Simon Foulkes' Blog

thanks to Andrew Marvell

2011-12-21T18:36:00.001Z

Talking to Ike reminded me of this:

What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine	35
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.	40

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,	45
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that 's made
To a green thought in a green shade HenryValensi+GreenSymphony+1935

2011-12-19T16:42:00.001Z

“When he was thrown into a stable, and placed in a manger, and a lodging refused him among men, it was that heaven might be opened to us, not as a temporary lodging, but as our eternal country and inheritance, and that angels might receive us into their abode.”
John Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists, on Luke 2:1-7

2011-12-18T15:51:00.001Z

David Cameron has declared that "Britain is a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so", in a speech to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/16/cameron-king-james-bible-anniversary?newsfeed=true). Britain - in my memory of growing up in the 60s and 70s - certainly WAS a country where we seemed to live by a kind of sub-Christian moral code: there was a grester feeling that people cared about other people, and an expectation that such an attitude was valued and correct. To this day I'm grateful for a number of people who helped me and showed an interest when they really didn't have to. On the other hand, many fear that an attempt to talk about morality would be a disguise for an ecclesiastical power-grab (http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/nelson-jones/2011/12/religion-christmas-dawkins). But, after riots, under a regime that seems to encourage hopelessness, in a week when an official report highlighted the lack of care for dementia sufferers, can we doubt that something is lacking in the way we nurture expectations in contemporary Britain (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8960735/Dementia-care-quality-report-is-shocking.html)? And might not taking some more informed notice of Jesus - with or without the trappings of institutionalised religion - be a rational response?

Generation A by Douglas Coupland

2011-05-10T22:03:00.000+01:00

I only borrowed this book on chance sight at the library, but it hooked me and I've read it in 4 days. Connects five people through the power of their stories in a world where bees are extinct... does this say something about the power of the parable?Certainly it wants to speak of the power of imaginatiuon to change lives and the world. In a very Coupland way. Of course!

Anyway, well worth a read.

A Poem

2011-05-06T20:27:00.000+01:00

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

and a photo from Littlestone beach:

Death of Bin Laden

2011-05-03T08:48:00.000+01:00

I pretty much agree with Nick Baines. Follow this link.

Nothing really deals with the outrage of watching nearly 3000 murders on live TV. One man's death doesn't seem like the definition of justice, in any case I am opposed to the death penalty.Capture and trial would have been preferable.

None of this seems likely to bring peace - that has to be based on love and respect.

Finishing things

2011-04-25T13:05:00.001+01:00

Having had an active Easter weekend with many moments to reflect on the stupendous marvel of God's love in the life of Jesus, as well as enjoy family gatherings and long hours in the sunshine on the patio -

I notice I have finished reading three books simultaneously, and each one is worthy of a recommendation.
1. Brighton Rock - an old favourite - Catholic noir of noir, with those wonderful images scattered as allegory: of the sea shifting under the piles of the pier in the thunderstorm, "hell lay about him in his infancy", and the darkest of endings - truly a parable of religious despair in Greeneland.

2. A Visit from the Good Squad (Jennifer Egan) - newly published and ( can I also recommend this) borrowed via Kent Libraries brilliant computer system. Follows my continuing love affair with the American novel that Richard Ford reignited a couple of years ago - dark, touching, funny: I'd buy it if I had the shelf-space and I probably will buy it and reread it some time.

3. Love Wins by Rob Bell - lent to me by a new colleague - riveting, refreshing, controversial, skating on some thin ice about universalism but I was happy to be caught in the slipstream - says some necessary things, I guess even more necessary in the US context - in the end I think he does maintain a case for the essential need to make a response of trust to Christ, but many will be uncomfortable with it.

And did those feet...

2011-04-10T21:01:00.001+01:00

Sometimes you finish a book, having been careful to read it thoroughly, and immediately know you could start again and find something fresh on every page. So it is with Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem". Immense research, judicious wit, thought-provoking: a hugely enjoyable history. In some ways partial, in others trying a little too hard to lean to the other side, but in every way worth reading. I saw a middle-eastern businessman reading a copy on the Tube, we chanced to walk together to the escalator, and I said 'it's a good book'. 'A tremendous book', he replied. I wish I knew who he was.

A day on the Railway

2011-03-06T07:22:00.000Z

picture from facebook.
it was a fun way to spend a Saturday.

A surprise from Pound

2011-02-17T21:27:00.000Z

Ezra Pound - Ballad of the Goodly Fere

Simon Zelotes speaking after the Crucifixion.
Fere=Mate, Companion.

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O' ships and the open sea.

When they came wi' a host to take Our Man
His smile was good to see,
"First let these go!" quo' our Goodly Fere,
"Or I'll see ye damned," says he.

Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears
And the scorn of his laugh rang free,
"Why took ye not me when I walked about
Alone in the town?" says he.

Oh we drank his "Hale" in the good red wine
When we last made company,
No capon priest was the Goodly Fere
But a man o' men was he.

I ha' seen him drive a hundred men
Wi' a bundle o' cords swung free,
That they took the high and holy house
For their pawn and treasury.

They'll no' get him a' in a book I think
Though they write it cunningly;
No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere
But aye loved the open sea.

If they think they ha' snared our Goodly Fere
They are fools to the last degree.
"I'll go to the feast," quo' our Goodly Fere,
"Though I go to the gallows tree."

"Ye ha' seen me heal the lame and blind,
And wake the dead," says he,
"Ye shall see one thing to master all:
'Tis how a brave man dies on the tree."

A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us his brothers be.
I ha' seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.

He cried no cry when they drave the nails
And the blood gushed hot and free,
The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue
But never a cry cried he.

I ha' seen him cow a thousand men
On the hills o' Galilee,
They whined as he walked out calm between,
Wi' his eyes like the grey o' the sea,

Like the sea that brooks no voyaging
With the winds unleashed and free,
Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret
Wi' twey words spoke' suddently.

A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea,
If they think they ha' slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.

I ha' seen him eat o' the honey-comb
Sin' they nailed him to the tree.

It went quiet...

2011-02-15T19:41:00.000Z

The blog went quiet because life went hectic! Not only did I start a new job and Ike start a new school, there';s been commuting to contend with and the continuing problem with my eye. Anne's expecting a major operation on 11th March if not before - all in all, pretty 'full-on'.

So - don't expect too many deep thoughts or massive reading (though we have discovered the detective novels of Jim Kelly and I have bought a volume of Ezra Pound's poems, always a challenge. Don't really know why I did that! Looking forward to getting to grips with some later tonight).

BUT, illnesses aside, it's been a great month and the new job has been fascinating. Today we had a conference for Headteachers, Chairs of Governors, and Incumbents looking at Academy status for Church Schools, with a speaker from the DfE and another from National Society. Bishop Trevor also spoke very well indeed. I'll refrain from any value-giving comments but let's just say it was fascinating and has stimulated much thinking even in the few hours since we all packed up at St Mary Bredin (excellent venue, by the way).

Can't find a very apposite Ezra Pound quote at short notice but here's a lovely image from his poem CINO:

"I will sing of the white birds
In the blue waters of heaven,
The clouds that are spray to its sea".

Busy times

2011-01-19T17:13:00.000Z

Apologies for not blogging a Happy New Year and posting something. But it's been a busy time: we've moved house, I've had my last Sunday in Bethersden and High Halden (more below), and I've begiun to do a few days in my new job. But I've had a major hassle of a flare-up of uveitis in my right eye (a by-product of my old ankylosing spondylitis) and it's not responding yet to treatment. Today I had an injection in my eye! And that's slowed me down a bit. (Though not literally as I thank my friends with the Jaguar and the Merc sports cars who have been running me up and down to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford).

But Bethersden and High Halden were lovely - our farewell 'do' was pitched just right, and they said many affirming things about equipping the saints there of their works of service; and I was able to make my usual, but still sincere quip, about the minister's prime role being to make themselves redundant.

Pace of reading has slowed, and I'm nearly finished with Blair - I think the book has become a bit more focussed and appealing towards the end of his Prime-Ministership.

Blair

2010-12-30T21:38:00.001Z

One (kind!!) friend gave me Tony Blair's 'A Journey' for Christmas. I'm reading it - I'd never have bought it. It's a book which is both engrossing and offputting at the same time. There is an awful lot of repetitious waffle in it, but it has the authentic tone of the man, and one can't help feeling he's really put pen to paper, however much it probably is ghost-written. It is, of course, massively self-justifying but also occasionally (disarmingly) honest(-sounding).

I find myself asking, have I misjudged this man? I honestly had got to the point where I couldn't bear the sight or sound of him. I feel, even just looking at the photo on the cover, he must have a screw loose to allow such a disconcertingly unnatural image to appear on his autobiography. He is worrying, when you do know something about the subject, for example what he says about the railways post-Hatfield as being in effect too risk-verse for his assessment of the political situation (not a direct quote - my summary) makes the blood run cold.

But he is effective, and passionate, and rational, about his own great cause - modernisation; he is engaging about his mistakes (e.g. the move to ban foxhunting); he is analytical and probing about issues he encounters, e.g. the relationship between Islam and Christianity prior to 9/11. That's as far as I've got.

A mystery wrapped in an enigma?