Marriage

...No, not mine (I've taken private vows.)

I was invited to the wedding of the daughter of a friend of mine. Friday afternoon seems a slightly odd time to have a wedding, but it did cross my mind that it might have something to do with the football. I know very little about football (I even asked my Form Group to pick my team for the staff fantasy football league) but I gather that England are playing tomorrow... and the groom used to play: Chelsea was mentioned, but I don't know if this was their youth squad or whatever....

Anyway, I was able, by dint of shameless grovelling, to get the day off school - most of my classes have either left school or are on exam leave, so there wasn't much cover to arrange. I was also privileged to sing the Ave Maria (Schubert) during the signing of the register. I have to confess that I prefer the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria, but the bride wanted Schubert, and it's her big day, so Schubert it was!

Tomorrow, I get to continue the theme: another couple of friends are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. I'm not singing anything at this, though if they have any hymns at Mass I'll join in with gusto... however, it'll probably be lots of Latin motets, so I shall just sit back and enjoy the beautiful music, and let it raise my heart and mind to God.

Pilgrim's Progress

Lourdes was wonderful: glorious sunshine, great food, good wine, congenial company...

The atmosphere is really special. Everyone is there for a common purpose. No-one bats an eyelid if you put on a mantilla (actually, most of the shops sell lots of different types!) Everyone prays. Actually, one of the most incongruous sights was on the last day in the Rosary Basilica: a woman proceded to make her way up the centre aisle on her knees... with a camera clasped in her right hand. And why not!

The queues for the women's baths are renowned for their length. One year I queued from 8:15am (the baths open at 9am) and at 11:15am I reached the outer vestibule. Realising that I would be late for the coach to the airport, I reluctantly had to leave.

This year, the queues have been more variable. I went on Tuesday morning at about 10:30am, fully expecting the queue to have been closed, but wanting to give it a go. To my surprise, the place was empty, and on my hesitation (I thought maybe it was completely finished) a brancardier shot out and practically dragged me to the door. The rest of the week I had longer to wait, but 2 hours was the longest. At least it gave me time to pray - although you are encouraged to compose your thoughts just before you get down into the water, the combination of a cold wet towel applied to your body just beforehand and water which is so cold you half expect to see icecubes floating in it often leaves you breathless and unable to say more than "Oh God!"

Despite that, it is one of the most moving experiences in Lourdes. It is daunting the first time (and never an "easy" experience, no matter how often you go) and there is a distinct element of penance involved in the mechanics, so to speak, but the feeling you get afterwards is truly indescribable.

Commercialism?

The only disadvantage in going on pilgrimage to Lourdes is that coming back can be a bit of a shock ! Driving to church this morning was a little surreal: not a single rosary or holy statue to be seen...

At the risk of merely appearing to repeat what Fr. Tim over at Hermeneutic of Continuity said on the subject, I don't think you can call the streets lined with shops selling rosaries and statues commercialism - for me, the term implies reducing everything to profit-and-loss, and trying to fleece the suckers who fall for whatever line you're selling. The atmosphere in Lourdes is very different...

For a start, although each shop is selling basically the same things, there doesn't appear to be any of the cut-throat rivalry going on - none of the feeling of "we've got the same item as next door, only we're selling two for the price of one, and our one is better anyway, his is rubbish." The shop fronts are completely open, and different shopkeepers can often be seen on the pavements chatting to each other as their respective customers wander round inside. There's a sort of patience involved... there's no feeling that you're being dragged in off the street to visit one shop in particular, it's almost as if it is expected that, sooner or later, you'll end up visiting every shop.

This slightly laid-back attitude to browsing is emphasised by the layout of the town itself. There is a one-way system in operation in the streets near the Domaine, and on certain days in the month, the direction of travel is reversed so that everyone has a fair crack at the passing trade!

Another reason I don't think of this as commercialism is that the prices are so very reasonable!

