Lift up Your Hearts

We went scrumping in Goldings Wood today (with permission - is that possible?) today for holly to decorate the church. We have a Victorian Carol service tomorrow. (I know, I know, it is still only Advent 3…) We have masses of ivy in the garden here, but very little holly.

Holly in Goldings - taken a bit earlier in the Autumn when things were warmer!

The linkage of Holly with the passion of Christ is found in a number of ancient carols. It is thought that evergreen decorations were used in pre-christian times for midwinter festivals. The church has always been very good at appropriating symbolism. Placing Christian festivals on the same days as pagan ones forced people to choose: you could not celebrate both things.

This is called the Sans Day Carol. The Music is here.

Now the holly bears a berry as white as the milk,
and Mary bore Jesus, all wrapped up in silk:

And Mary bore Jesus our Saviour for to be,
and the first tree in the greenwood, it was the holly
Holly! Holly!

Now the holly bears a berry as green as the grass,
And mary bore Jesus who died on the cross:

Now the holly bears a berry as black as the coal,
and Mary bore Jesus who died for us all:

Now the holly bears a berry, as blood is it red
Then trust we our Saviour who rose from the dead.

I didn't know that

The sale of the land on which Haileybury was to be built was completed on 23rd October 1805. It was the day of the battle of Trafalgar.

Dreaming Spires

Blogging has been light as things have been busy, but I think we are close to fixing a dinner in Oxford on March 4th. I'll post details as soon as possible, but pencil it in your diary for now.

Streets Called Haileybury 5

Liverpool boasts not only a Haileybury Road, but also Haileybury Avenue, L10, right next to the Aintree race course. By and large the Avenues are named after schools running at right angles to drives named after Oxford Colleges. 

Lift up Your Hearts

Advent - when the church prepares to celebrate the Incarnation by looking not back to Bethlehem but forward to the Second Coming. What follows is from John Burnaby's (B Fr 1905) study of the Nicene Creed, The Belief of Christendom.

Prophets and Apostles alike know that "The Lord is King" - and that, not in spite of what they see happening in the world, but because of it. The story they tell of the coming Kingdom is not a compensation for its present failure, but a corollary of its present reality. As the prophets see in the death of the sinful kingdoms of Israel and Judah at the hands of Assyria and Babylon not a disproof but a vindication of the sovereignty of the Lord, so S Paul finds the righteousness of God supremely triumphant in the Cross of Jesus, the sinless King of the Jews. In the prophets' story, God's unrevoked choice of Israel to be the place in which His sovereignty shall be revealed is pictured in the figure of the anointed Son of David who will rule in righteousness by the Spirit of the Lord. In the Apostles' story the same figure is central - but with the difference that while for the prophets there had been only one that should come, for the Apostles He is one who has come already. …


The Church's belief that Christ will come again in glory is the faith that in that same Jesus … we may hope to see the glory of God. 

ISC

Browsing for Haileybury things I found a site giving some history of the ISC including pictures of the buildings and the redevelopment of the site. The link is on the bar to the right of the blog.

There are pictures of the unveiling of a statue of "ambition," 'believed to be in the possession of Haileybury School.' I wonder if anyone knows where that is?

Neologisms

The Daily Telegraph has run an article congratulating itself on coining 251 new words. The newspaper appeals to the authority of the Oxford English Dictionary which of course provides the first instance in print of a neologism. The Haileyburian is given by the OED as the first source of the term Old Boy to describe a former (male) pupil of a school. Now that we are proudly coeducational we don't speak of Old Boys as much, and we are thankful that the foresighted founders of the Haileybury Society provided us with an androgynous term. "Haileyburian" is also usefully asexual. For a while the development department of my university college would send letters addressed rather cumbersomely to "Dear Alumni and Alumnae." Now their database and mail merge is clever enough to write to "Dear Mr Miller." That is pretty good, especially as the address on the envelope is to "Father L J MIller MA." (Not strictly correct to put the letters after using 'Father', but coping with clerical titles is a lifetime's study.) To return to the Telegraph and its neologisms, one which they claim is 'astroturf,' now a trademark. You may be aware that the development department at Haileybury is appealing to parents and alumni and alumnae all Haileyburians to try to raise funds for a second astroturf pitch at school. There is a blog about it, and you can contribute here. Thinking about it, given that there are people in Canada and Australia who call themselves Haileyburians, that word itself should perhaps be in the next OED.