“Occupy” is not a faith movement

You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m about to get all political again.

There have been a number of blog posts and news articles – such as this one by Tom Hodgkinson in the Independent – recently referring to the Occupy movement (here in the UK, at least) as being “fundamentally Christian”. OccupyLondon have posted a response to this, but I have a few thoughts on the matter myself.

I think that people have gotten this idea isn’t just due to the focus on the tensions involving the OccupyLondon camp at St Paul’s, but also arguably due to the Flash Evensongs organised by Kathryn Rose, though those were not actually intended to be seen as actually part of OccupyLSX – they were an independent response to the closure of St Paul’s. They were an Anglican reaction, primarily organised by the laity though with the involvement of clergy, aimed at enabling people who would customarily have attended Evensong services at st Paul’s to be able to still partake in an Anglican Evensong service. Unfortunately, arising as they did through the actions of OccupyLSX and taking place in proximity to the camp they were perhaps inevitably viewed as being part of the Occupy protest, even though that was not the intention – and indeed all who took part, from Kathryn herself and the clergy who preached, through to the lay choristers such as myself, were at some pains to state publically that we were not taking sides either for or against the Occupy protest and were simply there in direct response to the faith needs of St Paul’s parishioners.

Though I am speaking primarily on behalf of myself and through personal observation, I think I would be correct in stating that it was not our – that is to say, FlashEvensong participants – intention to give the impression that Occupy is a Christian movement. We were simply there to worship according to our custom. We couldn’t do it inside the church – so we did it outside instead. It’s unfortunate that our mere presence appears to have branded the Occupy protest here in the UK as “Christian”. That was never our intent. The Occupy movement worldwide is one that encompasses both all faiths and none. The fact that many of OccupyLSX aims and tenets are in accord with Christian ethos is neither here nor there – you could just as easily refer to them as Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan, Humanist. Such labels are meaningless however.

The Occupy movement is fundamentally a moral movement that strives for justice and equality, and it demeans both the movement and those protesting to reduce it to mere religion. The 99% are not just Christians. They are everyone. It is not simply a Christian problem.

You may think that this isn’t of interest to you; perhaps you don’t think of yourself as a political person. To tell you the truth, neither did I. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realise that caring about things makes you political. If you live, breathe, and actually give a damn about something other than yourself – you’re political. Even if you don’t realise that yet. If you’re Christian – then you’re political; to think otherwise is to delude yourself.

The “Occupy” movement is not Christian – but it is the duty of every Christian to be informed and to think about these issues; because they affect every single one of us. Us, our families, our neighbours, our society – and ultimately that of every country in the world. We’re all in this together. We all have to be political. We all have to care.

Flash Evensong

A beautiful rainbow appears over St Paul's Cathedral just minutes before Flash Evensong begins.

Last Wednesday I was part of something very special; something I’ve never done before, in more ways than one.

Doubtless by now many readers will have seen the news reports on the news, in papers or heard on the radio that on Wednesday evening, a group of more than 30 singers congregated outside St Paul’s Cathedral to perform an open-air Evensong service. It was all the brainchild of a good friend of mine, Kathryn Rose. After the cathedral announced it was to close due to purported concerns over health and safety issues, she decided to go to the cathedral last Sunday to sing Evensong outside – by herself if need be. She mentioned this on Twitter, and ended up with a quite respectably-sized group who sang Evensong with her.

So on Wednesday she decided to do it again. It was to be a simple Common Worship service from the Book of Common Prayer with sung psalm and canticles from the Parish Psalter and using the same hymns as on Sunday, as she and those who had sung with her on Sunday still had hymn sheets. There was also to be a sung anthem, and @FlashEvensong was busy organising that via Twitter.

Whilst I am primarily a musician, I also enjoy singing and have a fairly reasonable alto voice that can cover a tenor range, so I signed up to sing tenor (at the point I signed up, there were 6 altos already but tenors were decidedly under-represented!).

I arrived outside Marks & Spencers with my 4½-year-old daughter Freda at about 4:45pm and located Kathryn straight away, in the midst of quite the whirlwind of activity and attention. A journalist was asking for a quick 5 minutes’ interview, and she already had another one lined up for a short while later with a BBC journalist – whilst simultaneously discussing who would read what, where we were going to stand, and so forth.

