Palm Sunday in Salisbury

Tags

Arundells, Babel, Bishop's Stall, Chapter House, Constable, Creme egg, Dom Perignon, Easter, Jobseekers, Julian of Norwich, Living Water, Mammon, Mocha, National Trust, New Sarum, Old Sarum, Palm Sunday, patens, Pontius Pilate, Salisbury, Simnel cake, Ted Heath, University Challenge, Yasser Arafat

A re-blog as it is timely:

I can’t believe that it’s nearly Easter, shivered Carrie.

Quick! let’s go in and bag a table, I said.

Costamuchamoulah cafe was still doing a brisk trade, even on this

grey day.  Amazingly, the smokers were still prepared to sit outside.

We have the routine down to a fine art now: one gets into the queue while

the other nabs a table, much as the disciples snatched a colt.

Yes, Easter’s early this year, I commented, watching a child stuff its face with

a Creme Egg in advance of the Christian calendar.  It’s amazing how such

diminutive creatures can incorporate a whole orb of sickly chocolate fondant

into such a tiny aperture.

I bet they don’t know what Simnel cakes represent, I mused aloud.

What do they stand for? queried Carrie.  Then, seeing my expression, she

added, I’m sure I once knew.

That’s what I say during University Challenge, I replied.

Then I sipped my Mocha, getting a chocolate powder moustache.  You know,

it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow.  Are you going to go to a service? 

Try persuading that lot to get out of bed, she sighed. They used to like to see

the donkey coming into the church, though.  Sometimes they were convinced

that The Dean, giving his dramatised reading, was Pontius Pilate and it scared

them.

Yes, we used to go to Salisbury for the service.  That was when Ted Heath

lived in The Close. In fact..

..you have a poem about it, she smiled.

How did you know?

PALM SUNDAY IN SALISBURY

Polythene wraps New Sarum like an egg.

The sky above The Close is Constable’s.

Cream-robed clergy congregate in cloisters,

bespectacled, brandishing dried gray palms,

under a spire as tall as Babel’s own,

while new choristers mouth All glory, laud

and honour.. without comprehending laud.

The tallest lad hopes that his voice won’t crack.

Girl choristers have not been asked to sing today.

Some miniature Yasser Arafats

in tea-towels and trainers coax an ass

from a spreading cedar into the nave,

where all present pray for its continence.

True blue glass provides a continuo.

Ted Heath’s Jaguar, also blue, is parked

on a reserved space outside Arundells.

What if one should loose its handbrake

and say, The Lord has need of thee this day?

Meanwhile we make intercession for all

unemployed, under and over-employed,

while carefully noting the advertised

champagne breakfast on our service schedule.

Dom Perignon: a foretaste of glory.

The Jobseekers can sip Living Water.

Coffee will be served in the Chapter House

among the exhumed coffin chalices,

patens. The bookshop is doing business

in postcards of Julian of Norwich:

All manner of thing shall be well. Mammon

hasn’t felt stings from His whip of cords-yet.

The head which indicates the Bishop’s stall

has a triple face of circumspection.

The Dean and his ordained wife wear the same

as they stand on repro medieval tiles,

trying not to worry about their lunch.

In the cloisters a chill wind chafes faces.

A chair is overturned, but no tables.

Although we have received the sign of peace,

our palm crosses seem ineffectual.

We stick one on Ted’s windscreen, just in case

his residential permit cuts no ice

with the flaming Being at the Close gate,

who curiously doesn’t wear a badge,

but bears authority from Old Sarum.

He tends to let the backpackers pass through,

like Christians, still bearing their large burdens,

or as camels accessing a needle.

But Tory Faithful have to wait in queues,

backs turned to the Celestial City,

while Peter checks their National Trust cards

and the very stones cry, Glory! Glory!

Living Water

Tags

Argos Catalogue, Bethlehem well, boa constrictor, Consuelo, Hot Cross Buns, King David, Little Prince, Living Water, Midnight Mass, nard, Oliver Sacks, Parable of Vineyard, Prodigal Son, rag doll, Saint-Exupery, Samaritan woman, Wells for Africa

No, on a strict diet until Lent is over, Brassie said firmly, rejecting the proffered

Mocha.  I’ll just have a Suttonford Spring Water.  I’m parched actually.  All

that weeding at the weekend.  I was pruning some jagged rose bushes.

You sound like the aviator in The Little Prince, I commented.  Do you

remember when he said: This sweetness was born of the walk under the

stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms.  It was good for the

heart, like a present?

Not specially, Brassie said.  What was that about a pulley?

Well, he had been asked to draw water from a well in the Sahara Desert

for the Little Prince, just as the Samarian woman was asked to give

Jesus something to quench His thirst.