Having said all this, the shop displays are really something to behold. Bet you didn't realise that the one statue you absolutely had to have was a luminous Virgin Mary. Fr. Tim tells me that he even spotted a statue of Pope Benedict XVI ! Now that's one I have to see!

Holidays

It is gradually dawning on me that tomorrow I'm off on pilgrimage to Lourdes. I've been so caught up in various things going on at school that I hadn't actually been thinking any further ahead than 3:15pm on Friday (along with, I suspect, every other teacher in England, I always know exactly when the next holiday starts!)

I took the picture at the torchlight procession one evening last year.

Taking part in the procession in Lourdes is just such a boost for morale. Everyone is praying the rosary, and there are chants in between each of the decades, and during the choruses, the candles all get held up in the air. There is occasionally a moment of drama as one of the paper shields around the candle flames goes up in smoke, but it all adds to the atmosphere.

People are almost always polite and cheerful, putting up with minor inconveniences with good grace, and looking out for each other. It's also really great to see how the sick and disabled are put first... in the USSR there used to be special traffic lanes for the cars of the elite, and in the UK we have special lanes for buses and taxis: well, in Lourdes, there are wheelchair lanes... and believe me, getting run over by a brancardier pulling an invalid buggy is a distinct possibility if you are foolish enough to forget who has right of way!!

Sadly, despite the many beautiful places where one could celebrate Mass, there are a handful of rather ghastly locations - mostly in the newer buildings. However, we have arranged to have Mass in the more aesthetically pleasing chapels: Mass on Monday evening after our arrival is in the chapel of St Michael; we're in the Crypt on Tuesday morning, the chapel of St Gabriel on Thursday and in the Grotto itself for Mass on Friday morning.

The one blip (as far as I'm concerned) is Wednesday morning, when we join the International Mass in the Pius X Basilica. This Basilica is underground, and can seat 10,000 people or so. Apparently, when it was built, it was considered to be the latest thing, using pre-stressed concrete. The overall effect is one of having Mass in an underground car park. Lately there have been some additions - banners with some of the more modern saints - but it's still a car park. My objections to the location on aesthetic grounds have been firmly ignored: the International Mass is a major event, and as such, it forms part of the pilgrimage experience. To be fair, at least the 10,000 people present actually want to attend Mass, which means that the atmosphere is far better than some of the school Masses I have been forced to attend.

I doubt that I shall feel much like hunting for an internet cafe in amongst all the chapels, restaurants and shops selling rosaries and statues. So no more posts until I get back.

Hymn Lyrics to make you Weep

...Only this time with laughter! Given my previous posts on inclusive language in hymns and getting children to learn the traditional hymns, this offering from Fr. Nicholas at Roman Miscellany just had to get a mention...

Feast of the Ascension

I never quite got the point of today's Feast: it seemed a bit harsh for the disciples, having gotten used to Jesus being around again, to have to see him disappear once more. And having to wait until Pentecost for the consolation of the Holy Spirit, well, that just seemed a trifle heartless...

So the sermon at this evening's Mass was food for plenty of thought: we celebrate Jesus' return to the Father because he redeems our human nature and raises it up so that we can share in his divinity.

There was also a warning about bringing Jesus down to our own level in an attempt to make him seem less remote... the timely reminder that Jesus is more fully human than any of us gives the lie to the often-repeated statement that we're falible, we're sinful, because "we're only human."

(Apologies to Fr. Tim if I misquoted him, but I've had a couple of Baileys since I got home!)

Before the Moon and the Stars were made...

We had the last of our First Holy Communion Masses last Saturday. I've heard (and experienced) some real horrors over the years, but they are always done with reverence and sensitivity at my current Parish.

One of the highlights for me is being able to watch the children as they come up to the altar rails for Communion - I'm lucky enough to sit by the organ, on the sanctuary side of the rails (under the pretext of helping with the singing) and so I get the best view in the church.

