Christmas Culture

Tags

Filippo Lippi

The Adoration of the Christ Child by Filippo Lippi

In the middle of the 15th century, Filippo Lippi a notorious Carmelite friar, painted the birth of Christ not in a manger but in the wooded wilderness that surrounded his monastery.  There are no signs of the usual visitors you would expect to see gathering in the stable, even Joseph is missing, and a darkness and symbolism points to Christ’s death.

The story of the symbolism behind what Lippi painted in this commission for Comismo de’ Medici is only the beginning of what the BBC programme ‘The Private Life of a Christmas Masterpiece’ has to tell.  It also tells the story of the picture and of Lippi himself.  Although it isn’t on BBC iplayer it is being shown again on HD and BBC 2 on Christmas Day at 17:10, so if you missed it first time around why not catch it next time and sprinkle some culture, along with some scandal into your Christmas Day, the soaps have nothing on reall life!

Words of Wisdom?

Understanding maths is the difference between life and death.

Marcus du Sautoy

The statement comes from the beginning of a current BBC four programme ‘The Story of Maths’.  No don’t screw up your face like that, it is a fascinating programme and if you have any interest in history at all I am sure you would enjoy it.   I just don’t think that understanding it is a matter of life and death!

What I Am Missing

Having just watched on BBC i-player ‘Penelope Keith and the Fast Lady’, part of the story about the fascinating Dorothy Levitt who was a woman racing driver at the turn of the last century and to prove men wrong drove unaided from London to Liverpool and back in two days.

So what you may wonder is it that I am missing well as part of the programme Penelope Keith was reading from Dorothy’s book in which she states that no woman should travel without good chocolate and a revolver to protect herself.

No I am not missing a revolver, but I don’t have either the fine chocolate – rose and violet creams recommended – or the book, and I as am not giving up chocolates for Lent, I am hoping that the chocolates might miraculously appear in my car by the morning and the book will appear at some time – oh perhaps Mothering Sunday if either of you are reading this!

By the way if you have any interest in cars you can see the programe on BBC’s i-player here for the next couple of days.

A Short Stay In Switzerland

Did you watch it?  It is the true story about Dr Anne Turner.  If not and you want to it is available on BBC i-player here.

Having nursed her husband, Jack who had suffering from an un-named neurological disease, she then starts to become ill herself and upon discovering she has herself developed a similar illness and decides that she wants her life to end.

The story starts at one of their daughters weddings with both parents present and ends at a similar family gathering with neither of them there.  In between these two joyous occasions in that particular families life we are taken through the trauma of a family who love each other dearly trying to cope and struggling with what is happening and what is going to happen.  The acting is superb and I for one was drawn through a whole gamut of emotions.  The courage is plain to see, but so is the anger, the guilt, the sadness along with the love, the joy and the respect.  The subject matter is not easy, dying is part of living the final part, and for our society death of any kind is often a difficult subject.

I don’t think there are any right or wrong answers to this complex subject, each individual, each family is different.  I can not imagine that the choices came easily for anyone, and while it would appear that the legal complexities of it all place added burdens and stress, without them there I would be concerned about the innocent ending up being railroaded into something they didn’t want.  What happened to Anne is what she wanted, it took courage and I for one don’t think it was an easy way out.  However one thing struck me that I have never thought about before and new question has raised its head in a subject full of questions to ponder. 

We were never told the financial cost of what she did, could she have afforded to do it if she hadn’t been financial secure?  At one point in desperation she tries, and fails, to take her own life the distress this causes to her family is obvious.  At the end in Switzerland they are obviously still upset but there was a peace and serenity that was not there in her bedroom with a plastic bag over her head and a side table of vodka and ground up pills.  How many times might she have tried again before succeeding or being hospitalised to stop her trying, what further distress might that have caused to those who loved and still love her?  It has been said that death is the great leveler, rich or poor we all at some time will die and none of us can take our bank balances with us be they large or small.  The new question I am left pondering this morning is whether, with the current state of affairs in this country regarding euthanasia is – Is euthanasia the ultimate prejudice?

Right Or Left?

Doctor Who on Saturday got me to thinking, in fact it got me to thinking so much that Sunday’s sermon was abandoned in favour of one following a Doctor Who theme.

For those of you who didn’t see it the whole story pivoted around Donna changing a decision she made and turned right instead of left while driving her car this seemingly minor incident meant that she ended up not meeting the Doctor, with massive consequences.

Now the cynic out there, might say a simple change like that doesn’t change much and certainly wouldn’t have the effect on the whole world that Donna’s change did.  We don’t know if choices we have made have made big differences, small differences or no difference at all.  However the choices we have made, have made us the people we are today, and they do shape the world around us.  There are of course also certain choices that we make that we know will and do have an impact on others, choosing fair trade being just one example.

Donna’s change meant that southern England was wiped out by a nuclear explosion, that vast numbers of Americans were turned into blocks of lard, and that the Doctor died to name but three.  Surely our choices don’t have such a massive impact, or do they?

At St Mark’s we have been embarking on ‘Leading Your Church Into Growth’, which shows in commonsense straightforward ways how evangelism can be easily done, on some level or another, by everyone.  The choice is do we do something or don’t we; do we turn right or left; do we spread the Good News or not; do we or don’t we make that seemingly insignificant turn in our lives that will make a significant impact on someones life?

Lenor – Update

Last June I blogged (here) about a then new Lenor advert promoting their concentrated fabric conditioner and saying that if we all switched to it then loads of lorries would be taken off the road.  At the time I contacted them asking why they didn’t just make all their fabric conditioner in concentrated form and got a reply (here) stating that it was to give consumers choice.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a new Lenor ad on the TV stating their new ’fragrance’ will only be available in concentrated form.  I applaud them for the decision; however it does rather contradict the idea of consumer choice they once rated so highly!  Call me cynical but I still think it has more to do with their profits than any enviromental impact.

