The Grace Pages

Close Encounters

I should probably be ashamed to admit I had never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) before watching it last Saturday.

What a pleasure it turned out to be. For a film with themes of such epic proportions, the tone was nicely subdued, and happily absent the Spielbergian sentimentalism that bogged him down later in his career. I much prefer the early Spielberg seen here and in Jaws (1975) to the later stuff evidenced by ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, a good film, other than the sickly sentimentalism) and (God help us) Jurassic Park (1993).

As I was housesitting for a single night (it should have been for a whole week, but my friend's travel plans were scuppered by visa difficulties), I raided the video collection and watched a few movies I haven't seen before. Se7en (1995) was so-so, but didn't live up to the hype. 28 Days Later (2002) wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but after a slow start it kept me engaged, thanks to a generally interesting and novel approach to an old genre. Peter's Friends (1992) was a blatant British rip-off from The Big Chill (1983), and was badly written (by an American, ironically).

Rosa Parks

1913-2005

Church review: St Mary Magdalene's, Alsager

If I'd planned in advance, I could have done a full report for the Mystery Worshipper on my visit to St Mary Magdalene's yesterday, but I shall suffice with a short review on here. (Besides, you need to know I'm still breathing.)

I stayed with friends in Staffordshire on the weekend, and on Sunday morning I and my friend decided to to pay a visit to nearby Alsager for the the Eucharist.

It was fairly low-church, despite the robes and everything. They followed the liturgy from Common Worship, but chose the shortest and simplest bits every time, and dropped a few parts altogether. There were only four in the choir (which the chap I spoke to afterwards assured me was an anomaly due to the school half-term), but they did remarkably well, and even managed an anthem by Schubert and a very nice Lamb of God, which they'd nicked from a parish I attended while I was at my alma mater.

The service started with the deacon doing some storytelling from the Old Testament, and she had the Sunday School help her out with a bit of dramatization. She was an oldish lady, the sort you'd like to take home and have as your granny. I kept thinking all the way throughout that first part that this was the Christian faith as it should be expressed -- in stories and through imagination, rather than in doctrinal propositions and statements of faith.

Coincidentally, the preacher went on to talk about stories, and had a bit of a jab at the postmodern notion that we all inhabit different stories, and we should just appreciate the diversity. I have a lot of sympathy with that aspect of postmodernism, since if my experience has brought me anywhere, it has brought me to the place where I really don't think I can make absolute truth-claims about some indisputable metanarrative; I'm quite happy with my faith as my way of expressing an experience that may well be shared by other people who express it in different ways and through different stories.

The granny-deacon got up again to lead the intercessions, and prefaced each section of prayer with a flute solo. It was quite beautiful.

I couldn't say the Prayer of Humble Access, because every time I tried, I couldn't help but slip into the words of a parody I once wrote ("I am not worthy so much as to gather up me plums underneath our Mabel, but thou art the same Maude, whose nature is always to have Percy").

The church lacks a hall at the moment, which I actually thought was quite fortuitous, since it meant they had to turn the back of the church into a meeting room. It meant the area for "worship" and the area for "fellowship" (tea and biscuits) ran into one another, and there was no escape. Sometimes I need that push.

Unfortunately, it also meant there were no washrooms, and I had to borrow a key for the public conveniences across the road.

I enjoyed the morning, however. I always feel that worshipping outside my own parish on the occasional Sunday is like "seeing how the other half lives". But it's always refreshing, and always reminds me that some places do exist where things are done differently.

Scene: a cafe

Two men sit drinking tea.

First Man: This tea tastes funny.
Second Man: Oh.
First Man: That fella got that prize.
Second Man: Pass the sugar.
First Man: Nobel.
Second Man: Who?
First Man: The Nobel Prize.
Second Man: Oh.
(Pause for effect.)
First Man: Pinter.
Second Man: Eh?
First Man: This digestive is soggy.
Second Man: Yeah.
(Whistles)
First Man: 'Arold's 'is name.
Second Man: Oh.
First Man: 'Arold Pinter.
Second Man: Oh.
First Man: Fuckin' commie.
Second Man: My digestive's soggy, too.
First Man: Oh.

Full story here.

Nouvelle Vague, je t'aime!

Bande a part (1964), otherwise known as Band of Outsiders or sometimes just The Outsiders, was a great film, and I look forward to watching it again. French films of that era (the so-called New Wave) dispensed with many of the established rules of filmmaking, and the result was quirky, edgy films full of spontaneity. My favourite spontaneous moment in Bande a part was when the three main characters decide to dance the Madison in the middle of a Parisian cafe. In an earlier scene they hold a minute's silence for no apparent reason other than to see what it's like (and the soundtrack is entirely silent with them), and later on they joyfully race through the corridors of the Louvre in record time.