The sermon is usually pretty stunning too. One theme which Fr Tim mentions quite often is enough to reduce me to tears: he points out to the children that Jesus has been waiting for them to be ready to receive him, and has been waiting for each one of us, has thought about each one of us since before the stars were made... wow.

It was a theme which resonated in the homily of Pope Benedict XVI at his Inaugural Mass in April 2005:

And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.

Prayers Needed

...And while I'm on the subject of prayer, I'd appreciate one or two. I have an interview on Thursday afternoon.

Quite apart from the fact that I'm hopeless at interviews as I get incredibly nervous and tongue-tied, I have to give a five minute presentation on the cosmological argument for the existence of God.

Now, I "know" God exists. And I know the cosmological argument for his existence. But what I don't know right now is how to make the argument last for five whole minutes in such a way that the interviewing panel stay awake...

Aaaaarghhhhhh !

Children's Prayers

One of the "problems" often mentioned in English state schools is the legal requirement for a daily act of worship. Many of my colleagues don't actually bother, unless Ofsted are visiting, and then suddenly books of prayers appear miraculously with long passages to be read and pondered over.

Time constraints are often cited as the biggest hurdle. We have only 20 minutes in the morning to get into the class, take down chairs, check and sign contact books, take the register, sort out uniforms, chase up absence notes, give out behaviour monitoring reports and listen to the tannoyed announcements.

Because of this, I prefer to use the "standard" prayers - the Lord's prayer, the Hail Mary and the Glory be to the Father, and occasionally I will recite one of the longer traditional prayers, and then conclude with one of the more familiar ones to be recited together as a class. I do use more variety in the prayers we have in my lessons, but I prefer to make sure we have a short daily prayer rather than a longer reflection just once in a blue moon.

But every so often, usually about once a week, I will ask the students if they have any prayer intentions, and these can be quite an eye-opener. The children (my Form class is Year 8, and so they are between 12-13 years old) ask for prayers for parents, friends, relatives and just a brief indication of why they need our prayers.

Today, for example, several children mentioned a friend of older siblings who died at the weekend (I realised that it was the same person each time, as we'd had a prayer at staff briefing), a friend's mother who had died of cancer, a parent going to hospital, a relative who was pregnant and various brothers and sisters who were sitting exams.

I think of it as a privilege to hear these prayers. And it really makes me sit back and count my blessings.

Bad vibes for the week ahead

I suspect that I'm in for a trying week...

Last night I couldn't get to sleep. Instead of giving it up as a lost cause at 4am (I have to get up at 5:30am) I continued to lie in bed. My last thought was something along the lines of "I really should get up now, or I'll sleep through the alarm clock..."

Next thing I know, it's 7.15am, and that means I've missed Mass. Bad start.

Despite the fact that South East England is suffering from drought, it is tipping down with rain. No doubt we will be told by the Water Board that it is the wrong sort of rain, and the hosepipe bans and similar restrictions will escalate, along with the water rates. The rain is so bad that the windscreen wipers make little headway, and I'm reduced to driving at 40 mph (the normal speed on that road is 70 mph). I get hemmed in by two articulated lorries which add to the visibility problems... and since my car crash last December when I was smashed into by a lorry, twice, and then overturned when I hit the central barrier, I get a little nervous around lorries. They're bigger than me, and this time my Guardian Angel might be napping.

So, what with the slower-than-usual journey, and the rain encouraging every parent to drive their little darlings to school, stopping in the middle of the road to say fond farewells at the school gates, I was five minutes late. Not good... the day feels like it's going downhill.

It was hot last week, so the boilers have been switched off. Naturally this means that the school is now freezing. The day slowly progresses...

The final straw is when one of my pupils objected to being ignored when he was trying to disrupt my lesson from outside the classroom. He decided to jam a chair under my door handle, and followed it up with one of the long tables used for packed lunches, which he jams between the top of the door and the chair... I could probably lever the door open with brute force, but decide that it's probably safer to ring for a Senior Manager. Luckily I have my mobile phone handy...!

