Having a 9 year old means that in the last two weeks alone I have explained: OCD; neurodiversity; ADHD; autism; trans rights; sex; gay sex; mental illness. I haven't done a stellar job of any of these but it would have been much worse without Bluesky (and Twitter RIP) and all of you, so thank you.
Begging folks with open ended academic jobs not to forget there’s a whole underclass of permanently casualised academics who’ve been facing redundancy as standard for years. 12+ in my case.
I get it’s awful facing redundancy ofc! Just…this isn’t unprecedented for us. It’s the norm.
A photo of text from the book mentioned, in which the highlighted sentence reads 'Liturgical creativity is an area in which no Anglican has had any fun or job satisfaction since Thomas Cranmer.'
Sticking my head in the sand over All This, and very much enjoying the Colin Buchanan collection An Evangelical among the Anglican Liturgists. (You know he's an evangelical because Catholics would say 'amongst.')
This morning I’ve seen Olly Robbins’s appearance before the select committee described as ‘box office’, while a commentator flagged up another key political moment with the words ‘bring the popcorn’.
That’s one of our main problems right there.
Requiem Mass with the commendation about 'a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming'
Light's abode, celestial Salem
To God be the glory
How great thou art (when Christ shall come with shout of acclamation/ and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart/ there shall I bow in humble adoration/ and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art)
Anthem - Harris, Bring us O Lord God
Glorious.
I'm on the same theme with Light's abode celestial Salem - 'O how glorious and resplendent/ fragile body, shalt thou be'
#TheBisexualExperienceOfHavingYourD&DCharacterComeOutSoYouCanReadTheRoom
Yes, just now!
And in my notifications! (I mean, the algorithm has correctly discerned that I'm interested in churches, but even so.)
I'm so sorry.
And I wonder if that too is part of it. Making it harder for asylum seekers to be part of communities, but also punishing any communities that might welcome asylum seekers so that they stop fighting.
It's so unnecessarily cruel (*so* cruel that there is no possible explanation apart from the cruelty is the point). And counter productive. They say they want people to assimilate and then as soon as people are embedded in a community they kick them out of it.
And horrible for the community too.
This is the second case I've heard of in the last week. Indefensible.
The UKVI rejected the application, explaining that they were not satisfied the applicant was genuine given they had quoted the wrong founding year. The university subsequently confirmed that the applicant had provided the correct year and the UKVI caseworker was incorrect, but the decision could not be reconsidered. In another case a foreign student was rejected from obtaining a visa to study at the University of East Anglia due to a dispute over whether the university was in Norfolk. The applicant asserted correctly that it was, but the UKVI caseworker appeared to confuse Norfolk with Norwich, which is the capital of the county, and rejected the application - believing the applicant was wrong.
I hope the new Permanent Secretary at the Home Office is going to be able to look at the UK Visas and Immigration’s practices
www.thetimes.com/article/1644...
Cover of Long Road from Jarrow by Stuart Maconie
9 April - catch-up over, reaching today with this, which has been on my list for ages and which I borrowed from my dad (it's possible I gave it to him). Very enjoyable, old-fashioned leftist fare (with a reminder of the bird site in its heyday, sic transit etc, and nice nods to Orwell).
Cover of Beyond Common Worship: Anglican identity and liturgical diversity (Mark Earey)
And this week!
8 April - another work-adjacent (or future-further-study-adjacent) one. Perceptive about problems and interesting about solutions.
The cover of Worship and the Mystery of God: The Anglican Divines and the Reality of Divine Presence (John Shepherd)
And finally for Lent - again, does it count if I read it to review it? My view might have been coloured by having to read it in a truly rubbish e-book platform, but I was unimpressed.
Cover of (one translation of) (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names
My Lent lectio. A ladder shape filled in with various colours and a sequence of words, sentences and phrases from The Divine Names. Some legible phrases are: Yearning Matter cannot be evil He who Is Perfect peace is there as a gift No name for it or expression A union far beyond mind
Lent - Lent book (my usual approach to Advent and Lent books these days being 'pull spiritual classic that I haven't read off the shelf where it has been since I bought it an embarrassing number of years ago, and read it as lectio)
Thank you! I'd often wondered about that portrait. (It looks very Jesus to me, but I don't know if that's a C20/21 image of Jesus?)
Cover of Ghost Flower by Jessica Conwell
Lent - bought on Kindle after seeing a thread of 'support queer writers' On Here. Classic YA fantasy tropes (entirely positively meant) - a small town with a dark secret, parental figures who are not what they seem, a teenage girl with a destiny - but unexpectedly developed. And queer. Enjoyed it.
Cover of The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud
Lent - sequel to The Amulet of Samarkand, above. Also good, very much more of the same. Started the third in the trilogy but apparently two and a half is enough for three months, and haven't yet got round to finishing it.
The cover of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Catching up after a Lent largely off social media...
Lent - as audiobook, with 9yo G. He LOVED it. Had hoped he was the right age for Buchan (Boys Own adventures so much a part of my mental landscape between the ages of 8 and 14) and he absolutely is.
Older toilets often have the tanks way up on the wall, and fancy houses (probably the ones you're looking at on Rightmove) often have the tank built into the wall.
A sample:
If it wasn't for the tininess of the windows, I'd love the little council houses in St Ebbes (Westgate side). Less keen on the bungalow-maisonette combo on the river side, but that's partly for practical reasons.
His life is extremely hard.
A fluffy black and white cat curled up in a puddle against a white wall. His feets and tail are tucked in and so is his nosie. One paw is out. It is fluffy and white and you want to play with it. (Don't. He is very serious about his sleeping.)
Cover of 'Love Divine: A Novella' by Ysenda Maxtone Graham.
16 February - a Christmas present. Semi-epistolatory novel w/ episodes of dialogue written as sketches; mildly irritating. Not entirely accurate about C of E process; you... can tell that the author writes for the Spectator. But I did really care about the characters. Not a hardship to finish it.
Yes I think about handedness every time we get numbers about queer people. There's a incredible graph showing the jump of people saying they're left handed from something vanishingly small to ~10%. As soon as it becomes socially acceptable to be different, people who are different say so!