Weblog of a Country Priest

So "they" have won the first skirmish.  ID cards are approved by the political sheep.  How long before each new born child is indelibly marked with the state's mark of ownership? Perhaps it could be 666?

Or it might be a series of numbers on the inside wrist surrounded with a circle of stars on a blue background.

Still salvation might lie in the British Government's total inablity to get any computer system up, running and delivering what it's supposed to deliver.

Heigh-ho.  The scriptures have something to say about numbering and counting people.

 

The proposed ID card will "only cost" about £30 (on top of the prior purchase of a passport - for which a personal interview, iris measurement, fingerprinting, whatever else, and another £68 - plus will be a prior requirement) says Mr. Blair today.

What planet are these politicians on?

Mr. Mandelson and Mr. Blunkett with their severence pay might be able to pay, but what about those on the minimum wage, the unemployed, those on the £78 per week state pension, and underage family members?

My sister comes to Norfolk for her holiday tomorrow.  As always, the rain has come too.

It is a family  joke that this happens every time her holiday begins.

After a number of weeks without any rain at all, and with brilliant sunshine for the last two weeks, it is most welcome.

The Book of Common Prayer 1662 contains that most religiously-unpolitically thing, a prayer for rain.  As if God would be interested in, or bother to exercise His control over creation in such a way.

Well, I think he would and does, so thank God for this rain.

 

I understand that God made, loves and takes care of all that is, including you and me.

Everyone has access to being, to being loved and being taken care of.

This being in the love and care of God is a gift from Him to us.

Whatever is necessary to us being in this relationship has been accomplished by God without our  aid.  We depend on Him, He does not depend on us.

Each of us has an alloted place and task in His economy.

No one is more important than another.

Religious and non-religious alike He asks us to love Him, and love each other as we love ourselves.

For me this is summed up in the life, death, resurrection, ascension and promised return of Jesus of Nazareth, the man in whom God is made most visible to all who will see.

I said I would be more regular in blogging but the beloved wanted the carpet cleaned, and the fax refused to work, etc., etc., and she has just got the sunbed out for the first time this year - yes you've guessed it - it's raining.

However the new extendable mop to clean the bathroom tiles has been delivered.  Now we can be squeeky clean.

The weather is hot and humid so the grass has decided to grow at a great rate which means - yes - more mowing.

Tea-time approaches I must hurry.

Its official Ascot's gone to York.  How?  Wimbledon hyperbole is pouring out of the telly.  England have won a cricket match, and the weather forecasters are promising high temperatures with dry conditions - but not yet.

The cloud is as thick as ever over east Norfolk, rain is promised tomorrow, the end of the season sales are on at the Co-op, and every entrance to the town has major roadworks all scheduled to finish at the start of the new school year in September.

However all the late spring flowers are magnificent,  and you can be nearer to God's heart in the garden than anywhere else in earth.

One last thought,  now Mary Warnock has realised the errors of her theories over children with special needs,  and the persecution of Michael Jackson has ended,  both with assistance from those possessed of ordinary common-sense,  may be, those who have made their only living from slavishly following transistory fashionable theories about what constitutes the proper treatment of children and their needs,  and insisting that everyone else follows suit, will realise that they don't actually have a right to practise social engineering on the rest of us!

I have just watched Rolf Harris's Art Show, and the three very different artists and their portraits of Jennifer Saunder's husband.  He being a comic chose the portrait that depicted him as such.

The very surreal one he liked, but was too far off his taste to be picked - he described it as a rubber fetishist's nightmare; the absolutely accurate (even to the lack of  a six-pack ) was perhaps too realistic.

It all touched a nerve.  I don't like my photograph being taken.  Others feel that some pictures are not what they really are.

Maybe that's how God feels about our representation of what he has created in His image.  We don't represent Him very well.

 

The builders and painters have been here for getting on for 3 weeks now and the language should be blue.

We've had to pull the plug on the electricians (yes, a pun) until later in the year.

However, this might give me time to blog, so watch this space.

It's always the unexpected that changes things.

On Tuesday (after the Bank Holiday) the builder's carpenter arrived to put wind braces across the inside of the roof timbers.  To do this he cleared out all the stuff that had been put there seven years ago on moving in - just for the time being you understand.

As we had been expecting painters to work on the outside we had to abandon our plans and sort it all out.  This has taken the rest of the week.

We're knackered.