I can't wait till Friday: roll on the Half-Term holiday!

Cats Rule

As a woman who has a cat, and more importantly, as a woman whose cat knows exactly how to make me rush around supermarkets finding exactly the right catfood (which is invariably not the same catfood as the last time I went to the supermarket), I found the following item from Happy Catholic a real treat ...

On a Mission

Well, I've done my bit to help stuff up the DVC opening weekend figures: I went with a friend to see Mission Impossible 3 - which was on 4 screens at Purley Way, Croydon, despite having been out for a while. Very enjoyable. Even more enjoyable was the fact that the DVC for its opening weekend only appeared to be on in two screens...

I really shouldn't gloat ...

... well, just a little ...!

Traditional Hymns in School

I used to teach Science, and although I miss the fun and games I used to have with some of the more interesting practical sessions, one thing I don't miss is the relentless pressure exerted by the need to cover the syllabus.

My A level and AS level Psychology students have to work to pretty tight specifications because of the exam pressure, and if I had any GCSE classes for RE, they would be under the same constraint. But at Key Stage 3 (that's Years 7-9 in secondary school, or 11-14 year olds) there isn't the same sort of pressure, although I am expected to follow the scheme of work; and so, I occasionally take a lesson or two to go "off message."

I get very annoyed by the fact that the only hymns the children are ever exposed to in school "liturgies" are the teeth-grindingly awful standard 70s rubbish like "Bind us together" with the excuse that "the kids don't know any of the traditional, old fashioned hymns, and the words are unfamiliar ..." usually followed by, "and anyway, the young people don't like to sing ..."

So, for example, I had one lesson at the beginning of May where I asked 2 volunteers to go and pick daisies from the playing field outside the classroom. They made a small daisy chain, and I lit candles and crowned the statue of Our Lady. I also taught the children the Marian hymn "Bring flowers of the fairest" (I put the words up on PowerPoint, and went through the meaning of some of the unfamiliar words and phrases) and we all then sang the hymn (yes, everyone, even the boys, and no, I didn't need to threaten them with death first) much to the consternation of the English class next door. We finished off with some prayers.

Today, two of my classes were treated to a brief explanation of the reasons behind Henry VIII's split with Rome. I got to tell them about the "kindness" of the King in having St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More beheaded... the kids weren't too convinced, until I went into the details of what being hanged, drawn and quartered actually entailed. They were absolutely horrified (the scientific training I had comes to the fore here, as I give graphic details!) So I think that, for next lesson, we shall go "off message" again, and look at some of the other English Martyrs. I feel a need to sing a few verses of "Faith of our Fathers"...

Statistics to make you weep

On the offchance that there is anyone who has stumbled across my blog without having first visited Fr. Tim Finigan's Hermeneutic of Continuity blog, I would just like to draw your attention to some truly horrifying statistics on STIs in England. Whe I first saw the figures, I thought that a decimal point had to be missing: after all, you can't have percentage increases in the thousands! Well, apparently you can!

Schadenfreude

Mea culpa, mea culpa ... but I have to confess to a certain amount of unholy glee at the DVC debacle. Several people I know have expressed regret at having bought tickets to see the film, given the complete pasting it received from the critics. My heart bleeds ...

More to smile about ...

I usually listen to the radio on my way home. I used to listen to tapes, but there's something wrong with the player, so I'm stuck (temporarily, I hope) with the radio.

Unfortunately I was conditioned to tune in to Radio 4 from a very young age (it even feels like they have the same presenters) and I'm too lazy to find something else which isn't constant replaying of the same old pop songs. Sometimes I regret this, as what I hear on Radio 4 can bring me close to wrapping my car around a tree in sheer frustration.

But not today. Today was all sweetness and light. They had a review or two of the DVC from Cannes and London. The film was panned. You could almost sense the regret oozing from the reviewers. They were desperate to say something nice (after all, the trad Catholics hate the book, so it must be good, right?) and the best that they could come up with was that it was a very faithful adaptation of the book ...

