Msg Wtng

Carol Vorderman, Queen of the Consonants, placed her final vowels on the Countdown board a few weeks ago. For TV quizzes, it was the end of an era; Ms Vorderman - who was born at Christmas-time, hence her Christian name- had been there since the beginning and there were more than a few tears shed on that final show when it aired on the 12th December.

Meanwhile, back in Adventland, the countdown to Christmas is nearly over and the last of those high numbers will be revealed in a few hours and bells will chime to herald the Word which has always been there, never hiding in an anagram.

There is a message waiting indeed. It doesn't matter if some of the vowels are missing (like my blog posts this year!), nor does the Christmas story always add up to some commentators from our limited human perspective- but why should it? Life itself is a wonderfully complex puzzle which none of us will solve in this life in three score years and ten or more, let alone thirty seconds. But it's no conundrum.

In the birth of Jesus the Saviour is revealed the answer to life, the universe and everything in it's sweetest form- a tiny, helpless, naked and yet perfect baby. And no ticking clock can limit the time we should spend pondering that awesome mystery of God himself being born among us. No human mind can quite take it in, but it is God's own brilliant solution, and it makes me cry just writing about it.

May your Christmas joy be unrestrained, and your hearts filled with the peace which passes all understanding.

Fantastic Four!

Four years ago next Thursday, I set up this blog and wrote my first posting- all of two lines! Four years ago next Thursday, four British rowers brought a team including Sir Matthew Pinsent his fourth consecutive olympic gold medal in an Olympic regatta, as part of the Coxless Fours in Athens. It was an emotional occasion indeed. How do you top that?
By the sort of tear-jerking, heart-stopping, jaw-dropping performance four Pommy Powerhouses managed to put in an hour ago in Beijing, that's how, beating their Australian rivals by just a whisker. How do they do it?!
Teamwork. In an age which seems to lionise individualism, the coxless fours is an example of how the most worthwhile things in life are very rarely the effort of one person alone. Sir Steve Redgrave, or should that be the Venerable Steve Redgrave, with five of those gold medals behind him for olympic rowing events, was quick to dismiss any suggestion from his fellow commentator in Beijing, the BBC's John Inverdale, that any one member of a rowing four, even less an eight, is more important than the other. They all have their part to play.
But it's not only the high profile team in the boat, the ones catching all the camera angles whose every bead of sweat, every breath,every pained expression, is recorded for posterity, that bring olympic glory. It's the physiotherapists, the doctors, perhaps especially even the nutritionist who help to ensure that four human bodies can give every joule of the quite extraordinary power they are capable of, to bring the jewel in every sportsman's crown, the gold medal on the victory podium.
One body, many parts. Something St Paul gave a masterly treatise on in one of his pastoral letters to the early church. Every part of the human body has its function, and it's no good expecting it to do something it was never intended for. Rowers can't rely just on their arms to win a race. It takes strong lungs- Matthew Pinsent reputedly had the highest recorded lung capacity in Britain-, pounding legwork, keen eyes and ears listening to every utterance of the rest of the team and not least the coach following on the bicycle from the shore to achieve these sort of world-beating results.
I can't but think of the solitary man shouting from the shore to some rather disconsolate individuals in a boat on the Lake of Galilee some 1,973 years or so ago. He appeared to be walking, not even rowing, on the water, and called one of them over to him to walk with him on the water. One of his team, a man called Peter, at first was quick to respond and did just that-but then fear started to grip him and his mettle failed. Think what a disaster it would have been for Team GB if our four today had done that as they continued to row backwards towards their finishing line.

For the one who walked on the water was Jesus- the same Jesus who came to his team on the shore on Galilee again, and offered them a nutritious breakfast, just days after they had apparently seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory on a cruel cross in Jerusalem. He had risen again- and was to rise yet higher, not to the raised platform of a victory ceremony alongside a man-made lake, but to the exalted throne of heaven, beyond all earthly achievements.

