

(S VII p. 2294)

"You have the desire to walk in his footsteps, to be gentle and humble of heart following his example, to be obedient like him to the point of death, according to the will of our heavenly Father. Peace be with you! Your spirit will rejoice in this heavenly peace,… you will cease to be like… clouds of smoke dispersed by the wind. May peace reign in your heart… whose feelings and desires will always relate back to God! May this deep peace envelop your senses."

(S VII p. 2375.)

"Speak to the one who is the very expression of God’s strength and virtue; he has come to dwell in you, so as to be united with you in the same spirit, by the grace of intimate union and through the outpouring of ardent love. He knows your weaknesses and your urgent needs, he knows… your suffering, your temptations, your worries and your former infidelities. He sees all that is most secret in your soul. Therefore, implore his mercy and goodness, for he can refuse you nothing, given current circumstances."

(S IV p. 1485)

I think the end of this last one is wonderful:

"Let us pray, therefore, pray without ceasing. But, you may ask, is that possible?… Well! If you think this then you haven’t understood what prayer really is, this inarticulate, inner prayer that withdraws, so to speak, into the depths of the soul. Ah! This prayer is never troubled by anything. Nothing distracts it, neither noise, nor our various activities, nor our professional commitments, nor sleep… You want to know how one might pray without ceasing? You should also ask how one might love without ceasing, for prayer is nothing more than the expression of love, and love is the most beautiful and the most perfect of prayers."

(S IV p. 1478)

Jesus Culture - Light on Your Face

2010-08-09T20:44:00.000+01:00

This is rather wonderful. Very powerful song + performance, though it is much more than just a performance. Heartfelt, prayerful + passionate. I'll certainly be looking out for this band from now on.

That Mitchell and Webb Look - Moon Landing Sketch

2010-08-08T14:38:00.000+01:00

Oh I just love this!! And it's sooo British! The understatement, the sly satire. And they end up debunking the "fake moon landings" argument probably better than any scientist has until now.

Conception - oh this is sooooooo good!!

2010-08-07T15:05:00.000+01:00

To get the joke you must at least be aware of the current mammoth blockbuster brain-teaser that is "Inception" and its tagline and also have seen "Juno". The link between the two films is through a cast member of both films, the wonderful young Canadian actress Ellen Page. Sorry for the above pedantry, but there might be readers who don't get the joke :-)

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Conception

via Chris Curtis by Chris Curtis on 7/31/10

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