What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Predictions for 2014

    1. Remember those people who used to say, “But what is a blog…?” Well this year you are going to be hearing them say, “But what is a mooc…?”
    2. Gay men are going to start shaving again. Now that so many straight men have bought into the idea that beards are hip, it is time to mess with their fashion sense again. Consider this the memo. (Next year, the end of tattoos!)
    3. Church of Scotland General Assembly will be unable to affirm last year’s compromise on a local option for ministers who happen to be gay.
    4. More revelations relating to Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien.
    5. Number of active bloggers decreases. Influence of those still blogging increases.
    6. The real purpose of the Pilling Report will be revealed with hindsight as evangelicals begin to argue about its contents. (May take a couple of years, but trust me on this one). Initially this will be in private – increasingly in public. Having been the great unifying factor for Evangelicals for the last 10 years, attitudes to gay people will become the source of greatest disunity amongst Evangelicals for the next decade. Unappealing and unsatisfying as it is, Pilling is a watershed – it was never designed to court liberal opinion so we might as well stop moaning about it. It was designed to divide evangelical opinion and is going to be jolly successful.
    7. The Independence Referendum will be lost here in Scotland but alas, not by enough to shut everyone up.
    8. Such terrible statistics in the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway that we lose at least 4 seats on General Synod.
    9. Lord Carey will say that Christians are being persecuted in the UK, that the church is dying out or that the sky is going to fall in, and will say it at the most unhelpful time possible – probably around one of the English General Synods or Easter.
    10. We will hear about our first UK gay divorce.

    Trends to watch

    • Continued meltdown of the Church of Scotland. Ceasing to be a national church before our very eyes.
    • Internet increasingly rewards those who know how to manipulate images.
    • Economic polarization of the UK continues.

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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