Yet even for the Jesus who was as I put it was "being held in a queue" in my last posting some five months ago, actually in a stone cold tomb, it was his Father's amazing, awesome, unfathomable power that brought him back to life in a human body- a body recognised and seen by more than five hundred people, witnesses of an event far greater than olympic glory, some two thousand years ago. And it was the Holy Spirit, the third person of that profound mystery Christians call the Trinity, that inspired those early believers like Paul to carry on, whatever the cost, to their destiny, their victory, to claim their prize. In Paul's case, and for many Christians since in too many lands even to this day, it took them to their own deaths at the hands of persecutors and detractors.
Despite all the controversies which inevitably follow it from fallible human beings, the Olympic games remains an extraordinary sporting spectacle, the greatest show on earth indeed. Yet even the efforts of the greatest olympians- and surely I must give due credit here to the extra-ordinary Michael Phelps who looks set to claim his eight gold medal of the XXIXth Olympiad tomorrow in the Beijing watercube- will never match that labour surpassing Hercules which raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and which still inspires countless billion believers today. A more fantastic event never was seen!

Your Saviour is Being Held...

Yes, but held where? In a queue of mis-understanding religious leaders beying for his blood just two days ago, on Maundy Thursday? In the thousands who listened to them but could not hear his still, small voice of calm? His innocent bleating rather than beying? His failure to act in the face of blatant injustice to his person, to save his own life? Could this really be the Christ, the pivot of history motionless as his dead body was hastily taken down from the cross and buried in a borrowed tomb?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Please wait.
But for how long? Until the slaughter not just of one man, but millions of children yet unborn has stopped? Until the sword of power is replaced by the ploughshare of universal equality? Until all the hungry are fed and nobody thirsts either for the water of life or uncontaminated, donated blodd?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Please wait.
Until the war of words is replaced by the harvest of hope? Until the darkness of despair is banished by the lightness of endless day?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Please wait..
Until this shining, beautiful new moon yields to the bright, blinding radiance of the star of the morning. Until female eyes drained by too much mournful crying discover...what? Until the friends, still quivering with fear and incomprehension realise...yes?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Your call will be answered shortly. Please wait.
On Holy Saturday night, peace be with you.
Mark.

Now Hands that Do Dishes...

"Can feel soft as your face, with mild, green, Fairy liquid".

Come on now, be honest. You were ready to sing the second two lines of this triplet, word perfect, the moment you read my subject line, weren't you?

The reason you can still warble along to these frankly rather banal lyrics is largely due to the efforts of the late Cliff Adams, who until his death in 2001 was for several decades the purveyor of familiar ditties on BBC Radio Two every Sunday afternoon on "Sing Something Simple".


Far from just keeping grannies and grandpas happy with these memorable melodies sung a capella except for the versatile mouth organ of Jack Emblow, among Cliff Adams' weekday jobs was making a mint composing advertising "jingles" for everything from Murray's spearmint confection to an unpromising new concoction of dried potato which actually proved to be quite a smash- and the most popular British TV advert of all time, to boot! He probably composed the Fairy liquid jingle quicker than I can write this long-overdue posting to Anyway..

BBC TV's BBC Four channel is currently running a fascinating series of programmes about the advertising industry- the words, images and predominantly people that American writer Vance Packard famously described as "The Hidden Persuaders" in the title of his seminal book on the subject in the 1970s. A programme last night on the history of TV food advertising brought back many memories for my brother and me of the ITV advertising of our childhood.

Through pester power rather than today's nutritional wisdom, put-upon parents (though not usually ours, I recall) were persuaded they could pacify their restless offspring with merely a finger of toffee and chocolate fudge, or that an equally child-friendly digit proferred by a benevolent sea captain could get the little ones eating and enjoying fish. The ingenuity with which advertising agencies achieved this was to guarantee the TV commercials and their slogans a place in the cultural memory even if the products are becoming portiona not grata in the health conscious noughties.

