Song for Advent #19: Little Drummer Boy - The West Wing

O.K. I'm cheating here. Having posted Bowie & Crosby yesterday singing Little Drummer Boy here is another version of the song which I think is used brilliantly in The West Wing T.V. series. The episode is In Excelsis Deo and juxtaposes the West Wing staff listening to a choir singing the song while a military funeral takes place for a homeless war veteran who had been found dead on a park bench. Aaron Sorkin at the height of his powers. My eyes start to leak each time I watch these scenes.

Comet Watch

This afternoon a little spacecraft called Rosetta delivered probe Philae onto the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It is an extraordinary scientific endeavour and given the comet is some 300 million miles from earth the precision of the operation is astonishing. Even more astonishing is the fact that all this was accomplished without the presence of Professor Brian Cox telling us how amazing it all is.

However, news has begun to filter through that the two harpoons which were to be fired into the comet on landing in order to secure Philae to its surface haven't deployed. No doubt the boffins are hard at work trying to diagnose the problem and come up with a solution. I have a couple of suggestions.

First of all check that Big Bang Theory's Howard Wolowitz wasn't showing off to an undergraduate somewhere in the space centre. Howard has previous on this score with the Mars Exploration Rover.

Secondly, it may be that Philae detected on landing that 67P isn't really a comet but a Star Whale, hence the reluctance to fire the harpoons. In which case this is a job for Dr Who and let's face it he needs something decent to get his teeth into at the moment.

Anyway, I'm sure the geniuses at the European Space Agency will get things sorted given the brilliant job they've done so far. Now I wait for Nigel Farage to pop up on the BBC to explain how it would all have been so much better and cheaper if we'd done it without the rest of those pesky Europeans.

Filtering - a comment on #cnmac14

I visited Mary Arden's farm just outside Stratford-upon-Avon last week and while I was there listened to a falconer give a talk about owls accompanied by a cute Barn Owl and a rather intimidating Eagle Owl. One of the fascinating pieces of information she shared was that a Barn Owl can hear a mouse's heartbeat from 40 feet away and detect a mouse moving in the grass from 100 feet. Now gathered around the falconer and owl were about forty of us humans with hearts much bigger than a mouse's so the question was asked 'How can an owl detect the mouse with all the other noises around her in the wild?'.  The answer given was that an owl has to filter out all the extraneous sound to focus on her prey otherwise she would be driven crazy by all the other sounds she can detect.

On Saturday I was still on leave but followed a Twitter stream of comments from the Christian New Media Conference #CNMAC14 which I wasn't able to attend. I was also watching a football match while keeping an eye on Facebook and my Twitter timeline. Safari was open with several tabs including various news media outlets and sports feeds along with my blog with its attendant list of posts I follow from other bloggers. I avoided looking at my email in-box which had an 'out of office' message set up. The question I found myself reflecting on as I did all this is what stops us from going mad listening to, or seeing and reading, all this digital noise? The answer has to be filtering.

We filter out all the extraneous noise both consciously and unconsciously. I was following a hashtag Twitter stream which focused my attention on the conference, until the hashtag was hijacked for a while. I selected the digital media outlets I was interested in. My Facebook timeline is limited to a few people who I know personally in comparison to my Twitter timeline with the 873 profiles I follow. Within that timeline I can select lists of particular subjects related to my job and interests. As for the T.V., well for years I've made use of a digital recorder and watch more recorded programmes of interest than material broadcast in 'real' time. The football match I had on T.V. 'live' between Newcastle and Liverpool was boring, so I subconsciously filtered out most of what I was watching and nearly all of the vacuous nonsense being spouted by summariser Robbie Savage.

Filtering and focus are skills humans have always had to develop in order to survive and function in life, just like the Barn Owl, and that is no less true in a multi media digital age. The challenge is what we discipline ourselves to filter out and focus on. If we don't get that right then unlike the owl we'll miss out on the real meat.