So I was grinning like a Cheshire cat all the way home!

(but no, Bluewater still haven't put up details of the other films showing this weekend!)

Something to smile about ...

I was too tired yesterday to put up any posts, although I did have fun pretending I knew something about computer programming and playing about with some of the codes on my blog template. I felt a sense of achievement when I managed to get my favourite blogs up, in the place where I wanted them, and done by Blogroll so they will be updated automatically.

Looking through all the codes on the template, adding and subtracting bits here and there, and then previewing to see if it looked ok really took me back in time.

I'm afraid that I have to admit to being old enough to remember computers before Windows 3.1 (and yes, they were wind-up clockwork ... only kidding !) and the fact that you could programme them yourself. I was most familiar with BBC Research Machines at school (as a pupil back then, I hasten to add) which were programmed in BASIC and I remember the excitement when we got some new Sinclair Spectrums for the school library (colour screens, wow!)

I'm not so conversant with html as I once was with BASIC, but it is fun to experiment. And sooner or later, more by luck than judgement, I might even learn a thing or two ...

What's sauce for the goose ...

I seem to have an animal theme tonight. First rabbits, now geese ...!

Anyway, I just spotted this highly amusing post from Curt Jester, "extracting the urine" (so to speak) from the DVC. I have a horrible suspicion that everyone has seen it already (note the self-assured tones - I'm assuming I have had visitors!) but I'm going to put it here anyway, as it gives me the perfect excuse to try and put in a link.

Ha. Did it. (Admittedly I had a blonde moment and had to delete my first attempt!)

DVC "othercott" hurdle

To say that I'm not a happy bunny this evening is to understate the situation somewhat. I am close to being a seething, snarling bunny, and rabid to boot.

I read about the idea of going to see another film on the opening weekend of DVC, and thought it was pretty neat. I also read somewhere - I forget where, exactly - that "Over the Hedge" was out this weekend, and I thought that it would make a good option ... Unfortunately, I also forgot that most of the blogs I read are overseas ...

... It turns out that "Over the Hedge" isn't out in the UK until the end of June. So, I logged on to the Bluewater Cinema website to check out what films were going to be on this weekend. (BTW, Bluewater, for those of you who don't know, is a giant temple of Mammon just to the south-east of London, and great fun it is too!)

Imagine my disgust when, having picked the Saturday night option, I found that the ONLY film that is on the listing is the "Da Vinci Code" !

When I rang to find out what computer glitch was responsible for this one, the operator could only offer the feeble excuse that the listings didn't go on the system until Tuesday. She had absolutely no idea what other films might be on offer (there are about 18 screens in this place, I think). However, they were already able to get the DVC listing up. She couldn't explain that one ...

And while I'm on the subject, don't believe the old chestnut about DVC getting more people to really think about Christianity. I teach RE in my school and several kids decided to ask me if I'd go and see the film ... it was pretty obvious from the way they asked the question that they knew (a) what my answer would be, and (b) exactly why. One of the boys even pointed out that the film-makers wouldn't have been able to get away with making a film like that about another religion ...

I consider the DVC to be a direct attack on my (much loved) Holy Mother Church. And the kids at school would know exactly how to respond to an attack on one of their mothers ...

And another thing...

Of course, what really annoys me is when these so-called Catholics are interviewed by the media (usually Radio 4 - I really shouldn't listen to it, it's bad for my blood pressure) and are described as leading Catholics or prominent Catholics.

They do not speak for me, and I get really hacked off when they claim to give a voice to the silent "majority."

I've also noticed that a favourite argument for the proposed change in Church teaching (whatever one happens to be up for discussion, and you can be sure that it will be presented as a "policy" rather than a teaching) is that the majority of ordinary Catholics already do whatever is being discussed. Well, hallo people, wake up and smell the coffee: there are a lot of people who commit murder, and lie, and steal... that doesn't mean we should change the law and make it legal!