The cinema industry, Hollywood, its degenerate crew, its crazed writers and performers, regularly fetishise brutality and depravity; much of its output, it is true, now appeals to an audience of the new perma-adolescents, grown-ups hooked on kids' fiction, Harry Potter and damned Hobbitry, but much of it is porno-violence; that those who sell advertising in this often unwholesome medium have declined to run an advert consisting of different people reading separate lines of the Lord's Prayer is darkly amusing.
It is now forbidden to criticise, however belligerent and fascistic its actions, the state of Israel; for the longest time it was anti-social of the police and contrary to good race relations to arrest nonces, this being inimical to the interests of the multi-culturalism industry, not to mention those of Jack Straw's and Dennis McShane's NewLabour scam, and it is now an infamy beyond measure for a gentleman lawyer to make a saucy remark about a lady lawyer's vanity picture pouting on some website for the wretched as so it is for a Nobel prize-winning scientist to joke harmlessly about the distraction of the fairer sex in a gentlemen's laboratory.
Prohibition of arcane or dissenting opinion is partially the legacy of the Tony'n'Imelda years, the cynical opportunism of the civil rights lawyers, the attempted ninety-day citizen internment and the carrying of ID papers, these were the political mission of filth such as Snotty, Blunkett, Scmidt, Reid and the Milibands. It is a strategy of suppression which has been largely successful, as those whose liberties are at most risk don't even know they still have them. Living, as they do, in a demi-monde governed by the likes of the ape-faced mutant, Zuckerberg, the slave-owners of Apple and the parallel Stasi at Google, the New People believe fervently in the Doctrine of the Unacceptable, the nnacceptability of something being determined by, well, somebody else, and transmitted to them.
They are like zealots, these people, blind to life all around them, they jab and thumb and swipe and pinch at their cyberbooks of common prayer, living the dream, their private lives become advertising platforms, the only marketplace in history where the consumers provide the product, themselves, copy-writing their exaggerated existences for all to prey upon.
And now the advertisers interdict between a vague, loose, national belief, a touchstone of a pseudo-faith and an overarching, impertinent, notionally acceptable and notionally widely-agreed censorship. In cinemas which present gratuitous, disturbing violence of almost every sort, an adverisement consisting largely of a recital of the Lord's Prayer has been denied a screening. So's not to cause offence. So's not to be Unacceptable
Along with the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer has always struck this Zen-Presbyterian-Marxist as one of the least controversial scriptures, neither proscriptive nor judgemental and largely deity-neutral, it is as much a universal supplication to ourselves, to our better sides as beneficiaries of Creation, as it is part of the normally vengeful Armageddon of Abrahamism; it is as much the Creation's as the Lord's Prayer, yet some coke-snorting pederast at GlobaCorp feels it might offend some of its enslaved and has banned it.
How fucking dare they?
THE LORD'S PRAYER
from the proper book of Common Prayer, 1662
THE LORD'S PRAYER
from the proper book of Common Prayer, 1662
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.
The Whirlpool Nebula;
produced by Creation, photographed by NASA/Hubble.
Not at a cinema near you.
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.
The Whirlpool Nebula;
produced by Creation, photographed by NASA/Hubble.
Not at a cinema near you.
31 comments:
i am godless but most practising Christians of my acquaintance are gentle, compassionate souls. Their words of worship are often beautiful, most of all in the prose of Cranmer which has framed so many of our lives whether or not we know it or care about it. Indeed, how dare these oafs presume to determine what shall and shall not be heard of our religious heritage, and when and how Christians may express themselves? It is also worth pointing out that amid the mayhem and horror in the desert abattoirs, Christians are being systematically persecuted and extinguished with scarce a murmur from Winston, even as he kneels to satisfy the Generals and their profiteers.
Amen, mr bungalow bill, whether we know it or not, so much of what we value about who we are stems from that we now so eagerly reject.
In America University reading lists now come asterisked with "trigger warnings", lest the fragile student body get a fright (Ovid, much of Shakespeare, pretty much anything worth reading I imagine. God help the little darlings if someone shows them that relentless snuff-movie treatment known as the Old Testament.) There are "safe rooms" where distressed babyscholars can unwind with lava lamps, lego, and looped video of puppies frolicking. (With this in mind, it is worth looking at the wikipedia description of a Count Korzybski lecture delivered in the 30's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski )
verge.//
Let's see what the chap who composed this very prayer said about it's recitation.
"But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."
By the wildest stretch of the imagination a cinema is not your inner room, nor is performance on the screen "secret." Christians should trouble themselves to read the Bible and attempt to follow it's precepts. They all know the prayer but ignore the clearest instructions - from a representative, they say, of the highest authority - about the circumstances of it's recitation.