What a pity it is then, that while we remember the tasty, hasty snacks of our formative years so fondly just hearing the jingles- or the washing up that followed it for Mum and her little helpers, for so many the most heart-rending music ever composed coupled with the most profound words ever spoken or written will bring little or no associations this week. Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week in the Western Christian calendar. Yet for a great proportion of Britons, it might as well be Palmolive Sunday.

This is the day when Jesus of Nazareth rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, an unconventional entrance to the most sacred place of the Jewish nation, certainly, but enacted exactly in this way to fulfil scripture predicting this event,written many centuries before. So excited were those who saw Jesus arriving, that they threw down branches of palm leaves along his way, much in the way we'd welcome the coming of the monarch these days with a red carpet.

A people abused and exploited by an occupying power saw this young man of just 33 as the answer to all their hopes for liberation from the hated forces of Rome. Many hailed him as their king, much like a Hosanna hero, who would break the yoke of Caesar's stronghold and take the city and nation by whatever means necessary to restore political control to its rightful occupants.

How sad it is, with hindsight, that they were not on message, or at any rate only believed in this instant solution to all their problems for just a few days. Few saw in the substantial bread and wine offered one Thursday evening in first century Palestine, the most important meal ever put before mankind and a promise far more enduring than anything Proctor and Gamble could make because it came from the maker of life itself.

Instead of taking what was on offer in the greatest free trial ever-the love of God offered by his only Son- by the end of the same week Jerusalem's passover-consuming population were abandoning him faster than you could say buy one, set one free. Barabas left jail, Jesus was condemned to his fate- crucifixion. No brand loyalty here, then, but only the branding of a cruel crown of thorns and the nailmarks of the most hideous wrongful conviction ever enacted.

Standing around him at the cross the following day, what we now call Good Friday, as this young man who had done nothing deserving death struggled to breathe, was his best friend, along with the mother whom this dutiful Jewish son had doubtless helped to wash pots and pans at many a Jewish festival. Just the night before, however, the hands of the one so often portrayed as meek and mild had washed the rough, dirty feet of the same followers who would betray, desert and disown him at his hour of greatest need.

The Party's Over...

It's time to call it a day: The fourth of January two thousand and eight will do fine for the next few hours at least. Happy New Year!

Not that I've been a 24-hour party person ever since last posting to Anyway- last week, or was it last year? I had a very enjoyable Christmas, as I hope you did too, but constant jollity is just not the way we do things round here-even if for some the Christmas holiday will have lasted a fortnight and the return to work and school won't be complete til 7th of January.

The English are a funny race when it comes to celebrating New year-what is, when all's said and done, just an arbitrary point in the continuous revolving passage of the earth round the sun, when we decide to attempt to accurately measure that orbit again for another 365 "days", or as this is to be a leap year, 366. The very existence of leap years points out the folly of trying to number our days, months and years with too much precision, because the exact workings of the universe are complex and beyond our ken, as the Scots might put it.

Maybe we English are more pragmatic and a little less sentimental, but those of us south of the border have traditionally never quite managed to find the fun of New Year as well as other more outwardly flamboyant races- although as the pyrotechnic delights of London's celebrations brought Old Father Time to meet Old Father Thames once again last Monday night, it seems we're at last willing to have a try.

Indeed, the ritual of celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of another seems to have become almost a friendly international contest to see who can do it in the most spectacular fashion. Nowadays, the capital city of the UK even likes to have its cake and eat it not just as midnight but mid-day too. The New Year's Day Parade-London, originally the Lord Mayor of Westminster's attempt to have something matching his City of London counterpart's November streetfest, is now described as the biggest event of its kind in the world. It may have been influenced by Macy's parade in New York, New York, but Westminster, London has certainly produced a tradition to be proud of.

This year's parade, irrigated though it was by the first rain of 2008, certainly brought sparkle to the capital on what was once considered the most dreary day of the year. Earlier on New Year's Day, there was another feast for ears and eyes from another of the world's great cities, with the music of the Strauss family as played by the Vienna Philharmonic guaranteed to soothe even the heaviest hangover headache.

