Heaven Smiles On The Faithful, After All

This item brings good cheer.

The wonderful churches and cathedrals of the UK are a marvel, a gift from a rich history to our modern day.

Problem is, they're wicked expensive to maintain. Heating to even a minimal level of comfort is daunting. Those Evensongs in February are accompanied by organists in gloves, choristers emitting clouds of vapor, heard by worshippers bundled up to the hilt.

Each and every one of those buildings is also in need of structural work, constantly. They were designed and built with dead-reckoning and chalk lines, impressive pieces of engineering, but time and gravity overcome all human genius, eventually.

Sooo...

From Geoffrey Lean at the Telegraph:

Struggling churches and other religious buildings could get heavenly assistance in meeting the bills – from the sun. New figures produced by British Gas show that they could raise a total of £34 million a year by installing solar panels – quite a help, considering that a quarter of Britain’s 44 dioceses are in the red. Some £29 million of this would come from the government’s new ‘feed in tariffs’ which pay for generating renewable electricity, and the other £5 million in savings from not having to buy power from utilities.

Mosques and most churches are particularly well placed to exploit the power of the sun as – since they face East, to Mecca and Jerusalem respectively – they have large south-facing roofs, ideally suited to trapping the maximum amount of solar energy. In the process, British Gas adds, they could boost attempts to combat climate change by saving up to 42,000 tons of carbon a year, equivalent to what is emitted by more than 600 transatlantic flights. And, presumably, this could provide just the right way to meet all those appeals to raise money to repair the church roof.

It strikes OS that the path to energy independence from the bad people with oil, like the Saudis and Iranians won't actually be a straight line, or one top-down solution, but rather hundreds upon hundreds of small solutions, all walking in the same direction. Sort of like how a properly functioning marketplace works.

OS met an engineer this week who lives in an even smaller town than his own. He designs and builds equipment that makes solar panel installation much easier to achieve, and quietly makes a good living at it.

There are solutions out there. They just don't involve hijacking the entirety of the economy to work.

End Of April, A Thought For The Culture

It's one of those weeks--out of the house at 8:00 am, back in at 10:00 pm.  No time to think, much less write.

In the meantime, these wonderful words from the Sunday Times on the subject of music and worship. 

It's not a subject the general public spends a lot of time thinking about, but trust OS on this, it really matters.  How we say what we say at what should be our most serious and unguarded moments really matters.


Away we go....

Thomas Cranmer, Martyred Today in 1556

So why, one should ask, would anyone note this date? One more religious figure from long ago, killed in  a long-forgotten dispute.

These things happen. Move on.

OS hopes you pause a moment, and give a few minutes to the old Archbishop. He still has something to teach us, a huge gift to give us, if we will let him.

Cranmer's life really mattered.

It isn't how or when Thomas Cranmer died, or even the particulars of the political intrigues that finally led him to the stake.

It's what he did with the time he was given, and what he left behind for all of us. The PowersThatBe of his day indeed did kill him, but they were unable to kill his words. He, more than any other individual, was responsible for the Book of Common Prayer. His words helped shape a common theology that held England and the English-speaking world together when all else was flying apart, both in his time, and the centuries that followed. His words, indeed, shaped much of the English language as we know it, much as Martin Luther's translation of the Bible into German helped form and unify that language.

Whether you know it or not, Cranmer's words resonate inside your head:

DEERELY beloved frendes, we are gathered together here in the syght of God, and in the face of his congregacion, to joyne together this man and this woman in holy matrimonie, which is an honorable estate instituted of God in paradise, in the time of mannes innocencie, signifying unto us the misticall union that is betwixte Christe and his Churche:

Lyghten our darkenes we beseche thee, O lord, & by thy great mercy defende us from all perilles and daungers of thys nyght, for the love of thy onely sonne, our saviour Jesu Christ. Amen.

Of course, we now read them and hear them in less of a 16th-century usage and spelling. But they are his words nonetheless. Cranmer knew that words have great power, for good or ill, and wished them only to to convey truth. His only regret, as he died, was that at points earlier in his life, he had failed in the right use of words, and prayed for forgiveness.

His murderers, although then in power, are now reviled. Cranmer's words are woven into the fabric of the world's most successful and ubiquitous language.

In these days, when darkness seems to descend, it is good to remember this.

'Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, oh Lord...'

Here's a short video assembled in honor of Cranmer's words:



And, a big HT to today's Cranmer, the great English wordsmith and blogger.