What Jesus said has been available for at least 1500 years; everyone knows the Lords prayer except those who have no interest; and if I can have a reasonable stab at what he meant (secret is not the same as public) and ponder the reasons why this stricture is important) why can't the C of E?
-richard
I was just thinking, mr verge, a moment ago, how the Unacceptableistas would view the portrayal of women in Hamlet or Macbeth. It is a derelict, homogenised banality towards which they sail.
But such were not the reasons behind its censoring, mr ruchard, and a passing, public acquaintanceship, in the cinema, may well have led to a private meditation. I learned it publicly, in school or Sunday school, maybe on the Lisburn Road, but I only ever understood it privately, and relatively recently. Like most things, I guess.
He says the same thing about Charity, too: your Heavenly Father will know, do not do it publicly as do the pharisees, let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing. Now, while, for many reasons, I despise the fundraiser, I see no ill in the dissemination, at Christmastime, of a few lines of comfort, encouragement, awareness and aspiration; isn't that what we do, betimes, here?
When I was at school we said the Lord's prayer every morning. I'm not religious now, or really then, but somehow always found it's words reassuring.
It certainly seems to be the case that Christians are under attack across the world both physically and spiritually - not the least from their own clergy.
Yet in a strange way isn't that how faith is supposed to be, tested? Under attack?
The C of E were led to believe that it passed the test, or adhered to the requirements, whatever, for broadcastable adverts and only after it was made was permission to screen it withdrawn.
That was wrong. There were a series of atheist adverts on the sides of buses a few years ago, and to my mind if you pay for advertising space or screen time you should be able run what you like.
This does not escape the fact that JC didn't want people to pray in public, so whether the advertising company is right or wrong in restricting the advert is beside the point. In fact it raises questions about the C of E being in any way a valid disseminator of the teachings if they get such a simple instruction arse about face.
Maybe the bit about not letting your right hand know what your left is doing was an analogy of the church as a body, to avoid religious hierarchy, dogma, authority, and ultimately the reprofiling of the narrow path by the state. You can't herd cats. Consider that, then consider this; who is head of the the C of E?
The same head of the armed forces, courts, taxes, prisons, police, and government. They don't obey the Law either.
-richard
I wasn't for a moment supporting Church; like yourself, and like William Blake, I am an anti-pretatarian and an anti-monarchist. If my comment on this matter was any sort of -ism, it was literary critic-ism. I like the words, mr richard, and I guess I would like them had they no connection to Jesus of Nazareth. For me, the word Father could be replaced by Creation. Our Creation, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. For many, I should think, the Lord's Prayer is just a promot to meditation. I hope so, anyway, like the Ode to Joy, the Way of the Sufi, Hamlet's soliloquoy and the UN Declaration on Human Rights. Stuff to think about.
prompt to meditation.
When I was little, poor little Catholoc boy that I was, I was whipped to mass at least twice a week, sometimes more. While this was happening, my elder brother went off to the filty Protestant grammar school. He was excused attendance at school assembly during prayers. (1965, perhaps?) How this was accomplished is lost to me now but presumably the Left-footers were ushered in after prayers but before the anouncements and rugger results. In my turn, I was sent there too but the half-a-dozen years later the school considered that my soul was safe. So I had to go to assembly, did not have to speak the prayers but did have to sing the hymns. I kid you not - it was expressly understood exactly like that. Not singing was a disciplinary offence. To add to the madness, my parents made me go to Sunday School - after a thousand or more Masses attended for fuck's sake, the whole thing known by heart not just the Lord's Prayer - to ensure, I suppose, that the Protestantism was not creeping into me. Not long after, I grew taller than them both stacked and that nonsense was at an end too.
And now we have the cinema-loving being shielded from the vileness because they might be offended. Well, they don't have to speak the words, do they? And if they are offended by the worship of some other God, fuck 'em, I say. It is not as if the audience will rise as one and start recciting in unison - although it would be fun to try to arrange same.
And while we are here, the last couple of lines - "For thine is..." is not a part of the prayer I learned. And although it is part of it now, and has been for forty years, I guess, even among the Righteous, it grates every time I hear it. So it is all dogma, bollocks, and rules. And we will have no truck with that, thank-you, but surely if the CofE wants to have prayers prior to "Zombie 3 Freakout" being screened, so be it.
A tale which many of us could relate, mr mongoose, in one way or another, of immigrant parents, bent on doing what's right for Seamus or Ahmed or Delroy - Jews'n'RCs excused is the separation phrase which I remember, although I am neither.
I know that the last two lines form a bonus track, not on the original but, for my unbeliever money, they serve nicely, in a circular way, echoing the first line, bringing it all back home.