Behind Closed Doors

I can’t receive BBC Northern Island, however by using the BBC’s i-player I was able to watch ‘Behind Closed Doors’, a programme about the Sisters of Poor Clare in Belfast, a totally enclosed order. 

When Sr Pascal joined the monastery there were another 24 sisters, but the numbers had dropped to just her and one other.  As she approaches her 50^th anniversary of her profession a decision is also awaited from four visiting sisters from the Philippines who could offer a future to the convent.  According to Canon Law there needs to be at least 5 sisters in the convent to keep it open, so at least of 3 of the sisters from the Philippines need to decide to stay in Belfast if it is to remain open.

The programme wasn’t quite what I expected, however it does give some insight.  If you want to watch it yourself you can for another two days by clicking this link.

Question For The Day

Should someone who can’t cook – and I really mean can’t cook not just someone who doesn’t like cooking or has a limited range of things they can cook – should someone who can’t cook be teaching our children about healthy eating, as witnessed on last night’s BBC2 programme ‘Kitchen Criminals’?

Lenor – The Press Statement That Got Away

Has anyone else out there noticed the new Lenor ad, the one encouraging you to buy the concentrated version as it will make lorries disappear off the roads?

When I first saw the ad, I thought, good one, then as it faded from the screen I thought again.

What the ad actually suggests is that those who are watching it are responsible for big artics going down country roads, and the nice people at Lenor would like to stop those big lorries but can’t unless we change our shopping habits! Yes we are responsible for what we buy but hold on a moment, what is stopping them from ceasing manufacturing the big bottles and getting the lorries off the road. If they really cared, rather than that ad, there would have been a press statement reading:

We at Lenor, want to do all we can to ensure our lorries and the lorries that move our products up and down the country are as few in number as possible. We want you to smell our new fragrances in our new concentrate rather than the smell of diesel fumes when you hang out your washing. We want to reduce the amount of plastic filling landfill sites leaving an unknown legacy for our children and grandchildren – so we will be making only concentrated fabric condition in future.

Okay so in an ideal world all fabric conditioners would also contain eco friendly components, but hey it’s a start.

Lectures With A Difference

I should have been meaning to write about this for a while but kept forgetting.

There is a wonderful programme which is currently being repeated on BBC4 called The Mark Steel Lectures. In it he takes a sideways look at some of the great figures from the past, on their influence and what probably influenced them. Don’t stop reading; this isn’t some boring history programme, even though it is done in conjunction with the Open University. If you remember the OU programmes of the past you are in for a very pleasant surprise! The programme is funny and accessible; conveying passion and excitement while getting to grips with the thoughts of great individuals. Unfortunately it is being shown in the early hours of Sunday morning – but well worth recording, if you are already in bed, or too busy partying! (If you have teleport it is on there.)

In the programmes he travels to the areas where these people lived and, with the help of actors, takes some of their quirks and shows them in a whole new light. The programmes could probably best be described as caricatures, there is no attempt to try and change history, just bring it to us in a new and amusing way.

Here is Mark’s own introduction to it from the BBC website:

Having read about Sigmund Freud, two things stayed in my memory above all else. The first was that Freud was terrified of the number 62. He became convinced it was following him around, and that this meant he would die at the age of 62. As a result he refused to stay in a hotel if it had more than 61 rooms. The other thought to occur was the implausibility of his theory that men have a desire to sleep with their mothers. Because even if there WAS an attraction, your mum would ruin it by saying “well alright then – but only if you tidy your room first.”
This isn’t to deny that Freud, like the other characters in this series, was a genius who changed the world. But they were all wonderfully flawed and magnificently human. So the series is an attempt to portray just that, as well as the only way to show Lord Byron as Joe Strummer, Isaac Newton as Carol Vorderman and Darwin as the man who goes mad in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The next character is Ludwig Van Beethoven at 12:45am early this coming Sunday. If you don’t at least crack a smile and learn one thing I will be astonished!

The Convent – Part IV

Tags

Religion

The final part of The Convent was on last night, and the guests were made aware of the ripples that their actions can cause.

It was a lesson in love. Love that includes everyone, or love that excludes others, even if unintentional; love that doesn’t judge, love that forgives, love that at the end of the day allows people, whoever they are, wherever they are, to live together in harmony.

As Sister Angela the Abbess said at the end of last nights programme – “They have become more in touch with themselves and not trapped in this culture were you are more valued for what you have rather than for who you are, and I think each of them has discovered that path of living … it’s the love that really does it in the end … if you can be there be more there for other people then you become more in touch with your best and deepest self…”

Gradually they seemed to understand, I wish them luck and hope the things they learnt they will take with them back into the lives they left behind.

I hope they do a follow up programme.

The Convent – Part III

Tags

Religion

What a difference a visit form the family makes!

Last night was full of revelations, some of them big some of them gradual.
I must admit I was very disappointed at one stage when it looked like there was going to be a mutiny. “Why are you there then?” I was screaming at the TV. The only one at that point who was prepared to make any kind of effort was the one who is scared of God. But after they had visits from their families they started to see things in a different light.

That along with the fact that the nuns are prepared to be so honest with their guests is finally making an impact on them. Even the confirmed atheist seems to be prepared to acknowledge that there could be a God, although she isn’t so sure about organised religion – but she isn’t alone in that!

The biggest change last night was with the evangelical, after her brother’s visit which had included a comment about his surprise that she was up before noon. She has now decided to attend the 5:45am prayers!

p.s. I do find it ironic that it seems to be the workaholic who is now the only one who isn’t prepared to work at it!