We had not one, but two actual vicars to do the readings and service, and I believe there were more in the choir! 30 people had signed up online to sing, but I believe we ended up with over 40 singers. Despite never having sung together before, we had a brief warm-up – and you would have thought we’d been rehearsing for ages. There are links to recordings and video of us warming up and singing during the service on this blogpost by Dr Bex Lewis, who was one of the choristers. The service was led by the Reverend James Ogley, vicar of St Francis Church in Luton, with another vicar stepping in to do one of the readings. We sang the Aylesford responses, with Kathryn as Cantor.

The readings and hymns were as follows:

Introit hymn: Christ is made the sure foundation
Responses: Ayleward
Psalm: 119:145-160
Gradual hymn: Guide me, O thou great Redeemer
First Lesson: 2 Kings 9:1-16
Canticles: Parish Psalter set A
Second Lesson: Acts 27:1-16
Hymn: O God, our help in ages past
Anthem: If ye love me (Tallis)
Hymn: Be thou my vision

You can read a transcription of Rev. Ogley’s sermon on his blog here. There is also a video on the Telegraph website here. One of the basses present blogged about it here.

About ten minutes before we started warming up, a beautiful rainbow formed in the sky over St Paul’s Cathedral (see photo at the top of this post). It seemed like a very positive sign; and indeed, the whole experience was like the promise of that sign fulfilled. I had a very definite sense of being caught up in something wonderful, momentous, spiritually uplifting and fulfilling and right. St Paul’s was shut, the people barred from worship there – so we brought worship to those who wanted and needed it outside instead. Regardless of the politics involved with the #occupylsx protest and the closure of St Paul’s (which, to be honest, I feel is very much a case of “six of one, half dozen of the other”), we were there to come together in worship, and that was what we did. And I am very glad yet also humbled to feel I was a small part of that; one voice lifted up with so many others in one accord.

And that is what church is all about. It’s not about the building. The building is superfluous. It’s the people and their intent that matter.

Flashmob Evensong at St Pauls-in-the-Camp

If you live in London, you may well be aware of the Occupy London campaign which attempted to occupy Paternoster Square in front of the London Stock Exchange. Unable to get access to the square due to a last-minute injunction, they instead began demonstrating in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. Following an attempt by the police to kettle the peaceful protesters, they set up camp there and have been there ever since.

Whilst initially the clergy at St Paul’s were welcoming and supportive of the OccupyLSX demonstrators, their stance has changed as the presence of the camp has been deterring visitors and worshippers at the cathedral, leading to a decision to close the cathedral.

Last Sunday, Kathryn Rose (author of the blog Artsy Honker organised a flashmob Evensong in front of St Paul’s for those who were denied Evensong due to the closure of the cathedral. It was an immense success, and as a result she has organised another one for this evening.

All the details are on her blog post. Presently 26 people (including myself – I’ll be singing tenor, as we already have 6 altos!) have pledged to form an impromptu choir for the anthem and sing the ferial responses, and the service will use the Book of Common Prayer. There is a copy of the Liturgy to be used here. Kathryn will cantor if there are no clergy there who are willing/able to do so.

We will be meeting at 5pm in front of Marks & Spencers for a 5:15pm start, though we may have to move (e.g. if we are obstructing the pavement due to numbers).

If the cathedral has reopened in time for the service then we will join them – if not, perhaps we will see you there!

7.3 magnitude earthquake, Van, Eastern Turkey

Earlier today, about noon GMT, Turkey was struck by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The epicentre was about 10 miles north of the city of Van, near the lake of the same name; the region has been rocked repeatedly since then with a succession of more than 30 aftershocks, some reaching as high as 5.9 and all higher than 4.5, which are still continuing. Currently there are 45 confirmed deaths (some news agencies reporting 85) but it is estimated the toll could reach 1000 or more.

CNN has reported on the earthquake, as has the BBC. The Turkish Red Crescent is rendering aid to those affected, setting up disaster management centres and helping to co-ordinate relief efforts with the Turkish miliatary; the British Red Cross hasn’t yet started an appeal as needs are still to be assessed and no request for international aid has been requested yet, but donations can be made to the British Red Cross general fund via the front page.

ShelterBox are assessing the situation and standing by for a request from the Turkish government. The DEC have not yet announced an appeal. The IHH is accepting donations now – scroll down and choose “Van Acil Yardim”.