I always think, when, rarely, I attend an Anglican service, generally as part of a cathedral visit, that despite the very best efforts of the LGBT Multicuturalist, child molesting clergy, the words and the music make me lift up mine eyes unto the hills, equally, the Radio Three Evensong programme, with its sombre anthems and harmonious psalms, inspires my otherwise indolent contramundalism, reminding me that I'm a Believer, just not in religion. Prayer, meditation, duties and observances, what's not to like?
Mr ish, my childrens maternal great great grandfather was a german baker in london during the first world war, he had 12 children and worked 7 days a week ,he amassed quite a lot of gold sovereigns(god knows how) anyway the local priest told him that germany would win the war and german marks would be worth more than gold.. you can guess the rest! suffice to say he died soon after a broken man! I enjoy singing in my own way in my car all the old hymns
I sometimes wonder for how much longer they will be sung, mr walter. I was foolishly-wed one unhappy time, to a teacher of infants, her musical selections for assem-ba-ly were Morning Has Broken and extracts from Jesus Christ, Superstar; not quite as bad, I grant, as the dreadful You'll Never Walk Alone, now the psalm of disgruntled oiks, but equally crass and vulgar in their own poppy way.
One Christmas Eve, decades ago, I found myself watching a televised concert by the repulsive Rod Stewart. Fuck this, I thought, the church'll be better and so I wandered over to Mary Magdalene's C of E Midnight Service. The ordinary people of Coventry, carol-singing their school-learned descants were, to my ear, infinitely more musical than the pop tart from whose concert I had fled.
Another time, on Easter Sunday, I attended an RC service in a small Brittany town, whose choir consisted of three or four elderly sopranos, not the greatest of singers, their enthusiasm for these tricky, alien tunes gladdened the heart. Songs of praises do seem to ignite moments of musical magic, absent from other forms; you in your car, me in mine, twos and threes gathered together or crowds massed in cathedrals.
The NewPeople, it is true, engage in singing together and at pop concerts and festivals they sing back to the performers the lyrics of the song being performed, a valid musical event, a drunken sing-along, not to be scorned, just a bit vapid and trite; Mumford and Sons don't come near John Bunyan or King David's Ancient Blues.
Mr ish , You must have religious dna, or your absorbing it from the ancient wood in your manse,Or some siren called you too that rocky shore! Im afraid my celtic blood may be a bit watered down...
anyway ill stop typing shite! and bugger off
Stuff to think about is what it is, and of late I've been doing just that. There's more to this stuff than pondering the means available to Noah by which he distinguished, for instance, the male/female pairs of earwigs in over a thousand species, then, since that would have been impossible, dismissing the entire work as gibberish.
I used to live on the Lisburn Road and there I too learnt a valuable lesson; don't resist arrest unless you want a decisive boot in the stomach along with your visit to the station. I was released without charge in a contrite frame of mind and given a lift home. The policeman was not a bad fellow and I was treated fairly; he had thought I was a car thief he had been looking for but subsequently realised his mistake. The impressive bruise which appeared on my abdomen went from black to yellow over the following weeks and then disappeared, but the lesson - keep a cool head when interacting with a Constable - has stayed with me.
-richard
Hiroshima and nagasaki where the largest christian communities in japan lived, So the war on christianity has included the nuclear bomb!
No, I am as agnosic as fuck, me, mr walter, but smarter people than I have faith in all sorts of wild imaginings and have been inspired by them, all across the theistic telegraph. As for religion by osmosis, I should think that there has been very little of religion in this old manse or in any other.
As for what we might, these days, call Dawkinsism, well anyone can disprove the existence of God, but not explain, among so many, the need for Him or Her.
I have only been discussing, here, the dwindling of a collective reliance on traditional phrases and melodies: the day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, the darkness falls at thy behest; abide with me, fast flows the eventide; lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, even to the faithless ones, like me, these words, over many years, have become, as I said, a prompt to meditation on that which ails us all, more thoughtful whistling in the dark than God-bothering.
In the 'seventies, mr richard, there was a boom in retro-scientific explanation of Old Testament Abrahamic scripture and of the extraordinary astronomical knowledge of ancient Egypt and South America together with the wondrous building techniques of both. Eric von Danniken was the proponent of Was God an Astronaut theory - were Ezekiel's Chariots of Fire merely aircraft or rockets, described by simple people, that sort of thing - and sold many books about the possibility of such incongruous scientific knowledge having been brought to Earth by benign visitors from elsewhere. I think he had things to say about the Flood, too. If you have not encountered the genre and the subsequent refutations I am sure it is in Wikipedia and worth s few minutes. As I said, for a time it was as popular as was Mr Billy Connolly, although Herr von Danniken never dined in Dallas House, with Prince Andrew Beast and his Mrs, Porky, as, regularly, did Mr and Mrs Connolly.
