The Monthly Salon: May
Take the floor, my friends, and speak
Afternoon all. Here we are again, in the section of the Abbey which is conducted by you, my loyal readers. I am still in the thick of my Book of Wild Saints as I write this. The deadline for delivery of the manuscript is the end of this month, and I feel it breathing down my neck. I am loving it, though. It is a real departure, and my first Christian book. It’s going to look beautiful, too: the cover, by Ewan Craig, is a work of art in itself. But you’re not allowed to see it yet, I’m afraid. Be patient.
Speaking of works of art, the above image is of the Alfred Jewel, an astonishing piece of Anglo-Saxon metal-and-glass work, probably created in the 9th century for King Alfred of Wessex, a great reader, writer and translator, and pioneering Christian king. It’s one of the images I’m using in the slide show I’ll be giving this coming weekend, to accompany my talk on pilgrimage in England. There are a few tickets left for the British Saints Convention where I’ll be speaking, if you feel inspired to make a last minute trip. I’ll also be in conversation with Rowan Williams, and there are plenty of other good things on offer too.
I’m told that just a few places remain for the November event in sunny Florida at which I’ll be appearing, too. More about that here.
I’ll be back here next week with some exciting news on another subject, and some updates about what will be happening at the Abbey from the summer onwards. But for now, my friends, the floor is yours. The world is going mad, but the birds are still singing. Wherever we look, there’s plenty to say. Say anything you like.
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Hello all. I’m new to this community. Against the Machine made a big impact on me, working to keep the lights on at a huge utility. It’s been feeling like we have to work harder and harder every day just to keep up. I’m sick of keeping up and looking for a more humane way of life. It’s been encouraging to find others of like mind. Over a thousand new converts joined the church in our little diocese of Knoxville at Easter. Good things are happening if you know where to look.
Just back from a pilgrimage in Greece.
It was wonderful. I fell in love with the Greek people: gentle, kind-hearted, warm, sincere, comparatively innocent, respectful of their own culture and history. They are family-oriented, a cohesive society, clearly less obsessed with wealth and image, more self-respecting, self-reliant, closer to the land, with priests, monks and nuns out and about and clearly respected. How much of this is wish-fulfilment on my part clearly needs to be considered, but I would argue not much: it was my very direct experience. Is it a shangri-la? Obviously not. Many people have a hard time there, there were quite a few beggars and homeless people. It has struggled as an economy, for sure.
But one of many lessons I learned on my pilgrimage is this. In a society where the churches are open all day, where they have countless saints, where they value, remember and venerate their saints and their relics, where the relics are on open display (in reliquaries, obviously) and not hidden away shamefacedly in a box somewhere as they are in England, where people pop in and out of churches to kiss icons and say brief prayers before and after work, on lunch breaks etc, where even teenagers and young people (some, anyway) are not embarrassed to make the sign of the Cross as they pass a church --in a society like this, where Christ and His Church are so deeply central to the people, the human heart-qualities I mentioned above are very obviously going to be the result.
And then I think of the spiritual impoverishment of current British society, the fragmentation, the dissension, the unease, the utterly unwarranted bombastic pride and self-satisfaction of too many people, the overreliance on money rather than human qualities to solve problems, the lack of cohesion and the profound meaning crisis. The dead national church, the closed and locked churches, the indifference - frankly - of Anglicanism to its past.
And then I think further of our first thousand years, first as Britannia, then as the Kingdoms, and finally as England, Scotland, Wales - and of our countless early saints, alive in heaven, just waiting for us to call on them, waiting with open hands and willing God-infused hearts to help their ailing, bewildered, lost descendants in these Isles, to show us at least some of the way back towards its spiritual riches, towards what Greece, for all its travails, has never lost since St Paul first came there.
Your new book, Paul, will not come a moment too soon.
May our Isles rediscover their rich heritage of saints. May the akathists ring out once more and England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland feel their withered roots revive and flourish once more.