It is being reported on Twitter that Israel has offered aid to Turkey and been refused, but thus far Turkey has not requested aid from any other countries, though the international community is standing by to render assistance, and several countries have teams of their own earthquake specialists standing by in case of need. A plane with medical aid and supplies from Azerbaijan has just touched down at the quake-damaged Van airport.

The latest up-to-date information is being disseminated via Twitter using the hashtags #earthquake, #Van and #Turkey.

A Love Affair with the Flute

I first learned to play the flute in the first year of secondary school. At the open evening for prospective students and their parents, I’d been handed a piece of paper that had a list of musical instruments; I had to tick the one that I wanted to learn how to play. I’d learned recorder in primary school (in common with most British 7-9 year-olds – well, the ones which weren’t doing violin or guitar); I’d wanted to learn guitar but Mum had said “maybe later on”. I could have chosen to do guitar in secondary school – and, indeed, I was tempted – but then I spotted that one of the options was flute. My mother was really pushing me to take up clarinet as it’s one of her favourite instruments and she never got to play it herself, but I wasn’t too keen and stubbornly decided that was it – I was definitely going to do flute.

Mr Beech, my music teacher, lent me a series of flutes out of the music room cupboard – each needed some work done on it before it could be played, which meant I learned the basics of flute maintenance and repair at the same time as I learned how to play (and meant he got all the school flutes serviced for free). He was a flute teacher himself, so he taught me for 18 months until other commitments meant he couldn’t carry on teaching me. I switched to another teacher for a while, but her main instruments were really clarinet and piano; she was learning flute herself at the time and eventually it became obvious I needed a proper flute teacher. I would also need my own flute.

The nearest flute teacher was in Watford; that, plus the necessity of having my own flute, meant my mother had a handy excuse for making me give up flute. It was a great pity, as I loved playing flute. I’d got to grade 4 and bitterly resented having to give it up.

I eventually picked up a second-hand acoustic guitar at a car boot sale for £5 when I was 15 and taught myself how to play. Over the years I’ve gotten into various other instruments; I have a sizeable collection of recorders and whistles (including a couple of wooden antique fifes, one of which belonged to my grandfather), an electric guitar, a Yamaha acoustic guitar, a Tanglewood electro-acoustic that needs some serious repair, a mandolin and a violin that I started to teach myself how to play. And a Buffet Crampon 228 silver flute which I picked up dirt-cheap from a guitar shop on Shaftesbury Avenue back when I was working for LUL.

The flute sat around for a while; I was too nervous to play it in front of Sava, my late ex, as he was a professional flautist and ridiculously talented to boot. He never did get to hear me play. Last year I resolved to get back to flute properly but then all the health issues cropped up and the flute was pretty much abandoned to gather dust on the shelf.

Fast-forward to a few months ago when after a hiatus of a little over 4 years, I took up morris dancing with Royal Liberty Morris in Hornchurch – and dragged Dani along with me. I took my guitar and joined the musicians, but a couple of months ago Mark (RL violinist) emailed me a PDF of the RL tunebook, and on a whim one afternoon I picked up my flute one Thursday afternoon and had a go at playing a few tunes. Despite being hellishly rusty from not playing properly in over 25 years, I didn’t do too badly, so I took the flute with me to morris practice that evening – and I’ve been playing it ever since.

I’m now playing it daily for at least an hour a day, and recently I’ve found I’ve been stepping that up a bit – sometimes playing 3-4 times a day for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour each time, and my playing (and confidence!) have been coming on in leaps and bounds. I’ll never be as good as Sava was – he had a rare and true talent you don’t get very often. But I think I can certainly reach a reasonable level of accomplishment, though my fingers after so many years of breaks and damage aren’t quite as nimble as they were in my early teens. But they’re getting pretty fast. My head is full of folk flute tunes at any given moment, and when I’m not playing I frequently find my fingers are itching to play – and playing with Ian, Mark and Terry is tremendous fun and fulfilling in a way that is almost spiritual. It makes the 1½-2-hour journey to Hornchurch for morris practice well worth it just to have the chance to play folk music with others. This Sunday (as per my previous post) I’ll be playing the flute in public for the first time in over 25 years with Royal Liberty, and I’m looking forward to it immensely.

