Magic Statistics

Mr T takes on Bishop Spong.

via Drell's Descants.

The 1559 version of the Book of Common Prayer has just been re-issued by the University of Virginia Press. Michael Dirda, book critic for the Washington Post, discusses the importance and continuing value of the BCP and other religious literature from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

The solemn harmonies of such prose are largely ignored in these days of text-messaging and political newspeak. Even among our stylists, we prefer breeziness and irony, sometimes laced with snarky wit and street vulgarity. This in your face writing somehow feels personal and honest, more sincere or authentic than an elevated and poetical diction. No one wants epithets like "pontifical," "sermonizing" or "artificial" attached to his writing. Nonetheless, there are times when only the full organ roll of liturgical prose can match the glory or sacredness of the occasion. These are, of course, those times when we make our way to church or synagogue for weddings, funerals and religious holy days.

In English there are five main sources for this kind of religious eloquence: The King James version of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, the hymns of writers like Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley and others, and the classical traditions of oratory and homily. What links them all is a Shaker plainness and cleanness of diction, just barely covering profound spiritual conviction and emotion. This is, in short, the speech of men and women doing the Lord's work, honoring him and praising him with due reverence, ceremony and fervor.

Read the whole thing.

via The Prayer Book Society: News.

Gianna Jensen is now 28 years old. She survived an attempt to abort her by saline injection when her mother was 7-1/2 months pregnant.

But in the early morning of April 6, 1977, the abortion failed. Against the odds, the baby had lived. A nurse called the emergency services and the child was taken to hospital. She weighed only 2lb and the abortionist had to sign her birth certificate.

Then, at 17 months, Miss Jessen was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, caused by her brain being starved of oxygen during the termination. "The doctors said I was in a horrible state," she says. "They said I would never be able to lift up my head, but eventually I did. Then they said I would never be able to sit up straight, but I sat up straight. Then they said I would never be able to walk, but by the age of three I was walking with a frame and leg braces. She pauses before adding: I have a little bit of feistiness in me."

Feisty is right. She is entered in next April's London Marathon. Not surprisingly, she speaks against abortion.

"It's more comfortable for people to think of abortion as a political decision, or a right. But I am not a right. I am a human being. I am the reality. Gently I put the question, if abortion is about women's rights, then where were mine? There was no radical feminist screaming for my rights on that day."
. . .
On Tuesday, Miss Jessen will speak at the House of Lords in support of the British charity Alive and Kicking, which campaigns to eliminate abortion on the grounds of disability.

Last week, a study reported that 50 babies are born alive every year following abortions in the UK.

Every Tuesday morning for over twenty years, the Inklings met at a pub in Oxford to talk, drink, and smoke. Max Davidson of the Daily Telegraph recently visited that pub.

The little room where I am sitting, at the back of the Eagle and Child, is a holy place in the annals of English literature. In this room, every Tuesday morning between 1939 and 1962, a group called the Inklings met to discuss, among other things, the books they were writing. Note the years, then note the two best-known members of the Inklings: JRR ("Ronald") Tolkien, later professor of English at Oxford, and CS ("Jack") Lewis, fellow of Magdalen College.

As war raged in Europe, two of the finest minds in the country were incubating novels of pure escapism: fantastic tales in which children could walk through the backs of wardrobes and creatures with sticking-out ears roamed across Middle Earth.

Lewis, Tolkien, and friends also smoked and drank–rather a lot, it sounds like.

In 1939, there would also have been a thick pall of cigarette smoke - CS Lewis was a 60-a-day man.

There is a plaque on the wall commemorating the Inklings and the fact that, when not talking about their books, they "drank Beer" How I love that artless capital B! You can glimpse a whole world behind it.

Next to the plaque, there is a framed hand-written letter, signed by the Inklings and, by the look of it, written when they were sloshed. "We, the undersigned," it begins, "having just partaken of your house, have drunk your health."

For more on Lewis's life in Oxford, read the whole thing.

This photo of the StatDaughter and me in front of the famous pub was taken by the StatWife in July 2004. We visited the back room of the Eagle and Child where photos, letters, and other memorabilia of the Inklings are displayed. We also had fine pub lunches, complete with local ale.

The collect for today, the 2nd Sunday in Advent, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou has given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.