Oh, yeah.  And then He said he could give her water…

..and she’d never thirst again, I supplied.

That was beautiful, Brassie agreed.  I remember reading

Saint-Exupery to the twins when they were little. I like the point

about the effort one puts into the gift.  It refreshes parts that

other drinks don’t reach.

I think that refers to beer, I countered.

So much for self-denial.  She bit into a Hot Cross bun.

It’s good when you eat food appropriate to the season, I stated.

I hate to see Hot Cross buns on shelves at the wrong time of year.

St Exupery even covered the importance of ritual..

Oh, like the regulation of the lectionary? Brassie mused aloud.

Mm, she agreed, nodding with her mouth full.  I think Exupery

said something about half the pleasure of gifts is that they should be

given in a meaningful context.

Yes, he wrote that Christmas presents, for example, received after

Midnight Mass, in the bosom of a loving, smiling family were so much

more memorable.

Not like throwing an Argos catalogue at your carping kids out of

guilt, Brassie expanded.

I seem to recall that he gave an example of a merchant who could sell you a

thirst-quenching pill which would save you fifty three minutes a week.  The

Little Prince said that he would rather spend those minutes in drinking cool,

clear water.

All this brings to mind a story that we had at Sunday School when we were

little, Brassie enthused.  It was about King David craving a drink of water

from a particular well in Bethlehem.  Some of his brave, or reckless

henchmen risked their lives and stormed through the enemy to bring him

some.

I remember that! I interrupted.  Didn’t he pour it out on the ground as an

offering?

Yeah.  He felt it was too valuable to pour down his throat, given what

they’d risked. He returned the element to its source.

But Jesus allowed the woman to pour out the expensive nard perfume all over

His feet, remarked Brassie.  He accepted the gift.  It seemed excessive, a

waste to some, but he was okay with it.

That’s because He knew His own worth, I commented.  Also, the grudging

disciple was more intent on syphoning its value off for the purse he carried,

allegedly on all the disciples’ behalf.

Brassie mulled this over.  I might have been annoyed if someone had

poured out my gift after I’d put all that effort into getting it in the first place.

Hmm.  But The Little Prince said that it all depends on how you look at

things. Grown-ups couldn’t see that Saint-Exupery’s childish drawing of the

side elevation of a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant was not a brimmed

hat.

There’s a book about a man who mistook his wife for a hat, she interjected.

Brassie wanders off the point sometimes.

Oh, have you got it?  I asked.  I would like to borrow it from you.  I seem to

recognise the phenomenon. But, no, I drew her back on track.  Some people

don’t understand why the workers in the parable who joined the day’s labour

in the vineyard after the work had been largely done in the heat of the sun,

should receive the same wage as those who turned up late.

Yes, that’s never made sense to me, she said emphatically.

Well, no one is worthy.  It’s like the Elder Brother syndrome.  He felt

overlooked when the Prodigal returned and received a warm welcome. 

The Father rightly reminded him that he had had the benefit of his 

company, riches and household, all the time the younger brother had

been sharing pig swill.

Someone said that gifts that cost you nothing are not worth giving.

Correct, I replied.  That’s why I give all those unwanted Christmas prezzies

to Help the Ancient.  But I also have to give meaningfully too and that is more

of a challenge.

You gave me a nice present for my birthday, soothed Brassie.  Wasn’t it a

Wells for Africa donation certificate?

It might have been, I answered.  I can’t remember.

You didn’t waste your money, she carried on.

No.  Exupery said that the time children waste on loving their rag doll is never

– well, wasted.  One of the characters says the responsibility the children took

showed that they were lucky.

I hope you don’t see me as some kind of rag doll.  I know I didn’t change out of my

gardening trousers today.. Oh, I remember now, Brassie became agitated.

There was something about looking after your rose and watering it and not minding

if you only had one to look after, even if it had thorns.

I think Exupery’s wife, Consuelo, was rather thorny, I explained.  I don’t think

she offered him much consolation, in spite of her name.  And yet he said thorns

weren’t grown for spite.  He suggested that roses were vulnerable, but beautiful. 

His rose was so vulnerable that a sheep could have eaten it.   Flowers need to believe

that they can protect themselves with their terrible weapons, but we shouldn’t listen

to them, he said.  We should just admire them.

Was that his sexist view of women, then?  Brassie asked.

I think it was more subtle, I pondered.  He said people should think of the

affection behind the strategems and the inconsistencies of our loved ones.

In other words, forgive them..?

..as we ourselves are forgiven!

We flowers are complex creatures, as he said.

Thank goodness someone wastes time on us!

Would you like another bottle of water? I asked.

No, thanks.  I feel quite refreshed by our talk.  I’ll look out

that book for you tonight.

Oliver Sacks, I remember now.  Thanks, Brassie.