I only regret that I didn’t do this sooner. I wish I could have played flute with Sava, even just the once. Playing the flute feels as though it is bringing me closer to him though; when I fluff a tricky bit, I can hear him in the back of my head telling me not to stop but to just keep playing. And when I master a piece, I can hear/feel/almost see him smiling approval with a cheerful “That’s my Rosie!” It’s like sharing a small part of his spirit.

I’ve fallen in love with my flute in a way I never have with any other instrument, to the point where it almost feels like an extension of me. I finally feel as though I’ve actually earned the right to call myself a musician. A flautist. And now I understand why, of all the instruments Sava mastered, the flute always remained his greatest love.

Christos Anesti!

Hornchurch Passion Play: You’re Getting It Wrong

This evening, whilst on our way to morris-dancing practice (Royal Liberty Morris in Hornchurch), my eldest daughter and I were greeted by the sight of a Passion play taking place in the car park of the Queen’s Theatre on Billet Road. It was quite the spectacle – mainly due to the hideous amounts of Fail on display. Unable to procure a donkey for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem on, they’d found a white pony as a substitute. The Roman soldiers looked like a bunch of riot police complete with batons. They managed to lose the crown of thorns, so Jesus had to be crucified wearing a natty pair of white boxers and a neon green party hat.

Yes, really. Neon green.

What really took the biscuit however was the Nazi Sanhedrin. Dressed all in black robes, they sat on a podium beneath red banners bearing a white circle and a black Imperial eagle.

I’ll leave you to think about the sheer offensiveness of that for a minute. Jesus being condemned to death by Nazi Stormtrooper Jews.

Apparently it was the final dress rehearsal for the Hornchurch Passion Play, which takes place roughly every five years. I have no idea who was responsible for the gross offensiveness of likening the Jews to the Nazis; the sheer insensitivity being displayed is frankly staggering though. I’m fairly certain that the third Station of the Cross (or first Station if you’re going the traditional instead of scriptural route) is not supposed to resemble the Nuremberg Rally complete with Nazi regalia….

Don’t poo, Reactor-kun!!

It’s good to know that with everything going on in Japan – two earthquakes (the original Tohoku 9.0 last Friday followed by the Shizuoka 6.4 on Sunday), the tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear situation and now an outbreak of H5 bird flu at two chicken farms in Chiba today – the Japanese have managed to retain a sense of humour.

Why Fukushima will not become a second Tschernobyl

I’ve been watching events in Japan unfold with, I think, much the same sense of horror anyone viewing the footage must be feeling. I knew something massive had to have happened when I checked my email on Friday morning and saw over 30 notifications sitting in the “USGS” folder. I’m signed up to the US Geological Service earthquake notifications list, which means I get an email notification of any earthquake of magnitude 4.5 or higher. 30+ notifications invariably means something absolutely massive has hit; and sure enough, it had.

In the first 24 hours, there were over 150 aftershocks of magnitude 5.0 and over, of which more than 20 were magnitude 6.0 or higher, with 2 at 6.8, a 6.9 and a 7.1.

The Japanese Geological Service has since upgraded the initial temblor to 9.0; Robert Geller – seismologist working at the University of Tokyo – has referred to it as a 9.1. It triggered a tsunami over 10m high that raced inland several kilometres – and that raced across the Pacific at 500kmh to hit the opposite side of the ocean. In most places it had diminished to only 0.6m high, but local geography caused it to reach 2m when it hit some US coastal areas, causing significant damage to the marina at Santa Cruz and to Crescent City.

Initial measurements showed that the force of the temblor had forced a 500km long section of the ocean floor 7m towards Japan; measurements at an observatory in northern Tokyo showed it had moved 8m west. Subsequent GPS from 1200 sensors mshowed that the whole island of Honshu had shifted 4m to the west, and the Earth’s axis had been tilted by 4-6″ due to the force.

All these statistics are staggering enough without adding in the statistics of those injured, displaced, missing or dead. I’ve found it easier to concentrate on facts and figures; it’s not that I’m callous to the loss of life – there is simply nothing I can do for it other than express sympathy and condolences, and post links to suitable charitable organisations, which I’ve been doing on Facebook, Twitter and a few online communities.

Increasingly I’ve been reading people expressing most concern over the damaged nuclear power plants, specifically Fukushima Daiichi (Number 1).

