England back 3

I just got to watch England vs The Pacific Islands......please Mr Johnson recognise the brilliance of Sackey, Armitage and Monye. I have seen an altruistic yet attacking back 3 like it for years in british rugby. It was exciting, creative and .....well quite frankly entertaining. What to do about 10 12 and 13 though.

Messrs Davenport, Outteridge and Lamb think Flood, Barkley and Tait.......go on Johnno you know you want to!!

Lapdog Law & Abortion

I am excited not to be blogging about the US election but things more important but in some senses as spin off. I was talking with L about Obama's policy on abortion. His personal outlook is that it is wrong from a moral and faith perspective but as a political position he understands that each must pursue his own conviction. To criminalise abortion only actually creates criminals, we can look at 1970/80's Eire to know that abortion went underground, women got sick, died and were jailed for living in fear of shame.

I guess it is important that I share where I am coming from, I would love to see a world where every pregnancy and pregnant woman was supported so whole heartedly by society that there was no potential for shame, suffering or loneliness. Yup that is essentially pro-life (very conservative of me eh?) - but it is an acknowledgement that this is a decision that the whole of society must make; it is not about individuals chosing life. It is about community reforming to a point where judgement falls away in the face of love. Not free love but the gritty real love of recognising someone's intrinsic worth beyond the mistakes they make. The gritty of love of living out the commitment to the unborn child that so many profess but when it comes to support of the mother shy away from. I applaud centres which offer all sides of the argument and gather volunteers that say we will stand with you in the hour of your need and I pray that those who walk in open protest at abortion do so in love and not judgement and become part of the solution and not the problem.

I am not for changing the law in the UK or anywhere else at the moment not beacuse I believe that abortion is right but because I think the law is a lapdog. I think it is in "Much Ado About Nothing" that one of Shakespeare's characters says that the law is an ass - it could have been Falstaff in a history play- , for me this works at two levels, the first level is that of a fool. For the scripting it works, the law is an ass and that is the affront to the law which the character wishes to invoke but I think the law is an ass because it is a beast of burden. The law changes nothing, I argued this with L and she sited William Wilberforce's struggle against slavery. Wilberforce pushed through a law that changed the face of a race....or did he? I am not arguing that William Wilberforce's contribution made slavery an abhorrent thing in society, I am arguing that the law was the lapdog to that social change. Wilberforce made himself sick in the pursuit of this counter cultural ideal. He triumphed and the world we know today where Obama has become president owes much to Wilberforce. The law did not change what society did it reflected it, Wilberforce changed society's perception not the law. The law is that beast of burden that carries the aspirations of a society that they might live in a world of moral agreement, not necessarily a state of heightened moral awareness and perfection but perhaps an agreed state of moral decline. Rather bleak eh? I think not i think it put's the challenge on those who care to find constructive ways of changing society and not punitive ones. If the law changes before society does we only create criminals; I think this is the prevalent state of UK politics and law making at the moment and it may reflect the rest of the western world. The law has become arrogant and thought that itself not the ass of burden but a thoroughbred stallion capable of carrying humanity, and we have come to believe it. Rise up the social transformers, that want society to change through love understanding and empathy. Rise up those would have righteous anger like Wilberforce. Those who can deliver a loving rebuke and then cradle those they have rebuked and offer them support and caring in walking out the conviction of that rebuke; stand up! The law IS an ass let us not entrust our future to a beast of burden but take it upon our own hands with integrity, dignity and urgent desire to society healed from within. Let's do it in love and not in judgment, the law brings only judgement.

Times run away

Isn't it funny how time runs away for you, good times, bad times, eventually they run away. I heard a story about King Solomon asking the Court Jeweller to fashion the most beautiful ring in the world for his bride to be. The Jeweller was petrifed when making the ring, afterall when Solomon was surrounded by huge beautiful palaces how could he create something to trump them.....this was only the half of it, when he returned Solomon asks him to go away andengrave an eternal truth in it. The Jeweller is away for a year before returning and in the ring is written

"this too shall pass"

True of kings and peasants good times and bad all shall pass and even memories will fade, I have often wondered how many films have been made that you now can't see, miles of celluloid or video or megabytes of digital data will be toiled over and not last a century, how many more writers were about at Shakespeare's time making a living that we now don't know. It gets me to thinking is art and music an attempt to express a culture, capture a groundswell for posterity or an attempt to move it on and if it is to move it on does art, if not the artist, embrace only the zeitgeist of tomorrow. Is art like an insecure and greedy child always wanting the next best thing never truly cherishing the gift of today? CHERISH!!!!! What do we truly cherish in art....nothing surely it seems now to be about the abandonment of the last expression? Are modern artists anti artists? Destroying the last muse and creating the new? Banksy's petshop overwriting the wall painting in urban centres? Does that make all art Graffitti; over writing the last artist asserting it's existence as part of a legacy of vain destruction and self destruction?

