Lift Up Your Hearts

Bishop NS Talbot (Th 1893) wrote a book on suffering called "The Riddle of Life." In the first chapter he argues that suffering can and does sometimes bring good, and that there is a nobility which comes to some souls through bearing suffering. 

The Christmas story is packed round with tinsel and fairy lights, but despite all that it is the same story. The joy which comes to a mother suffering in child birth; the happiness granted to a family who are homeless and destitute, the vision of angels granted to poor mean shepherds on the look out for wolves and afraid for their lives. 

Here is Talbot's first chapter's closing paragraph, and the opening of the Gospel for Midnight Mass. 

We have reached no 'explanation' of why there is a problem of evil. That a night of darkness can come upon men remains still and inexplicable mystery. Yet it is true that light does spring up in the darkness, welling up from within it, spreading through and suffusing it, making it to glow. And this is real light, not a false light or ignis fatuus of self-deception or make-believe. It is light deeper than the darkness, un-overwhelmed by it. It makes, so to say, the very darkness to serve for its fuel.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings is a play by Sir Alan Ayckbourn (Tr 1952) which is on at the National Theatre this Christmas. It has been well reviewed, including by Quentin Letts (Ha 1976).

Two writers of different kinds both schooled by the same English department, and possibly both taught by Jack Thomas (staff 1954) - who famously, and possibly apocryphally, said that Ayckbourn would never amount to much if he tried a career in writing. Ayckbourn cut the original form for Season's Greetings from three acts in three hours by a third, and Lett's review is an example of journalistic brevity. The suburban characters


use intrinsically English expressions, enjoying nothing better than discussing power tools, preferably in the wife-free zone of a shed or pub.

"Great set" say Quentin Letts

When Neville is asked if there is any ginger wine in the house, he doesn’t just say, ‘yes’. He says, truculently, that ‘we are awash’ in the stuff. …

David Troughton’s Uncle Harvey has the gait and neck tweaks of a former chief pety officer. 


Brevity is a virtue in a preacher as well - but one more difficult to attain than it seems. I think it was Churchill who once wrote  I am sorry to have written you a long letter. I did not have time to write a short one."

Reports

The end of term reports arrived today. Or rather an e-mail arrived to say they can be found on the 'Parent Portal' of the school website. It seems a world away when the little booklets of reports came by post at the end of each term. As a child I never imagined that the purpose of the Master reading all the reports was as much to check up on the staff as it was on me. One Summer term I received a report which I hardly noted at the time, except for its brevity. Scrawled across the center of the page in purple felt tip pen it said simply 'A fair term's work,' and the initials of the Beak. Years later I discovered that this was a final act of rebellion by a man who was retiring. He handed in his reports after it was too late to do anything about it and they all had to go out as they were. I was told they all said the same! I may still have it somewhere and if it turns up in our impending move I shall scan it and put it up.