Behind the Sofa

My first memories of watching Doctor Who are from the mid 1960s, sitting in my pyjamas having had my evening bath, in front of a coal fire at my Gran's house in Belfast. I can also remember the series that gave me my first nightmare: The Underwater Menace. Broadcast in early 1967, the plot

revolves around plans to raise the lost city of Atlantis. One of the early episodes ends with Polly, one of the Doctor's assistants, held down on an operating table and about to undergo surgery to convert her into an amphibian. These days the series isn't highly rated by Whovians, and some episodes are missing, but it had me waking up in a cold sweat that night because I was strapped on the table next to Polly and about to be converted into one of the Fish People.

Over the last couple of weeks another debate has been taking place about whether Doctor Who has become too scary for children. These debates come around every couple of years and it's bizarre really because I always thought the main point of the programme was to scare children. My problem with the more recent incarnations of Doctor Who is that often the series are so wrapped up in a plethora of subtexts and cleverness that there isn't time for the scream inducing moments. When my now teenage children first started watching a few years ago, I found myself watching them to see how often they jumped, closed their eyes or, yes, wanted to hide behind us or the sofa. I have to say the answer is they didn't do it often enough. That's not to say we don't enjoy watching Doctor Who, and there have been some fantastic episodes, it's just that it isn't very scary and it should be.

Now back to my nightmare. Perhaps it wasn't a nightmare after all but a premonition, for as a Christian you could say I have become one of the Fish People.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The feast of 6th July

Yesterday I celebrated the Feast of 6th July. This incorporated the Men's Wimbledon Final; the Tour de France in Yorkshire and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The problem was they were all on at the same time so how was I going to cope? The answer was simple as illustrated below...

Now if there had been a World Cup match on as well I really would have faced a dilemma.

Snowman redux

For those of you who find the Christmas adverts a bit too much Charlie Brooker has written an interesting piece in The Guardian. And here’s an excellent take on The Snowman for all the Scrooges out there.



h/t Paul Trathen

Not so great - Rev

I’ve returned to Blighty after a couple of weeks away to much excitement on the Christian blogs and in the Twittersphere about the return of the sitcom Rev. Clearly many people enjoyed the first series and are looking forward to what the new series has to offer. I have to confess I am rather more ambivalent about the programme.

Firstly I ought to say I think Tom Hollander is a brilliant actor and plays the part of the Rev Adam Smallbone with a well judged balance of empathy and comedy. I recognise some of the characters and scenarios played out in the first series having served in an East London parish. There is a real appreciation of some of the challenges, frustrations and dilemmas of urban ministry. I’ll leave aside mention of some of the predictable inaccuracies which are used to help drive the plot; if you know anything about the C of E you’ll have spotted them.

However, the problem I have is with the ministry offered by Rev Smallbone. Put quite simply, I haven’t a clue what Good News Adam has to share with his parishioners. He seems to live out an incarnational ministry devoid of any sense of joy or hope. Watching the first series of Rev. I was often left feeling frustrated and miserable and the reason is that I couldn’t see where God entered the situation. I hardly ever heard any articulation of the gospel, or a gospel, nor was there much about worship and hardly any sense of Adam’s own relationship with God expressed in a devotional life.

One of the great strengths of the Church of England is that it has maintained a presence in communities that have been abandoned by just about everyone else, but maintaining a presence isn’t enough. The incarnate Jesus came that we might have life and life in abundance. I hope that in the second series of Rev. we might glimpse something of what that abundant life might look like.

I’ve just spent two weeks meeting with Christians living in conditions that make the parish Smallbone serves look like a cosy suburb so perhaps my perspective is somewhat distorted. Yet, having witnessed the vibrant faith and sense of mission of those with so little I’m left wondering why these aspects of ministry are missing from Rev.?

How to choose an Archbishop

There is only one way to choose an Archbishop and it is this:

United 93 - remembering 9/11

There has been a plethora of programmes and films on T.V. over the last few days to mark the anniversary of 9/11. By far the best I have seen so far is United 93, a powerful film about the flight of the United Airlines plane that crashed before reaching its designated target. The film was shown on ITV and to their credit they showed the film without the interruption of adverts.