How many miles of film goes unwatched every year.....I want to know.

Gay Bishops & Cowboys

Yeah, all very random but stuff that I have thought about at one point or another today. Gay bishops was a chat with J over Chai Latte at Starbucks not far from Borough Market. Borough Market like many of the great markets of London is going the way of a tourist attraction and twenty five minute queue's for coffee just weren't our thing so it was Starbucks not Monmouth's. J is just back from Africa so we chewed the fat abit - I miss Africa alot so it was cool to talk. Somehow we got on to gay clergy, we are both Bible believeing christians and there are plenty of views about; after some bishops from Africa boycotted the Arch Bishop of Canterbury's summer conference. No one seems quite sure if there should be gay clergy or not. This is something the church can tie itself in a knot over...one of several things... to me it is simple Leviticus 18:22 (don't sleep with a man as you do a woman - look it up to check I ain't lying)...does this mean I am anti gay clergy....well er no...not entirely. I mean to say I don't think God is thrilled about gay clergy, in the same way he isn't happy a bout clergy who lie, cheat steal. covet, are prideful. I can't work out why we have singled out this one thing that clergy should not be, I am totally on the train that being gay does not glorify God but nor does putting your congregation before your wife.

.......where is he going with this......

Every clergyman is human, they will sin, that is the nature of it, they are forgiven and that is not mine to take away - so how does it work......well I guess it is like teaching dance classes if you don't know the steps how can you teach the dance. Now you may know the Tango but not the Foxtrot and that would mean you could teach one and not the other but you can't be the principal of a dance school and look to teach the foxtrot with the wrong steps, you have to find someone who can teach the steps right and acknowledge that you can't. I guess that is how I see it with the clergy, as long as you are up there acknowledging that you're not dancing the steps in the book and you keep trying to learn the right steps and you have someone competent to teach the right steps then it may just perhaps all work out. My wise wife makes the point that this is something we haven't seen, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't happen let's not be polarized about this let's be honest we are all work in progress and let's apply this to every sin in the book not just the one's we don't find socially acceptable.




Oh and the cowboy thing......er well I was just thinking how much I love the scene in movies where the cowboy just slips his rifle back into the sleeve behind his saddle and rides of into the sunset, it's just the coolest..........doesn't it just make you want to jump on a horse and hit the road?...... No .....oh .....er well it's just me then. Well I can't be serious about everything.

New York New York & America I think I love You

Firstly the whole logging on to blog just jumps on the rythms of my mind, I mean it is so counter the flow of conciousness which spurs my creative that I am sometimes just chasing my tail to get back where I was....but for New York New York.

I never heard Alistair Cooke, the famous BBC journalist who commented on Americana over many years from his window on the world which I believe was several storeys up in New York. I think may have heard a few dulcet tones as he retired. I did wonder how someone could fall in love with a country like America,

......Laura arrives home and wants to talk.....you see if your writing in a book people leave you to write but IT doesn't have the gravitas of pencil and paper. Byron wasn't on line, Yeats never worried about his connection dropping out, Kerouac was all about dropping out in the beat generation.

So where was I on New York, I wondered how someone could fall so in love with a country like America, but as I watched Griff Rhys Jones in NYC I was intrigued by the place. I realise all I have is Hollywood and second hand accounts and just bad examples. New York seemed multi-cultural and as the montage layered jazz over melting New York sunsets, bridges silhouetted, pinks and oranges fading behind a sky line starting to sparkle. I thought I want to be there, I started to remember that the beginning of all my journeys was in New York, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty setting out on the epic OnThe Road. My trips to Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe all started in New York. I love America, to love isn't always to like and I think that is true whether it is about loving your wife, your job, your favourite food or a country. Love is to recognise it for it's intrinsic value, accept its faults.....maybe even cherish them.... but to always see all that it, or they, can be. America....I think I love you.

A little history of blogging for the man behind the moustache.

Quite frankly blogging has been something that appealed but was actually quite alot of effort I had things to do and places to see or vice versa. In reality that was alot of tosh...yes I used the word tosh. I had some stuff to do and in reality I often wanted to head back to the same old places....Acton Villas and the like and really had i recorded some of it, it would championed the fictional persona that I drivelled into and out of in the blogs. So now The Man Behind The Moustache (TMBTM)...why the man behind the moustache...... a skeggies off look at some of the hilarity, creativity, doubt, discernment and deity that goes on in my little head. Quite frankly I love words and the chance to write words like scurrilous and ribaldry in a sentence and to expand my powers of articulation quite appeals. Do nudge me when I go quiet, the mind is rarely becalmed but the old digits sometimes can be.