On-Going Creativity

At the moment I am putting some effort into new content in the website. The newest page, but intended to be one of a small series, is on liturgy and ceremonial, looking at principles of services involving something usually not seen in Unitarian circles - ceremonial features. But in there is a service structure as a framework for more or less of ceremonial. I am currently writing a page on liturgy and culture. These are in the Learning/ Religion pages.

The liturgy and ceremonial page projected me into writing a NoteTab clip so that I can produce text shadows of different colours. This is a text and HTML editor with clips that assist, but also take up time in construction. The main clipbooks I make are for HTML and Text Processing and these have been updated within the Learning/ ICT pages. They obviously relate to my computer so others would have to extract from them; in some cases I have not removed old website locations and the like. These are very frequently used. The processing clipbook includes how I assist myself searching for jobs and also in my voluntary activity in putting church music CDs together. As webpages in appearance they can be copied and entered into a clipbook via the Add from Clipboard feature in NoteTab itself.

I am resisting doing commentaries on the Anglican Church now; I'm not part of it and I only take an interest where it impacts on a more general population. It is clear that Justin Welby is of evangelical and charismatic origins; he is of a general 'the poor first' view although, apparently, his general stance supporting the recent bishops' letter against the cuts to welfare wasn't raised with Ian Duncan Smith, and he is a disappointment regarding gay inclusion (but no real surprise there surely). He has made a rod for his own back in starting a blog - albeit one with no responses allowed. I may do the odd fictional 'Church in England' entry, however.

The problem for politicians is when they start believing their own propaganda, so that the Liberal Democrats are milking the Eastleigh by-election for all that it can give and then start to think like their public narrative. Basically Nick Clegg is deluded: the loss of vote was consistent with national polls and will lead to huge losses especially in the north. They were lucky to stay in first position anyway. As for claims to social justice: not with the Bedroom Tax, mate, and your names are on it. The miserly 1% increase in benefits is lost simply via the new Council Tax demands being made, but the Bedroom Tax is utterly draconian and vicious and discriminatory. Marches are being organised; people are starting to react. You can't compromise with the Tories' hatred for the poor and 'undeserving' and this is what the Liberal Democrats have been doing, and no doubt will as the next Budget comes along.

Rather occasionally I am adding to a novel that has now got some volume (also via using Notetab). It is of a Church topic in a Lincolnshire seaside town of invented name and has duplicity at the heart of its adventures. It has a lead female character written in the first person, and she is a deacon to become a priest. She was accepted for training but only went forward after her husband did and was rejected. He ends up in a secular job that is about measuring the measurements (in ships etc.) and has an affair with an old school friend now at HQ in Harwich, which he visits. But the main character had a sexual encounter with her friend and two chaps, one now a private detective she meets again, used by the measurements firm to check its own integrity and she uses to expose her husband's affair. But she needs happy families to carry on through the priesting, and he is given his affair, and so she gets back with the now private detective and they look down the other two to resume their fun. They encounter duplicity through the clergy of all kinds and she herself is a complete liar when it comes to shove and push, plus she basically believes nothing in particular beyond the common narratives by which we understand reality. Her bishop and others are like government whips in the sense that they try to gather as much compromising information as they can on their staff to keep them putting on a public front. Unfortunately, she has fantasies about her own, though she and none of her colleagues like him and she is not sure if he is trying it on with her either. On top of all this about duplicity, the novel is rather explicit. I am not sure if any of the characters are to be redeemed in any sense, other than they are basically harmless types going through ordinary institutional life. It's just that they ought to put up a front. They are all good trinitarians and believe in heterosexual marriage. Except they are not and don't, in private practice. I include some sermons she makes that show how her extreme liberalism tries to look like more than it is, though few in the know are fooled. Her training vicar wants more but actually doesn't really care so long as she doesn't wreck his parish. The story has to have the four get together again, one of whom went off in personal guilt and also ended up being ordained (well to the north) and one who is purely secular (as indeed is the private detective). I'm trying to think how the charismatic one and she will argue, given that the charismatic one will herself not be what she seems. It's all good fun, but if I was more disciplined I'd write it more and faster.