United 93 is a docudrama by British film maker Paul Greengrass and based on recordings, interviews and testimonies from many of those involved in the unfolding horror of 9/11. Several of the participants in the events play themselves in the film, giving the unfolding narrative authenticity and avoiding the melodrama of offerings like Oliver Stone’s World Trade Centre. The story begins with the hijackers preparing to depart for the airport and passengers going through the mundane process of checking in for an everyday internal flight. Knowing what is to come, there is genuine tension from the start in watching as late passengers check in and people make routine phone calls before take off. The flight is backed up due to heavy air traffic and there is a real possibility that it won’t take off before news comes in of the other terrorist attacks. The short glimpses of passengers reactions when the plane finally takes to the air are truly poignant because the viewer knows what is to come.

The film depicts the reactions to the unfolding horror from several perspectives; the passengers and crew of the plane, air traffic controllers and the military . What emerges is the chaos and confusion as well as the inability to comprehend what is happening and how to respond. Some of the most effective scenes are the reaction shots as controllers watch the second plane crashing into the World Trade Centre; no one can quite believe what they are watching and all are struck dumb as the fireball envelopes the top of the tower.

The later half of the film focuses on the events inside United 93 during its last few minutes in the air. There is a certain amount of speculation as to exactly what happened but much of the story is pieced together from the phone calls to loved ones made by the passengers. It gradually dawns on the captive passengers that this is not a straightforward hijacking as they hear news of the Trade Centre attacks and the explosion at the Pentagon. The decision to try and retake the plane is no gung-ho act of bravado typical of Hollywood blockbusters, but the hesitant conclusion drawn by terrified men and women who see no alternative course of action. The last few moments are harrowing as the passengers almost succeed in over powering the hijackers before the all too familiar final event.

From start to finish United 93 maintains an almost unbearable tension, remarkable for a film in which the ending is so well known. The routine of the flight, the ordinariness of the passengers, the disbelief and confusion of those responding to the unthinkable, the breakdown of communication between the authorities and uncertainty about how to react, all effect a realism seldom achieved on the big or small screen. United 93 comes as close as any film can in creating a fitting tribute to those caught up directly in the tragedy of 9/11.

I first posted this review in September 2009 and I still maintain it is the best film or documentary I have seen on the subject.

Happy birthday Freddie

I remember the first time I saw Queen, it was on Top of the Pops performing Seven Seas Of Rhye. Mercury with black nail varnish on one hand and the glam with some serious rock thrown in. Next day at school it was this performance we talked about as we speculated on what effects May used for that distinctive guitar sound. I saw them live a few years later on the News of the World tour in 1978. Their performance came close to rivalling my all time favourite gig, Led Zeppelin at Earls Court in 1975. Close but not quite.
I’m fairly sure this video is that performance from Top of the Pops. So happy birthday Freddie and thanks for some fantastic music with plenty of pomp.

the agony and the ecstasy

Every now and again there comes a match when a football fan experiences 90 minutes (or in Manchester United’s case 97 minutes) of pure joy. Last Sunday’s evisceration of Arsenal was such a time as Manchester United left Arsene Wenger’s managerial dreams in tatters at the Theatre of Dreams. But for every ecstatic fan there is another keeping balance in the universe as they experience the agony of their team’s complete humiliation. Such misery was captured brilliantly by Ripping Yarns in the episode Golden Gordon (Gordon Ottershaw is even wearing red and white!). Watch it and weep or laugh depending on which team you support.

Number 1 but who saw it?

It is a fantastic achievement for the England cricket team to be crowned as the world's best Test playing nation. Some question marks remain over the side's ability to win consistently on the Subcontinent but let that not detract from what has been a glorious summer of great individual performances and consistently high achievement for the team. To whitewash the top team, India, over four matches and to capture their crown demonstrated the fact that England are the real deal and deserve all the plaudits they are getting at the moment.

The only problem with England's moment of glory is the question of how many people, and young people in particular, actually got to watch England's triumph? Since the suits who run English cricket sold the game's soul to Sky several years ago, most of us have had to satisfy ourselves with odd snatches of action in brief highlights packages in the evening. At the moment the highlights are consigned to Channel 5, a station you couldn't even receive in large swathes of the country until the digital switch over. Gone are the days when the nation's sports fans could gather round their T.V.s on an afternoon to celebrate an Ashes victory. Now the great game played over five days (that's the idea even if India seem to have forgotten) is reduced to three minute news packages and 45 minutes on the Big Brother channel.

