Miscellaneous Things

It always rains on Sunday … well, actually it doesn’t; not here anyway, but it did today.

Back in the dim and distant past – 1947 to be precise, there was a movie by that name. It was based on an Arthur La Bern novel and was set in a very dreary East London. This was a time of stark austerity in
England, made all the more apparent in London. Few things are improved by wetness, except perhaps bronze nubile maidens at the beach. A grey old city ravaged by the best Herman Goring’s Luftwaffe could do, is made all the uglier by mist and rain.

How different that image is from the one I am used to here in
SW Florida. But is this SW Florida? My window reveals a sodden windswept landscape reminiscent of the Yorkshire Moors. Could it be that in the dark of night, aliens entered my bedroom and made me a victim of their loathsome technology and ‘matter transferred’ me to another place? There was one way I could find out. There is a place known only to me (I think), or perhaps a couple of others; where alligators lurk and leer locally. Arriving there, I was relieved to see them: as before, lurking and leering. But this time they seemed to be enjoying the rain. I guess life for an alligator is pretty boring, so the change from getting wet without slithering into the water comes as a pleasant change.

Rain and wind not-with-standing, I headed off to church. Religion is very popular here. My church doesn’t attract the vast congregations enjoyed by some churches, but it does average 300 per service on a Sunday; and there are three of them. If St James the Great, in my little Worcestershire village could attract that many for one service, they would hale it as a coming of the Messiah. On a good day we used to get nineteen: and that included the choir.

The Baptist Church is just up the road from here. Its not so much a church, its more like a stadium. I’ve lost count of how many services they have, but never less than 3000 cram into each one. In architecture it has no pretensions of looking like a church. It emulates a Toyota manufacturing plant in Kentucky. The nave is replaced by a massive auditorium that seats thousands. In the winter the congregation spills over into an adjacent auditorium with enormous load-speakers and video links to delude people into thinking they are part of the service.The service is essentially a large choir singing happy-clappy songs pretissimo as a prelude to the Pastor sharing an enlightening moment with us. This diatribe is punctuated with demands for money – for very good causes I have no doubt. As his rhetoric bombards us, the Christian cardinal virtue of humility seems to be lost on the good pastor dressed in $4000 suits, gold Rolexes and topped off with designer hair and spray that would support a ship.To me, living a Christian life is more than seeing how many times I can include the noun God in a given sentence. It is all about God being the father and we being the family. This influences me as I leave the crowded parking lot. It doesn’t seem very Christian to me to bang my door into the car next to me. Or spin my wheels so the manicured grass is ripped up, while I ace out the other drivers to get to the exit first. But I guess one can do all that and still be a Christian; only not a very good one.

The rain has stopped. It’s Florida again. The wind is still blowing but the brilliant sunshine masks the discomfort. The benefit of Florida is that it always defaults to sunshine. Even when it rains, you know that it really wants to be sunny – and it doesn’t always rain on Sunday. In fact it rarely ever does.