What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • World AIDS Day 2014

    Here’s the final video in the series of conversations that I’ve been having with Marion Chatterley the Chaplain at Waverley Care.

    World AIDS Day video 2014 from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

    In this video, the tables are turned and Marion gets to ask me the questions.

    She starts by asking me why churches don’t seem interested in HIV AIDS issues during most of the year. We talk about people in pews and pulpits who are themselves living with HIV.

    We talk about why there’s stigma around HIV and return to the connection between what the churches and their leaders have been saying about marriage and keeping people safe from HIV.

    I remind Marion that there’s only a few hundred yards of Scottish streets where gay people might feel comfortable holding hands and talk about why relationships are still frightening and still being hidden because churches are not challenging discrimination and are indeed promoting it by their language around sexuality.

    We talk about the phrase “Well, it isn’t living up to God’s ideal” and the way that my denomination is failing me as a priest.

    We talk about early HIV prevention campaigns and what the churches might be saying now. We also talk about the churches’ obsession with acts and bodies and how I think that while current policies from church leaders focussing entirely on the sexual element of relationships remain then the devil will go on winning.

    We return to the theme of healthy relationships that has come up in each of the videos, including negotiation in relationships and how to find someone you can stay safe with.

    The other conversations can be seen below.
    (more…)

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4 responses to “Sunday's Lament”

  1. chris Avatar
    chris

    As I read that lament on Sunday, I was singing inside my head the wonderful Tomkins’ setting of the lament. As an alto, I could be accused of bias – the suspensions between the two alto parts are hair-raising in their beauty – but to me nothing can match it. You can hear it here

    Reply
  2. RosemaryHannah Avatar
    RosemaryHannah

    Oh dear me, yes. Let’s all wear pink and have a celebration.

    Your video camera however does not let one get anything like the quality of the voice in space experience of last Sunday. And I write as one not musical.

    Reply
  3. RosemaryHannah Avatar
    RosemaryHannah

    I think, too, it always would work best for a single male voice, because it is so heavily tied to a single male figure. It is superb writing, superbly put to music.

    I don’t want to ‘dis’ your only-too-correct comments on the space between our understanding and that of the Iron age. But I think that two things may offer a little light on how and why we read the succession narrative.

    The first is that it is an outstanding piece of writing by any standards at all. The terrible attempt by the lectionary to cut it on Sunday just pointed that up (not the first time I’ve wondered what the editors of it thought they were doing). Good story has its own power.

    Secondly, one has to ask who commissioned this account and why. I think the answer has to be Solomon’s court, as ’twere – thus not only does one have to explain why Solomon succeeded one also has to paint a very flawed but still in some ways great David. A man one might be glad to have as a father, and a man who it would be possible to offer a better alternative to. The last King, if a relative, should neither be too good or too bad. QED.

    Reply
  4. revruth Avatar
    revruth

    Oh my word! Why have I never heard this before? It is glorious and I am in love with it. There is absolutely nothing like a good lament. Dido’s Lament had better look out.

    Reply

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