I will be interested to see what the viewing figures are for this summer's Test matches. That will be of little concern to the money men at English cricket's HQ as they bank the subscription T.V. dosh. But how many youngsters will be heading into the garden or down to the local park to emulate their cricketing heroes if they never get to watch them play? Who will be inspired to become the next Cook, Prior or Anderson? It is one thing to put some money back into the grass roots game for those already in local clubs. It is a much greater challenge to attract potentially gifted future cricketers if they have never seen and grown to love the game in the first place.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

It’s Pancake Day… again.

Here’s the excellent Maid Marian and her Merry Men to remind us what today is all about.



I posted this last year but make no apologies for a repeat.

5 soundtrack songs meme

I thought this one up while walking the dog in the rain. List 5 songs used to great effect in a soundtrack for T.V. or film.

1. The West Wing - Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits: This track is used at the end of The Two Cathedrals (The West Wing series two finale) and underscores the poignancy and tension of the whole episode.
2. American Gigolo – Call Me by Blondie: The song and accompanying opening shot of Richard Greer driving sets the film up perfectly.
3. American Beauty – Don’t Let It bring You Down by Annie Lennox: Well judged use of a gorgeous rendition of Neil Young’s classic.
4. To Live and Die in L.A. – Dance Hall Days by Wang Chung: Don’t know why but this just works with Friedkin’s underrated thriller capturing the 1980s West Coast zeitgeist. Wang Chung were also commissioned to write the score.
5. The Wire – Way Down in the Hole by The Blind Boys of Alabama: Each series of The Wire uses a different version of Tom Waits’ classic for the opening credits and this is my favourite.

You are tagged if you want to have a go.

Tiny temper tantrums

Sat down to watch a bit of men behaving badly at The Brits last night and it turns out I should have watched the football instead. Gone are the days of overpaid, self indulgent and immature young people making fools of themselves in public. No swearing, leering and sneering, buckets of water tipped over a deputy prime minister’s head and general drunkenness and revelry. Instead we were treated to a corporate bash with winners in suits and evening gowns thanking their accountants and multi-national backers for making it all possible. No more ‘sticking it to the man’, the man was everywhere.

The whole event was epitomised by one of the winners, a very pleasant young man called Patrick Okogwu aka Tinie Tempah who received his accolades with good grace and thanked everyone from God to his broker for standing by him through the hard times.

Some things could be relied on. Rihanna was up to her usual tricks as my young son rather wearily observed ‘Daddy, she’s stripping off again’ while she reprised her X-factor appearance. It was left to Mumford & Sons and Arcade Fire to add a musical touch of class and wardrobe eccentricity; 1st prize to Winston, Mumford’s banjo player, for the yellow baseball cap and 2nd to Arcade Fire’s Win Butler for sporting half a hair cut. Everything ran to time, James Corden, presenting the evening, thought he was Ricky Gervais but was more like Kenneth Williams and all were out of the O2 Arena and tucked up in bed before the Newsnight paper round up. Roger Daltrey sought to instil a bit of rock n roll spirit by commenting ‘It's good to see the British music industry still has enough money for a good booze-up’ but his heart wasn’t really in it.

Meanwhile, Spurs had gone to the San Siro stadium in Italy and given a classic European football away fixture performance against A C Milan. So riled were the home side that they resorted to trying to cripple the opposition and how Flamini avoided a red card is, as Toyah Wilcox would say, a mystery. Milan’s captain Gattuso attempted to strangle Spurs’ coach Joe Jordan and then after the match gave Jordan a head-butt for good measure. Now that’s more like it; overpaid, self indulgent and immature young men making fools of themselves in public.

Here's Mumford & Sons' performance from The Brits last night with no miming, half-naked dancers or fake attitude.