Fukushima is not going to become a second Tschernobyl, which I think is what everyone is dreading; it can’t, because the conditions are completely different. The reactors are completely different types, for a start; for another, at Tschernobyl the reactor was still running when the meltdown occurred – at Fukushima all three reactors shut down automatically and safely the moment the earthquake was detected.

At Tschernobyl, the reactor core was fully powered and operating when (against all safety protocols) they decided to take all the safety systems offline to simulate a power cut – and then couldn’t bring them back online again. The core started to overheat but they were unable to scram the control rods to shut down the reaction. The core went into meltdown and exploded, blowing open the top of the containment chamber and the roof of the plant, spreading radioactive vapour and contamination over a wide area. The core continued to burn for three days before they were able to bring it under control and quench it.

The situation at Fukushima is very different. As I said, the emergency systems kicked in automatically the moment the earthquake hit and the control rods were scrammed safely, halting the reaction. The core pile still holds a lot of residual heat however – in excess of 250°C. At this point the cooling systems should kick in to circulate water around the pile to cool it, but the power was knocked out. Back-up generators should kick in at this point, but the power station was built to withstand up to a magnitude 8.6 earthquake and a tsunami of up to 5.7m in height – and the earthquake was actually a 9.0 (they revised it yesterday from the initial reports of 8.9) and the tsunami was in excess of 10m, so the back-up generators were knocked out as well.

As the water in the reactor core evaporated, the fuel rods were exposed to the steam which split into oxygen and hydrogen. This started happening first in Reactor no. 1; they tried venting off some of the hydrogen, but detected radioactive caesium and iodine, which meant enough of the rods had been exposed to cause a meltdown as the zincaloy casing of the fuel rods melted. This meant the control rods were no longer fully inhibiting the reaction so the temperature started to rise to the point where the hydrogen exploded, which happened on Saturday. This only damaged the outer building shell of the reactor however, not the inner containment core.

Once they’d ascertained that the inner containment shell was still secure, they started pumping in sea water laced with boric acid; the boron in the boric acid retards any further reaction and basically acts as one huge liquid control rod. However, the core in Reactor no.3 went the same way as no.1 resulting in a hydrogen explosion that blew off the concrete roof over the reactor – again, without damaging the inner containment shell. They are flooding no.3 with sea water and boric acid as well, and are trying to do the same with no.2 – however they’re having problems pumping in the sea water as fast as it is evaporating, and it’s believed the core was, briefly, completely exposed for a short while. They don’t know yet whether any melting of no.2′s core has taken place, but they’ve detected hydrogen and rising pressure inside the core which suggests at least partial meltdown. They are carefully trying to vent off the hydrogen and prevent another explosion.

However, even if all three reactors go into complete meltdown, it won’t be a disaster; each reactor stands inside an outer steel containment shell filled at the bottom with several metres depth of inert boron-containing concrete designed in such a way that if meltdown occurs, breaching the base of the reactor core, the molten core will spread out on the floor of the containment chamber, increasing the surface area so it will cool faster. Once it has all cooled and hardened, engineers in protective clothing would then break up the core mass and it would be removed to a nuclear waste processing plant. There would be no massive explosion and no radioactive contamination beyond a local amount.

Currently there are members of the US atomic energy commission, 12 French engineers who are experts in nuclear accidents and a consultant from Tschernobyl on site as well as British scientists assisting the engineers at Fukushima. Yukiya Amano, head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, says Fukushima’s reactor vessels “have held and radioactive release is limited” despite the effects of the earthquake and tsunami.Japan has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to provide expert help at its damaged nuclear plant. IAEA will be giving daily briefings on the situation at Fukushima Daiichi, and is satisfied that TepCo have been given full, honest and detailed information on what has been going on – another way in which this situation is completely different to Tschernobyl, where the Russian authorities did not admit a major nuclear incident had taken place until other countries had started detecting elevated radiation levels. Thus far Russia has confirmed it is monitoring radiation levels at its nearest observatory on an hourly basis but detected no increase in radiation, which is in line with what TepCo has reported.

That was unexpected….

It’s Sunday evening, it’s 7pm… and St Mary’s is shut up and dark!

I have no idea what’s going on. No notice on the door or on the notice board out front, and no email has gone round, so I have no idea what’s going on – only that the usual 7pm service, for whatever reason, isn’t on this evening. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to it.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to look forward to next week instead.