Tuesday 28 March 2017

Do-lang, do-lang, do-lang Doodlings

by Kim Fabricius

Another terrorist attack and mass murder, the brutal ending of lives and worlds, the implacably occluded futures of the wounded and grief-stricken – and the inevitable confected aftermath of political fustian, media puffery, and vox-pop cliché.

God is love. Monotonously. Or rather Trinotonously.

God is like an excellent malt whisky. Alas, liberals add ginger ale and ice to it, while evangelicals just read the label.

The church is like a cappuccino: 1/3 creedal espresso, 1/3 milk of human kindness, and 1/3 ceremonial froth.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Because if bad things happened only to bad people, we’d be in hell.

One of the best arguments for torture is belief in hell, and one of the best arguments against belief in hell is torture.

“There’s nothing worse than loving someone who’s never going to stop disappointing you,” said Hosea. (Actually, it was a character in a series 7 episode of House I watched last night.)

What was Descartes doing when he wasn’t hunched over that blazing stove cogitating? Probably checking and rechecking and checking again that he had turned it off.

Selfie, ergo sum. Indeed, Selfie, ergo mundus est.

Wow! A new iPhone that can take 3-dimensional selfies – of 1-dimensional selves.

At a recent funeral, a mourner [sic] took a selfie at the graveside as the coffin was lowered. Now if only Joseph of Arimathea had had an iPhone …

Greatest selfie of all time: Velasquez’s Las Meninas.
Runner-up: El Greco, Pentecost.

The binary social media world of Thumbs-up/Thumbs-down – it’s missing a third icon: Turd = Who Gives a Shit?

Did you see the pilot for the brilliant new sitcom set in the Brady Briefing Room?  It’s called That Was the Week That Wasn’t (subtitle: Fake You!), starring Donald Trump and co-starring a cast of discombobulated journalists.

Let’s be clear: Trump does not drive me to despair.  The reality of his presidency suddenly flashing like lightening across a clear blue sky – my reaction is always “WTF!”, not despair.  In fact, I have moments of lucid hopefulness. Trump is a compulsive fantasist, and our fantasies always fuck us in the end.

Stanley Hauerwas has recently written: “I want to suggest that one of the essential tasks of those called to the ministry in our day is to be a teacher. In particular, ministers are called to be a teacher of language.” God’s bollocks! From the fact that Hauerwas feels it is necessary to make such a “suggestion”, one can only conclude that our seminaries have become cemeteries.

To re-endorse Hauerwas: the ministerial vocation is ecclesial speech therapy.

People often say to me after worship, about the sermon, “Thanks. You really gave us something to think about.”  And I think: another Sermon Fail. Imagine someone coming up to Jesus after preaching and saying, “Thanks, Rabbi. You really gave us something to think about” (cf. Luke 4:28-29).

Every year the Times runs a “Preacher of the Year” event. Seriously. Commensurate with the theological vacuity of such a contest, I propose that the winner should be awarded their own celebrity brand of cologne, perfume, or (if High Church) incense.

So The Rt. Rev. Christopher Cocksworth [sic] has apologised after accidentally voting against the Bishops' report on marriage and same-sex relationships, confessing that the mistake had been a “moment of distraction and some confusion” (BBC, 16 February). Rather like the report itself.

Breaking News: The District Attorney of Denver has announced that the three fundamentalist Christians who were arrested for the abduction of the Lutheran minister and human fresco Nadia Bolz-Weber have pleaded guilty to the charge of artnapping.

As a Protestant I don’t have a problem with Mariology, only with mariologiae gloriae. So I guess I’ve got a problem after all.

Why biblical criticism and hermeneutics? To unsettle the text. It is to the bewildered that the Spirit speaks.

Who am I when I do not know who I am? That may seem to be the predicament of the person with Alzheimer’s. It is, in fact, the human condition. Advantage, however, to the person with Alzheimer’s: he does not lie to himself or deceive others about it.

Early Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Late Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the rain gets in.”

1 Comment:

Alan K said...

Thanks.

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