Sometimes 140 isn’t enough

Interesting Twitter experience yesterday. I read an interview with the writer behind the excellent T.V. series The Nativity which is being broadcast this week on BBC1. I was particularly struck by some of the writer’s comments and decided to tweet a couple of quotes with some interesting results. Here’s the quote that caused a bit of a stir:

Immediately some Twitter friends, mainly male clergy it has to be said, responded with amazement that Jordan had come up with such a profound insight. The Jordan they had in mind was the ubiquitous celebrity Katie Price not Tony Jordan the scriptwriter. A previous tweet had included the full name and a link to one of several interviews Tony Jordan has given about his experience of writing Nativity, but for this message I ran out of characters. Twitter only allows 140 character messages and sometimes that just isn’t enough.

Anyway the interview in The Telegraph is well worth a read and in it Jordan comments:

"If you accept that Jesus is Son of God, why would you not believe that Mary was a virgin, and that God must have had some hand in the impregnation.
''Quite how – whether it was a whiff of steam that came through the nostrils and into the semen, or whatever – is beyond my comprehension, but to me, as a sequence of events, it makes perfect sense." That's a big "if" he's starting with. I thought he wasn't religious. "I have a distaste for organised religions," he corrects me, "because they tamper with stories, add a bit here, take a bit off there, and then start killing each other because the other one doesn't agree. The only thing I know for sure is that the words I read as coming from Jesus Christ are the most truthful thing I have ever heard. As a blueprint for mankind, it is so smart that it couldn't even have come from a clever philosopher. Who would have been smart enough to say 'He who is without sin cast the first stone'? Wow! That's pretty cool."

Several people have drawn attention to Jordan’s more negative comments about the church in his interviews. I think we need to listen and hear how the church is perceived by those with a genuine spiritual yearning who nevertheless don’t see the church as a home for them.

“I have a distaste for people who say to me if you come through these doors, walk down this aisle, sit on that wooden bench, and sing these hymns in this order, I have got God in a little bottle under my pulpit and I'll let you have a look," he says. "I don't think was God's intention.”

Tony Jordan is right, this experience of the church is not God’s intention and if this is all church is then I want no part of it. Jordan’s observation is sobering and challenging.

But I wonder whether this is a rather safe caricature that some people employ to avoid some of the harder aspects of being a follower of Jesus Christ. Being a Christian involves a change of life, abandoning one’s own priorities and values and seeking to embrace God’s love and purposes for the world. Being part of the church, the body of Christ, means learning to love and serve one’s sisters and brothers who are also followers, even with all their faults. The ‘blue print for mankind’ that Jordan speaks of, calls on us to dedicate ourselves to proclaiming God’s Good News to those around us by our words and our actions. It means patterning our lives not just on Jesus’s teaching but on his life, the beginning of which Jordan so powerfully and creatively celebrates in his writing. This is much more than a message in a bottle, it is a life changing challenge.

The one who said ‘He who is without sin cast the first stone’ also said ‘Follow me’.

Warning: religious symbolism!

When Claudia Winkleman captured the Film 2010 gig on the BBC I was non too impressed and doubted she was really up to occupying a chair once graced by Barry Norman and then sullied by Jonathan Ross. Winkleman has cornered the ditzy and sometimes wry presenter market with her role on Strictly Come Dancing. To be fair she does it very well in a format that suits her gifts. Having seen her in film reviewer mode I felt that the jury was out, until last night.

Ms Winkleman and her side kick Danny Leigh were reviewing the latest offering in the Narnia series Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Everything was going fine, some interesting insights into the making of the film and the direction Michael Apted had chosen to take the series. Part way through the segment Liam Neeson, who provides the voice of Aslan, mentions C S Lewis’s conversion from atheism to Christianity and a short clip of Reepicheep, the valiant mouse, saying ‘We have nothing if not belief’ underlines the point. Back to the studio and Winkleman and Leigh make some straightforward comments about the plot and the action sequences.

Then comes this comment from Ms Winkleman:

‘We ought to warn people… there’s a lot of religious symbolism…’

I had to watch the clip back a couple of times to make sure I’d heard correctly and that Ms Winkleman wasn’t being arch and I honestly don’t think she was. (Episode 9 26mins in on iPlayer) Ironically, Ms Winkleman goes on to admit her son didn’t get the allusions.