I took a cup of kindness or two in a favourite local hostelry with my brother and some friends on New Year's Eve, and very nice it was too. A lovely atmosphere, no rowdiness but good-humoured revelry and the shared experience of crossing the line of one year into another and singing Robert Burns' timeless lines once again while linking arms. I was glad to be there, in company and to think on the old acquaintance of the twelve months just past, which will never come our way again.


Yet I could just have easily have enjoyed the moment without any need for booze or food. What New Year's eve really represents, I guess, is our shared humanity, celebrating the succesful circumnavigation of both the mountains and the planes of this thing we call life through another twelve months. For some, it will have been a breeze, while for many others the year yet ahead will offer new challenges and not always of the enjoyable type.

Sadly, the turning of the year does not turn man from the worst of his ways,no matter how much we might hope for it. No sooner had the New Year begun in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, than the news brought horrendous stories out of Kenya, where disputed elections have stirred old tribal hatreds, rather than gladdened old acquaintances. The situation is very tense as I write, but can there be anything more obscene and against the spirit of the season than the loss of over 30 lives with the deliberate destruction of a church where some were sheltering from the violence around them.

It doesn't take long for joy to turn to pain in human experience, and yet there is always the hope, the promise, that the pain will end. All pain. All suffering. All death. Defeated! Not ultimately by act of EU or UN, despite the growing and welcome recognition in our digitised, globalised age that we must work together to solve those problems which we all face together as the Human Race. The challenge of Global Warming will surely be high on the international agenda again this year. And doubtless, every country will have different opinions on this and other issues affecting us all.

But national preferences, or at worst national prejudices, can never cause the world to move truly forward. That comes not from astronomical predictions or astrologer's presumptions, but from seeing the evidence and the promise in every human being that there is more to life than the counting of days. God knew this, when he chose to reveal himself to mankind two thousand years ago in a tiny baby. Two thousand years; but a blip in the long history of the universe but marking the most important event ever to take place in human history.

Christmas surely deserves its full twelve days of celebration, which is why the party won't actually be over, in the Western tradition at least, until Sunday 6th January, the feast of the Epiphany. Once again, our continental cousins seem to know how to celebrate this event so much better than we do in England, where for most it's just the occasion to pack away the decorations for another eleven months or so lest bad luck be brought upon the house.

Quite where such a weird superstition developed, who knows. Superstition defies logic and rational analysis, much as those of a secular mindset might say adherence to the tenets of religion limits the growth of our humanity and the true way forward through science. But they conveniently forget that one of the greatest scientists of all time, Sir Isaac Newton who was born today in 1643, was a man of deeply committed faith too. For him, to increase our knowledge of natural laws was to do God's work and and to increase our knowledge of him.

Science and Belief do not have to be constantly fighting, and neither should people. Is there not surely something very significant in that the guests at the birthday parties of Jesus Christ represented a very different view of the world to that of his own people? Contrary views can co-exist.

The shepherds who came to adore Jesus from the nearby fields of Bethlehem were considered by some in their society the lowest of the low. Who might be their equivalents today? Asylum seekers? Strange, isn't it, that the biblical account of Jesus's infancy includes a flight into an alien country, to escape the jealous wrath of a king. Later, when that king went the way of all flesh, the young child and his parents returned to the land of their birth, where they were visited by mystics and distinguished persons traditionally represented as three "kings". The served became the servers with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The visit of the three kings is the wonderful story behind Epiphany. Of course, there are inconsistencies in the details, but does that really matter? Science too is full of paradoxes. It is though very appropriate that Epiphany should be the first feast of the secular year, and the last of Christmas. The time arrives to take in what it all means, and get working again in real life in real time. When Jesus is revealed to the magi, the secular world of time and place, evidence and senses, meets the other world of eternity and humility, and things unseen by any eye but even more wonderful than anything science can explain are glimpsed in the eyes of a child.

Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, is the reminder that Jesus came for all, not just a select race or races. He came to bring life in all its fulness to everybody. Now that's surely something worth celebrating- party on, at least til Sunday!