What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Guides and God

    So, am I all up in arms about Girl Guides dropping their promise to love [their] God[s]?

    No, I don’t think so. I suspect God can take it.

    This is what the Girl Guides used to promise:

    I Promise that I will do my best;
    To love my God,
    To serve my Queen and my Country,
    To help other people
    And
    To keep the Guide Law.

    Now they are going to say this:

    I promise that I will do my best:
    To be true to myself and develop my beliefs,
    To serve the Queen and my community, 
    and
    To keep the Guide Law.

    This doesn’t seem to me to be particularly troubling. It looks as though Guiding wants to be modern and inclusive. I’m just a little surprised they’ve kept the Queen in there which surely must exclude republicans.

    I don’t expect that Guiding will change significantly by changing that promise except to allow some girls to take part who might once have thought that it was not for them because they were not religious.

    The “self” has a complex relationship with religion. And Christianity is something of a mixed bag when it comes to the self. On the one hand it is all about losing your self and being lost in God and service of others. On the other, we are told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, which sounds a bit like a good starting place for a lot of modern therapy.

    “Unto thine own self be true” is an injunction that sometimes is wrongly attributed to the Bible. It isn’t, it is a misquote in any case and comes from Polonius speaking to Laertes in Hamlet: “This above all- to thine own self be true”.

    I think that God will survive the Guides’ change of wording and I hope that Guiding will flourish as a result of trying to keep up with the times.

    However, you can see an enormous shift in ethical thinking taking place between those two versions of the promise. The self is paramount in modern thinking. I think that’s an inevitable thing. I also think that it is a good thing. We’ve not thought nearly enough about the self in the past. Somewhere inside though, I find myself thinking that focusing on the self is not an absolute good. Some things within the self may not be good. Presumably the injunction to serve the community in the Guide promise is an attempt to mitigate that.

    If I’d been a Guide taking part in their big consultation about the promise, I’d probably have wanted something included about preventing harm. I think that’s a good direction to follow for ethical thinking and can cover the self and others.

    I like the new Rainbow promise though:

    I promise that I will do my best to think about my beliefs and to be kind and helpful.

    You can find the inside skinny on this from a Guide leader at Some Random Bint’s blog.

    , , , ,

6 responses to “Dialogue des Carmélites”

  1. Moyra Avatar
    Moyra

    Mmmmm now you’re giving me ideas!

    Reply
  2. Rev Ruth Avatar
    Rev Ruth

    Oooh, I have that on CD and haven’t listened to it for ages. Love that chopping sound!

    Reply
  3. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    I was told that some kind of scaffold had been rigged up offstage complete with block and tackle to provide the definitive thud as nun by nun, they fell to the floor.

    The stage was littered with dead nuns by the end.

    Reply
  4. david Avatar
    david

    It is a real shocker at the end. Liked Poulenc’s music, and the singing was good (Monday performance).

    Reply
  5. Jonathan Ensor Avatar
    Jonathan Ensor

    Attended the performance on Thursday. Particularly liked the voices of Mere Marie(Elysia Leech) and the Father Confessor(L’Aumonier), James Geer.

    Tim Dean led the performance admirably and there was hardly any poor casting although obviously with a student performance some were better suited to their roles than others.

    James Geer is to be singing the Male Chorus in Britten’s “The Rape of Lucretia” at Aldeburgh-a favourite opera of mine with the Pagan story offset and contrasted with the choruses commenting from a Christian perpective.

    It was good to see(at a distance) Donald Maxwell and Linda Ormiston in the foyer before the performance, both professional singers of some distinction. I remember them both from Good Shepherd Chorus performances at St Mary’s years ago.(Donald Maxwell sang the baritone part in a performance of Elgar’s “The Light of Life” and Linda Ormiston, who studied maths at Glasgow Uni and singing with the late Winifred Busfield who taught me, sang the alto part in Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody under Christopher Seaman.

    The staging of Dialogue des Carmelites was very effective and succeeded in conveying most of the pathos of the final scene without gross exhibitionism, which would have made it unbearable to watch.

    Reply
  6. John Woodhouse Avatar
    John Woodhouse

    It’s a great work – saw it at ENO.

    Reply

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