So this is the stage we’ve now reached. A presenter feels it necessary to issue a warning to people that a children’s film might contain religious symbolism. In times gone by parents feared their children attending the cinema because of the danger they might be corrupted by the loose morals of Hollywood. Today parents have to be warned that their children might be in some way infected by Christianity.

Stop the Traffik

I read an interesting post by The Church Mouse earlier today. Mouse writes about one of the clergy who provided the inspiration behind the REV TV series.  According to a report in the Evening Standard the Rev Paul Turp is supporting a campaign to keep open lapdancing clubs in his parish, in the face of Hackney council’s ‘nil policy’ on such establishments.

I don’t know all the facts on the ground about this story and inevitably many press reports will present the story in the most sensationalist of terms. However, I am concerned about any impression or suggestion that lapdancing and strip clubs are harmless. The Revd Turp is quoted as saying:

I would prefer if it didn't happen, but Hackney council cannot impose a moral code on it citizens, it can only impose a criminal code. I've been here for 27 years and there have been no problems. They are not dodgy, back-street places where people are getting ripped off. They are well run and the council has done a good job at licensing them…

There are much bigger social problems that destroy communities for the council to be concentrating on than lapdancing clubs..

I’m not sure what is meant by there being ‘no problems’. The exploitation and degradation of women is a problem. The idea that women are commodities to be enjoyed for the cost of a tenner slipped in a G-string is a problem. The impact of the sex and pornography industries on our communities is a problem. A society in which 31 London councils have seen an increase in rape during 2010, while conviction rates remain pathetically low, has a problem. Eastern European women being enticed or forced to work in lap dancing and strip clubs across Europe including in the U.K. is a problem. Men, women and children being trafficked and traded across the world for the warped gratification of others is a problem.

Stop The Traffik is a growing global movement of individuals, communities and organisations fighting to PREVENT the sale of people, PROTECT the trafficked and PROSECUTE the traffickers. Those trafficked include those deceived or taken against their will, bought, sold and transported into slavery for sexual exploitation, sweat shops, child brides, circuses, sacrificial worship, forced begging, sale of human organs, farm labour, domestic servitude.

Now that’s a campaign well worth supporting.

Sorting the Covenant

There’s been a lot said and written about the Anglican Covenant over the last few days. I do wonder what this looks like to the average punter in the pew, let alone people out on the streets? It does strike me that if we put as much passion into proclaiming the Good News as we do into fighting our corner and setting up groups for or against particular issues then our churches would be full.

Anyway, I am most grateful to Harry Hill who has proposed a way of resolving the arguments over the Covenant and all the other debates raging in the good old Anglican Communion.



h/t my good friend Paul Trathen.

The Big Silence

Caught the first episode of The Big Silence last night. The three part series follows the experience of five ordinary people as they are taught the value of silent meditation by Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Worth Abbey. The theme of the programmes can be summarised as:

Silence is the gateway to the soul, and the soul is the gateway to God.

The series got off to a good start with some interesting insights into the faith and spirituality of the participants. One of the most revealing, though not surprising, struggles for the group was the challenge to listen in silence for a few moments to the noises around them. Asking the group to listen to the sound of a candle flame was one thing, getting them to listen to the sound of the stars was a bit of a stretch.

Early on the group were asked to find 20 minutes in their daily life to practice silence and it was sobering to see how hard they found this. Then they were off to St Beuno’s Jesuit retreat house in North Wales for an eight day Ignatian retreat. The trailer for the second episode suggests this was going to be a real challenge, though it also hinted at some profound and life changing experiences.

The programme is produced by the people behind The Monastery, the excellent series following the experiences of another group of people engaging with the life of Worth Abbey and broadcast in 2005/6.

To be honest, I find silence difficult. It’s easy to fill the day with noise, from the radio first thing in the morning to the iPod while walking the dog. So I’m looking forward to the rest of the The Big Silence and reflecting on the place of silence in my own life. However, it’s half term this week and the kids are already tearing up the house so not much chance of silence at the moment.