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| | e-Pistle News from the University Church |
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Well. In search of the essence of humour (to develop my last sermon at SMV) I have begun to read Frank Skinner on the Road. It’s about Frank’s return after ten years in television to being a touring stand-up comedian. The Amazon Blurb says that it’s also ‘on the nature of comedy itself’, but I don’t think I’ve got to that bit yet. I remain hopeful because I’ve already hit some insightful bits, like the woman who met Frank at a Gilbert and George exhibition at the Tate Modern and told him, ‘I think their art is like your comedy: when you first experience it, it seems like it’s just filth…but when you dig deeper you find it’s about truth and about challenging our avoidance of truth.’
He also talks about going to Mass on the Feast of the Assumption in Edinburgh, before launching into a critique of Richard Dawkins whom he refers to as ‘old Dawko’. The Assumption falls on 15 August and in continental Europe is seen as the end of summer and of the holiday season. We Anglicans simply designate the day as ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary’, because we don’t accept all that stuff about the mother of Jesus being assumed, body and soul, into heaven, but that’s too big a topic to enter into here. |
| | Services this Week
Tuesdays & Thursdays
12.15pm Lunchtime Eucharist
Sunday 16th August Trinity 11
10.30am Sung Eucharist
Address: Canon Brian Mountford
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Forthcoming Events
Wednesday 19th August, 1-2pm: Poetry Seminar in the Old Library
Throughout the summer, we'll be running a family craft stall on Thursday afternoons. Pop in for colouring, sewing, stained glass-design.
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Forthcoming Concerts
None in August. TBC in September |
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| | Ride and Stride, 12th September
The annual RIDE AND STRIDE in aid of Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust, will take place on Saturday 12th. September. If you would like to take part on either feet or bicycle, please contact Margaret Chaundy - margaret.chaundy2@btinternet.com Alternatively, if you can spare an hour on the day to welcome visiting participants, your help would be much appreciated. |
| | Poetry Corner
All Except Hannibal
Trapped in a dismal marsh, he told his troops:
‘No lying down, lads! Form your own mess-groups
And sit in circles, each man on the knees
Of the man behind; then nobody will freeze.’
They obeyed his orders, as the cold sun set,
Drowsing all night in one another’s debt,
All except Hannibal himself, who chose
His private tree-stump – he was one of those!
- Robert Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985)
This is a neat little poem from the former Professor of Poetry, Robert Graves. Like the poet himself, Hannibal is an observer of people and is concerned with them; but he also craves solitude – indeed, requires it in order to take in the wider picture. Graves updates the language of the classics to a sturdier, 1940s camaraderie – addressed as ‘lads’, the troops are humanised. There is also a sweetness in the economy of that phrase ‘one another’s debt’: their survival is due to their shared existence. Hannibal, however, has just his ‘private tree-stump’. He is not scornful of their company; he is just ‘one of those’. Graves values this aloofness in the right context, even if he gives it a little affectionate mocking. |
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