Glastonbury Poles       

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1 The Altar.

This is indeed an ancient place. Dark crumbling ruins of Gothic intent. At every turn I half expect to find the demented guitarist, dressed in short trousers and school blazer, tearing up the fret board of an S.G. Either that or some T.V. crew rehashing the Dracula tale.

 Here are some stairs leading down. Down to what? I glance behind to see the others dawdling through the history of the place. Boredom leads me down to an ancient crypt, the same dark walls as above but neat rows of wooden chairs on either side of the passage, scarlet hymnbooks ready for action.

 As I approach the altar, freshly varnished and bright as butter, I am filled with joy! I am not used to this, church is depressing and I have no faith other than that common to all men. i.e. that God exists but has left this universe to fend for itself while he works on his next great project. Yet I feel such gladness in my soul.

Who gathers here?

What songs are sung?

What vows are taken and to whom?

The others come with their chatter and I move on ahead.

2 The Grave.

 Buoyed by this exuberant joy I ascend once more to find a crowd of people gathered around a grave. Wrought iron railings prevent indiscretion and here,

here is no joy.

 The sign is bold to proclaim this as the tomb of Merlin! Suddenly fact and fiction intertwine. Yet here is such sadness, the palpable feeling of despair, total and utter desolation. How can this exist only yards from yon joyous altar?

Who gathers here?

What songs are sung?

What vows are taken and to whom?

 Over coffee we relate our day. “What, you felt it too? The joy, the despair?” My spiritual horizons widen at a stroke. Is this historic ruin, this pile of stones, a great magnet and we flakes of iron drawn to one pole and repelled by the other?

3 The T.V.

 The years resolve nothing but knowledge increases, God is found,

Jesus received, the Devil rebuked for a while. Late at night the

T.V. is on and Glastonbury appears in the corner of the room.

There are the ruins. No altar is shown but here is the tomb of

Merlin and here also, in my living room, is the same sad despair.

I turn to her and she to me as we feel the threat.

Off, the T.V. is off and questions, questions, questions!

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Could it be true that the earth is only 6000 odd years old or has science debunked that idea completely? Ice core samples from the Antarctica go back much further than 6000 years and if the assumptions that fossil dating are built on are correct, then we are talking many millions of years at the very least. Astronomers tell us that, given the fixed nature of the speed of light, then by looking at the farthest stars we can look back billions of years. Add that altogether and the Creationist’s few thousand year view seems as dead as a dodo.

However, the Bible says that God created simply by saying, “Let there be xyz.” Now if I had that power and I decided to create a horse, would it appear as an embryo or a foal or a full grown stallion? And let us say I wanted a Knight in armour to ride it. Would he be a baby, a boy or a man? And the castle, would it be made of shining new stones or would it appear weathered by storms that never happened and scarred by battles which never took place? I would want all of these to look the part so horse, knight and castle would have an apparent age which bore no relation to their actual age. All for the sake of realism.

Now I am not a died in the wool fundamentalist and tend to favour the scientific age estimates while viewing Genesis as symbolically true but, if the earth were just 6000+ years old, how would we know? The Lord could have made this entire Universe with an apparent age of 6 billion years and, just like our castle, there would be absolutely no way for us to tell.

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A businessman’s guide to suffering.

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There are lots of highly theological explanations on offer regarding the thorny question of why God allows suffering and if any one of them was completely correct then we would all have stopped asking the question long, long ago. Here then is yet another stab at the beast which, in all fairness, I must warn you may be completely bonkers!

If we think of the Universe from a business point of view what do we see? Well there are a thousand and one jobs to be done and billions of customers to be served so who does the serving? In the beginning when everything was good and the Fall was still on the drawing board, the customers or Mankind as they call themselves were easy to please. they were all well behaved, none were greedy and everyone knew how to wait their turn. The angels, who were also shareholders in the company, were there to make sure everything ran smoothly and the C.E.O. (God) was well pleased.

Then came the boardroom revolution. Suddenly the chief musician and praise leader, Lucifer, decided that he could manage the company far better than God and issued a call for a vote of no confidence. Unfortunately for Lucifer he only managed to get the support of one third of the shareholders and the boardroom coup was still born. The C.E.O. wisely decided that it was time for a parting of the ways and sacked those angels who had voted against him along with their leader.

Now from a business point of view this has left us all in a rather precarious situation. Not only are there not enough angels left to do the work but those who were booted out have set up in opposition, disrupting supply lines, stealing customers and doing a lot of very negative advertising. In the good old days Heaven would be nearly empty because no one had died and as there was no threat, the angels could be out about their business making sure folks did not fall off cliffs or get drowned etc. The animals were all vegetarians so making sure the elephants did not step on baby was as about as exciting as it got. Now however, Heaven has to be guarded 24/7 leaving only one third of the original work force in the field and even they have to watch their backs when they are working. No wonder then that this world is a dangerous place to live.

P.S. it is rumoured that at some point in the not too distant future God is going to wind up the company and make a fresh start under the, “New Jerusalem,” logo with a guy called, “Jesus,” as the new manager.

20 seconds from disaster.

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I was driving down a winding country road when a silver estate appeared in my rear view mirror. I was doing about 45 but he was going much faster. We were approaching a blind summit and he went for it. I could not see if the road ahead was clear but this guy chanced his luck and risked his life. He got away with it and about 20 seconds later I passed a car driven by a middle aged lady going in the opposite direction and two thoughts occurred to me.

            First concerning the driver of the estate. What drives a man to take such a risk? The answer is fear. Fear of being late which is of course fear of his boss or customer or wife. Fear of what others might think, fear of looking bad. All these are based in a basic insecurity. Poor soul.

            The second thought concerned the lady. Had she left the house 20 seconds earlier she would be dead. If she had not stopped to pick up the mail or check for stray hair in the hall mirror then she would have been at that blind summit and in a head on crash with the afore mentioned lunatic.

            So that births a final thought: how many times have we been unwittingly 20 seconds from disaster and not known it?

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Don’t be upset.

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So there you are, in the pub or the staff room or even on the internet, locked head to head in battle with the dreaded atheist. It is rapidly becoming apparent to you that his brain is much larger than yours and, short of an angelic visitation, nothing you can say is going to change  his opinion that you are at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder and he is at the top. But wait just a moment, this guy keeps on using logic as his main armament so why don’t we use some ourselves?

If I wanted to learn to dance who should I ask, a doctor, a decorator or a dance instructor? Which of the three will have the most experience? Obviously the dance instructor. Again if I want to learn how to put up wall paper which one should I ask? So when it comes to finding out about God who should we ask, the atheist who has zero experience or the believer who has? The one who says, ”There is no God,” or the one who says, “Well somebody keeps answering my prayers!”

If I want to learn how to blend  colours,  I would not ask one who is blind and If I wanted to learn about music I would be foolish to ask the deaf so why listen to the atheist when it is logical that his opinions are  absolutely worthless?  So don’t be upset, you are the expert on this issue not him.