...in Surbiton, invited me to talk to them about "Traditional feasts and seasons". An interested audience, a sense of a shared heritage...and a particular pleasure to be there as I spent some happy years on the excellent Surrey Comet newspaper when it was based in the centre of Kingston, right opposite the parish church (where my father's regimental colours are laid up)...
Talking about Christmas customs, Advent wreaths, and Santa Claus makes sense to an audience that has a familiarity with the basics: Luke's Gospel account, the significance of March 25th and hence its links with the feast of Midsummer (St John the Baptist) and with Christmas at midwinter...what will it be like when a group such as this lacks this bedrock knowledge? A friend recently described a visit to an art gallery where an erudite art historian talked a group through some of the great religious art. A young student asked "Can you recommend a good book that would tell more about the stories shown in these pictures?"
Yes, indeed there is a Good Book, and it is heartbreaking that today's young are not familiar with it. The world's rich heritage of art and music - and literature, and archirecture, and songs, and jokes, and nursery rhymes, and pub signs, and so much more - is closed to those who do not know who Moses was, who Christ was, what the Ten Commandments are, what happened on Calvary...who do not immediately respond to words like "Good Samaritan" "Loaves and Fishes" "Last Supper"....
Oh, the pity of it...
And it is no use just moaning. Find out about solutions, and worthwhile projects. The Schools Bible Project has its prizegiving this week - more info on this later.
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