Though from an Orange family, my father advised me, from an early age that the B Special Constables, even amomgst Ulster policemen, were a particularly bad lot. I have relations, unmet, in the PSNI, and I regard them as the black sheep of the family.
You should never forgive that bastard for kicking you, maybe his next wrongly suspected victim fared worse. And he's so good at that, DC Filth and Sergeant Slag - no hard feelings, son, i gotta difficult job to do, and you don't make things easy on yourself, protesting your innocence, on yer way now, an' we'll say no more about it......
I would venture that even a Godless Mr Dawkins will one day pray to a Divine creator, probably at his last moments, or if threatened by some drug crazed bat wielding thug.
Shouldn't the CofE take the pornsters to court Mr I, claiming victimization of a minority religion, as would the Hebes or Ahmeds?
Yes, mr inmate, of course it should, although it won't.
I read Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods as a lad. Years later I realised that he was pulling rabbits out of his arse on the flimsiest of evidence.
My first boss was an ex B-Special and was a bully and a liar, and I was given the runaround and humiliated on the basis - as I found out later - that he had one staff member too many and wanted one to quit, and I was the newest. If he's an example of the breed then "bad lot" doesn't come close.
I will elaborate upon the kick - I was obstreperous and sort of..ahem..tried to punch him in the head. Looking back he ended the confrontation quickly and did not handle me roughly, or even uncivilly, after I fell down. So, compared with the rap sheet that could have materialised - alleged offences of breach of the peace, D and D, assaulting an officer - I have no complaint, and thanks to having trained in a boxing club my abdominal muscles were hard and I wasn't harmed by the forceful blow which knocked me down.
I'm under no illusions but I don't think this constable, this particular one, over-reacted or was malicious given the circumstances, and don't forget that the chap he mistook me for might have been known to carry a weapon, who knows, which put the constable on edge to start with. So all in all I'm OK about it, he had a right to protect himself on the instant and afterwards he turned a blind eye to what might be considered as offences, which a true bastard copper could made a meal of. So there it is, it's not a case of excusing anyone by parroting "police are good" but things could have been much worse and I don't need to forgive him for sending the youthful me on my way with no further action and a lesson learnt.
-richard
Yes, Erich V.was pulling lot of stuff from his behind, but he could fire up readers' imagination. Some plus points there, given that a lot of things are still
not very clear.
Yes, maybe he was over-egging the holy pudding, Eric, but there was a good deal of interesting and incontrovertibly odd stuff there, especially about the South American structures. As for the chariots of fire, I would only remark that his explanation of Ezekiel is certainly no more fanciful than the traditional one, offered, still, by Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan scholars and probably a goid deal less. I am glad that I read that stuff, as I am glad that I read Carlos Castanega, around the same time. The one is fanciful science, the other fanciful spirituality/mysticism/pharmacology and - rubbished or not - both encouraged a wider thought frame, a bolder imagination, if only for a time. No harm done, unlike the effects of the Bible, the Torah and the Koran, which have wrought carnage. Orthodoxy has, for a long time, insisted, with the certainty of spiritual truth, that we are BigBang fallout, although now even the originators of the theory are saying that this is bullshit, as any fule knows. Everything from nothing, just like that. And people say von Danniken's is crazy shit.
Is this the future mr ish god help our children!
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a10_1446411139
Iknow you dont like links mr ish, but the live leak one works, it depicts some moslem shithole backwater school, the principal is punishing male students he,s clearly criminally insane
I will have a look, mr walter, just away out to see A Winter's Tale, live from London, here, in Orkney.
Aliens or not, it's amazing to think that the few examples of truly ancient art and architecture that have survived to this day are almost certainly a poor sample of what human industry has created, and lost, over the ages, to erosion, oxidisation and mineralisation.
The documentary "Seven Wonders of Ancient Greece" has some underwater footage at the end of the segment on Santorini (at about 41:30), showing submerged ruins with very striking architectural features, presumable dating from around 1600BC. They are not even mentioned in the programme, but a wall painting, discovered in a house that was buried by the eruption which largely destroyed the island, and depicting the island city-state at that time, is.
The depiction bares a credible resemblance to the Atlantian myth of a circular city and, given that it was entombed by the eruption which destroyed the ancient settlement, there is no reason to think it anything other than an authentic representation.
Hope you enjoy the play Mr I - I think these live transmissions are a brilliant idea though, as usual, I have managed not to get to any of them ever.
Thanks for the live leak Mr Walter - and in the next episode - 'Death by Crushing'...
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