But it's not all levity by any stretch. Its main theme is the isolation of and emotional distance between the main characters. That's the thing with these early New Wave films -- they defy genre, and move from comedy to drama all the time. You never know quite where you are, and you have to remind yourself that it's only convention that says a film has to be one thing or the other, that you have to feel one way or the other. With the films of Godard or Truffaut, you never find yourself watching just a comedy, just a crime drama or just a romance. But then, c'est la vie, eh? And la vie is what those films were really about.

There's a grain of truth in here somewhere...

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IVP moves into 'The Onion' territory

Inter-Varsity Press seems to have branched out into the satire market with A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. (What my mother would have given to have this important volume in her hands twenty-some years ago!) Here's a classic comic moment from the introduction:

I told her, "Mom, you saw me play with Barbie dolls. You allowed me to use makeup and to fix my hair in front of the mirror for hours. My brothers never did any of this. Why didn't you stop me? What were you thinking?"

Later on it gets even more devastating:

"Doctor, ... my son Stevie ... [is] a beautiful little boy, a special child. But..." She hesitated. "Stevie's fascinated with little-girl things. Even more so than my daughters. In fact, he just loves the colours pink and red. He even... well, plays with Barbie dolls and... dances around the house on tiptoes like a ballerina."

As I listened, Mrs Johnson gave me a few more specifics. Her son was five.

"I've been noticing this kind of behaviour for almost two years," she explained.

To me, that length of time was significant. It is okay if a little boy wonders what he would look like wearing long blonde curls and so he tries on a wig, simply to be silly. There is nothing particularly alarming about that. But if he keeps on doing it and has little interest in "boy" things, there likely is a problem.

I am finding it very difficult to believe such stuff can actually be written -- by doctors no less -- without tongue firmly in cheek.

Sometimes grace takes longer...

Our town has an annual service for Church unity. I just found out that the next one will be at the Pentecostal church -- my old Pentecostal church. Our choir is also supposed to be singing. I would happily worship with the folks there, for all our disagreements, but this is the church whose pastor, less than six months ago, received a  very blunt letter from me detailing his abuse and manipulation. It's not a forgiveness issue; it's just after a letter like that, you can't just turn up at someone's church having not seen them face-to-face in a couple years and sweep history under the carpet.

I think the choir are going to be a tenor down. Sometimes, grace just takes a little longer to work in the real world.

It's goodbye from him

Ronnie Barker
1929-2005

 

The Green reaction

 Mark Greer registers his reaction to the appearance of Stephen Green on last week's Question Time. He writes to the Beeb thus:

    I am a Christian leader and it is very frustrating when people who represent a small minority of Christians are chosen to represent Christians in such a high profile way.

    Unfortunately it seems that whoever shouts the loudest and most extreme views gets to be heard. This is not helpful and there are many other more discerning and representative Christians who could be given a chance to give a Christian perspective on the issues of the day.

In fact, the Beeb had a fairly good spokesman for Christianity in the form of MP Simon Hughes. He directly challenged whether Green represented his evangelical faith.

Meanwhile, the reactions on the BBC website are, um, interesting:

    Did you ask Stephen Green onto Question Time just to ridicule him because he fought against your awful programme Jerry Springer - The Opera? I thought you were supposed to have a cross section audience. I didn't sense there were any Christians present. Shame on you.

I think the writer meant there weren't any extreme fundamentalist Christians like Green. Another writes:

    Can Janet Street-Porter please refrain from calling Christians a minority group. Perhaps if more of our fellow citizens read the Bible and listened to the words of Jesus - as many of us do - then we would live in a fairer society, less prone to greed and war.

I think Janet was in fact exposing the fact that his own peculiar fundamentalism was a minority group, and not representative of Christians in general. Still another complains:

    Mr Dimbleby used very aggressive tactics against Mr Green on tonight's show. The protests Stephen organises are not aggressive, but the legitimate right of UK citizens to protest. Isn't this the very thing people were so shocked was being stifled at the Labour conference.

I don't remember the BBC heavies coming in and removing Green, which is what happened at the Labour conference. In a similar spirit, another protests:

    I think the audience was misplaced in this - they acted like the stewards who refused to allow a dissenting voice.

Alas, a better comparison would be with the the unfortunate 80-something-year-old ejected from the Labour Conference last week; the audience protesting Green's views were doing nothing different.