The Green Balloon Club, for the uninitiated, is a nature programme on the fabulous CBeebies channel. They usually talk about bird feeders and minibeasts, and leaves, and whatnot, and then they sing a song.  Daisy loves it, so we generally make a point of watching it.  Today, however, they broke with the entire format in order to tell the story of the Nativity.  It wasn’t entirely faithful – it was rather skewed towards excessive mention of the animals involved (and I’ve never seen a rabbit in the stable before!), and the small matter of WHY the baby was special, that he was, in fact, the Son of God sent to save humanity from its own wickedness, was airbrushed out entirely, but nevertheless, there was Mary and Joseph, an angel, some shepherds, some kings, gold, frankincense, myrrh, and a general sense that the story was the reason for the presents under the tree.  I was most impressed.

I think, on balance, I’d have liked the Son of God bit, even if it was qualified with “Christians believe that…”  Still, after an afternoon of the Grinch, it was a refreshing change.

On Wednesday, our bible study group decided to plan to be spontaneous on the fifth Sunday afternoon of any month with five Sundays in it…

*snigger*

Inside the Catholic Cathedral

Today, we visited the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. I’m always struck, when I go in, by how I don’t hate it nearly as much as I feel like I ought to. It’s a concrete sixties monstrosity, which was falling down by the mid-eighties, and so isn’t even fit for purpose. The corrosion of the bells above the main door has stained the concrete green, in a way that they’ve only partially managed to clean off in the recent renovations, and as a piece of architecture, it seems forever stranded in a state of just-missing.

That’s what I think when I’m sitting here, postulating. When I’m actually there, though, I love it. It’s so calm, so peaceful, and so focussed on God. I love that all the windows are dark blue and purple, giving it a twilight quality even at 1.30pm. I love the big crown of thorns sculpture that dangles over the altar (I wanted to say communion table – I’m such a non-conformist protestant). I love the stations of the cross around the outside edge, and all the little chapels dedicated to this and that. Mostly, though, I love the people. All the staff, even the tour guides and people, just seem to radiate this spirituality that really touches me. A foreign nun, being given a guided tour by one of the staff, stopped to take photos of Daisy in one of the chapels (I let her – she’s a nun, and anyway, Daisy’s cute), then gave her a blessing. I don’t even know what that means, but I know that it’s the sort of thing we don’t do enough of in my church tradition. And I know Jesus did it, so it can only be good.

Inside the Anglican Cathedral

I find the place much more of a spiritual experience, even on a Saturday afternoon when they’re moving the furniture round for some kind of chamber orchestra to play, than I’ve ever found the Anglican cathedral to be. That’s impressive, don’t get me wrong. It’s the biggest protestant cathedral in Europe, it’s impressive on sheer scale, but it’s only like a incomprehensibly large parish church. With a cafe. And being there feels more like visiting a building, and less like calling in on God.

And coming on the back of many generations of protestant snobbery, that’s saying something.

I’m currently engaged in trying to get a lock-down on The Plan for Christmas. Boxing Day is officially locked – we’re spending the day with Kevin’s sister and her family, and the evening at my Grandma’s party, assuming it occurs, which it has every year since about 1932. We think that Christmas day is also locked, now, though that won’t seem quite as certain until the plan has had a few days to set, so to speak.

Christmas Eve has a plan pencilled in, but is subject to confirmation from variety of sources, one of which, I’ve just realised, is our church – Christmas Eve this year is also Christmas Sunday, and since we’ve not been in our current church for all that long, we don’t have a clear sense of how to reinterpret their activities of last Christmas, in predicting their activities for this one.

I have considered ringing the pastor-chap, and demanding he commit to something, but he’s very, very, very unlikely to have even thought about it, I should have thought. I hope he thinks about it soon, though, because if Christmas Eve is punctuated by a 4pm Carol Service Followed By Buffet Supper, as Christmas Sunday was last year, the 1 element of what we are currently calling Plan C1 may be entirely scuppered.

I know you all think I’m mad, but at some point in the next ten weeks there is an inevitable period of stress and agitation, while we all work out who will be where, when and with whom, over the Christmas period. Once the plan is settled, the stress oozes out of it, and it really makes precious little difference whether we go through that process now, or in nine and a half weeks’ time. The advantages of doing it now are twofold: 1) I’m already thinking about it, therefore am already stressed, so the sooner I move through that to a position of lock-down, the better I’ll feel; 2) The sooner we have the locked-down plan, the sooner we can make all of the other plans – what food to buy, whether we need to borrow a bigger table, etc, etc.

I sometimes envy the people whose relatives live too far apart for them to reasonably travel from one to the other during Christmas – it must simplify the military operation significantly.