What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Guest Post: Alan McManus on The Feast of St Francis

    The Feast of St Francis is increasingly being marked in the church these days, most obviously by services for the blessing of animals. St Mary’s will be having just such a service on Sunday afternoon at 2.30 pm. However, Francis is about a good deal more than animal blessings. In this guest post, Dr Alan McManus reflects on the challenges that Francis presents to us as we celebrate his legacy on this his feast day. Alan is the author of, Alchemy at the Chalkface: Pirsig, Pedagogy and the Metaphysics of Quality, on www.robertpirsig.org  and, Only Say The Word: Affirming Gay and Lesbian Love, forthcoming from Circle Books. He runs Alchemical Life Coaching and is the animating force behind Tent City Theatre Company, both based in Glasgow. Alan attends St Mary’s Cathedral.

    Did you see the news last week about the young Frenchman, the MIT (LSE?) drop-out who publicly kissed a paedophile priest, liberated twenty beagles from an in-vivo tobacco testing lab and then forced his way into the Stock Exchange – was it Wall St? the Bourse? – stripped off his clothes and left them at the feet of his father?

    It may have been the son of a Cathar cloth merchant, a leper, a lion with a thorn in its paw and a market square in 12th century Umbria. I’m hazy on the details. Anyway, it was big. Unofficial Church sources say it’s “too politically sensitive to touch” but local people have reacted positively and are putting up bird baths in his honour.

    Francesco, the ‘Frenchman’, was nothing if not theatrical. Which is one of the reasons why I love him and possibly one of the reasons why, twenty years ago, I spent a year as a Franciscan ‘postulant’ and novice. Although I didn’t know it at the time. What attracted me then was his simplicity, his spontaneity and his spirituality of identification with the poor.

    The poor (like schalmtz) will be with us always. We had that on good authority 2,000 years ago and it’s one prediction that has stood the test of time.

    (more…)

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4 responses to “Book Review”

  1. Peter O Avatar
    Peter O

    I think you miss the point of the book Kelvin. It’s meant to be a guide to listening to *all* sides of the debate, not just those you agree with. That’s what makes the last section so good, because it forces us to deal realistically not just with the genuine evidence on the causality of homosexuality, but also the fact that some people *do* see remarkable change in their sexual orientation (and that others don’t).

    I wrote my own review here.

    Reply
  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    We were not called by the last Lambeth Conference to listen to all sides in the debate.

    Reply
  3. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    Ruth Gledhill has posted a PDF of the whole thing, for those interested:
    http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/files/Final.pdf

    Reply
  4. Rosemary Avatar
    Rosemary

    I’ve now read the ‘scientific’ section – thanks for the link ryan – and I thought it was mixed. I thought Glynn Harrison made a serious attempt at dispassion. I think it is a fair point that any person must decide their own priorities, and the final argument must be between theologies, not sciences. I was not so impressed by David de Pomerai – though one could hardly quarrel with his conclusion that we simply do not know exactly what makes one person homosexual and the next heterosexual. However his whole argument was bedevilled by assumptions that, e.g. homosexual men will be more effeminate than straight ones. Anecdotal evidence instantly produces examples where it is the straight male siblings who are drama queens and run from spiders, while gay ones take it all in their stride.

    It must be accepted that both gay and straight people live with voluntary or enforced celibacy with no ill effects – and that some people can change their sexual orientation and live happily with the change. What I found truly heart rending were the desperate attempts and the high cost to those who actually did succeed in changing orientation – however much Harrison denies the skin colour analogy, it reminded me painfully of those endless jars of skin lightener which encrust Sri Lankan chemists, where beauty is measured in skin tone. Because whether or not genetic, orientation is not a simple free choice. But I suppose the answer would be: ‘And what is?’

    The final point, though, is always the same. Is Christianity a religion of an authoritative book, or an authoritative Person?

    Reply

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