O Little Town Of Bethlehem

[poliphilo]

I have sympathy with the vicar who decided he didn't want to be singing "O, Little Town of Bethlehem" this year. He'd been to the real Bethlehem, seen what a shit-hole it is, got involved with the politics- and couldn't square his experience with the fantasy version in the carol. 

"How still we see thee lie"? Actually, no. 

It's the job of a priest to point this sort of thing out.

Christianity isn't just bubblebath for the soul.  There's also the social gospel.

Myth and ethics: a powerful- and volatile-  combination. 

Besides, there are plenty more carols to chose from.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I agree. I wouldn't have "banned" the carol myself.

But I do wonder whether Bethlehem then was all that different from how it is now. Judaea was, after all, under Roman occupation.

The Bethlehem in the carol is a mythical town in a mythical landscape.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a tale with a strong mythical component...

I don't know. I am just reminded of the arguments I had in Catholic school with the teachers there about whether Catholicism should take social action. I was arguing against priests getting political in the homily because it destroyed the sense of mythic power of the mass by interrupting it with reality. Which is not to say that priests can't become activists, I suppose... but that they should recall that myth and ritual, and their ability to elevate the spirit and one's sense of one's own life's significance, is in itself a great power, and one that we are losing access to as modern skepticism and cynicism removes it from the realm of the "thinking" person.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I trained for the (Anglican) priesthood at a time when everything was geared towards stripping the mystery out of ritual and making it more accessible. We jettisoned our lovely old services in Tudor English and turned the mass into a sort of holiday-camp singalong- only without the fun. We were driven by a fanatical belief in the rightness- the inevitability- of all this reform- and we were terribly, terribly wrong.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I miss the mass in Latin, the elevation of it to something outside the norm: like poetry, the mass in Latin communicated before it was understood. And I despise the new American habit of building churches that look like auto dealerships. There is no sense of the numinous, the mysterious or the divine about any of it... it's very workaday human.

I don't go to God for that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The 20th century was seriously unfriendly to organised religion and its mysteries. The western Churches tried to accomodate themselves to the prevailing mood- and ended up impoverished.

Sometimes I dream of being a country parson, reading my services from Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer, Sunday by Sunday, in my tiny, (unheated) 11th century church.

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be the life? To be a parson the way Herbert was?

upasaka once worked for a Lutheran church that maintained their original building as a historic site. No heat, no artificial light, and a hand-pumped small pipe organ. (No loo, either, I think.) I have a photo somewhere of my stepdaughter at the age of about ten, leaning on the bellows during a concert we gave there. She did a fine job as the blower.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The hero of Parade's End (the novel I've just been reading)- a soldier serving at the front in WW1- has a persistent fantasy about taking holy orders and retiring to a country parish- preferably George Herbert's Bemerton. I really can't think of a more attractive life.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

And thus is paved the road to Hell - or at least irrelevancy.

I was raised United Methodist, even groomed for the clergy at one point, but abandoned them for the Episcopal Church. Then the Episcopalians, in that same sense of tone-deaf and misguided reform, forced "Rite 2" on us by fiat.

I think I'm a half-assed Chan Buddhist these days. I did a stint in the Gnostic Catholic Church, in which I was elevated to the clergy, but it emerged that their leadership were a bunch of clueless wankers as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the churches panicked. They saw they were losing ground- and decided the way to win people back was to dumb things down. It was the wrong decision.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

If Graves is to be believed - and too often he isn't - Bethlehem has always been a shit-hole. He pokes fun at it in King Jesus, as I recall.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love Graves- a very fine poet- and very silly man.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Graves is something of a guilty pleasure. I love his poetry. I love his novels. And I love his scholarship, which I enjoy knowing full well that a substantial portion of what he's feeding me is utter crap.