Jamie123

Maybe "calling" isn't the right word. People agree to be rostered to do different things to help, but there's no sense that God is "calling" them to it. Another of my "things" is to collect my friend Marjory from her house and drive her to church, set out all the tables and chairs for after-service coffee in the church hall. Then put the coffee machine on, while Marjory sets out all the cups and saucers and gets the biscuits ready. When the last hymn is starting we rush out, run around like headless chickens when we discover the coffee machine never switched itself on, get the tea ready, pour out the tea and coffee when people arrive, afterwards wash up, put the tables and chairs and cups and saucers away. Go into another another panic because Room 5 is locked and no one has the key. Find the key. Put the coffee machine and the tea and coffee and uneaten biscuits away, and then drive Marjory home. All good fun.

The nave, vestry and sanctuary, plus the choir stalls and the piano area - are pretty much the whole church. It's not like our local Methodist church, whose internal arrangements remind you of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. There is the porch too, which sometimes needs sweeping out of dead leaves. It's a very small church - but very old. It predates the town, and was originally a stopping-off chapel for soldiers on their way to the Crusades. We do have a church hall too, which is a lot larger, but the cleaning of that is organized separately.

Similar...but doesn't quite inspire the same level of evil glee as abandoning "dear old Henry" to the horrors of the landfill!

Every month me (and another bloke called Alan) have to vacuum the church. I do the back area around the piano and the organ, and the nave (where most people sit) and Alan does the "holy end" - the vestry and the area around the altar. I guess it's similar to what you people call a "calling". Anyway, the vacuum cleaner I use is "Henry": I have no idea whether you have "Henry" in America but he is really popular here. He has a top that looks like a derby hat, with a long cord that pulls out and you wind a handle to get it back. And you drag him around to where the dirt is, and he sucks it up his long extended nose. If you pull him too fast he topples over and his "hat" comes off. Anyway, I have seen Henry vacuum cleaners in B&Q for about £150. I have often thought of buying one and taking him straight to the rubbish tip and chucking him with all the other used appliances. That would wipe the smile off his smug little face, don't you think?

What do you call a man with a plank of wood on his head? Edward What do you call a man with two planks of wood on his head? Edward Wood What do you call a man with three planks of wood on his head? Edward Woodward What do you call a man with four planks of wood on his head? I don't know either, but Edward Woodward would.

Chapter 9: Great stuff! All very Agatha Christie! The Chief Judge is murdered but whodunit? There are the five "obvious suspects", but their guilt is a little too obvious. Along comes Nephi (Miss Marple with divine revelation) to solve the mystery. Whatever anyone else says, I say Joan Hickson was the bestest Miss Marple of all:

I was thinking much the same thing!

Just a little joke. It occurred to me that though Anglicanism is still deeply embedded in my life, I've recently been giving more attention to the Book of Mormon than to the Bible. Not that I've even giving enough attention to either, but the Book of Mormon has caught my imagination a lot. I keep thinking about the "stripling warriors". I'm not sure how great a father Helemon was to his actual children (I suspect a good one - he seems like that kind of man) but he was a great father figure to his men. They must have been a similar age to the students here at the university (the younger ones anyway) so however much I've mucked up as a father, I can still strive to be like Heleman and do my best for the students. Its quite an inspiration.

Ah well, living arrangements would scarcely change. My wife left me about 6 months ago for...well, for a number of reasons, but mainly because she couldn't cope with my declining mental health. Things are as they are (more's the pity) but sending large arachnids to a chronic arachnophobe would not, I suspect, help much.

I would so love to send one to my wife for Christmas. We'll...I wouldn't really. It would be mean, and I'd have a lot of repenting to do afterwards. But...amongst the guilt and remorse, there would be a tiny particle of pleasure. Not enough to make it worthwhile though. *I polish my halo*

"Mockingbird Hill" sung by Patti Page. That never fails to cheer me up: And there's this delightful song sung by a delightful girl... ...which I think has become a hackneyed annoyance to LDS people - perhaps the equivalent of the poem Footprints to certain cynical types in my own tradition. I'm uncool enough to like Footprints and "yah, boo and sucks" to anyone who calls me out for it.

Ah well - that's the first of his videos I ever saw, so I guess I came in half way. Having said that though, aren't Latter-day Saints also looking for effective ways to preach their beliefs to other Christians? It works both ways. P.S. I removed the link, as it could (at a stretch) be regarded as anti-Mormon. I thought it was rather a nice summary of Alma, but best to be of the safe side.

On second thoughts I'm removing this link. While he isn't "anti-Mormon" exactly, he doesn't hold back from identifying things he believes are wrong. As far as keeping to the rules of this forum, I'd rather err on the side of caution.

It's certainly the case in the UK. They're as bad as each other. Whenever there's an election I'm strongly tempted to vote Monster Raving Loony (an actual party!)

If you think about it, simply being intelligent or beautiful is nothing to brag about anyway, unless you put it to some good use. Just sitting on it is being like the "one talent servant" who hid his money in the ground. (You may think this servant was a bit of a waste of space anyway to only be trusted with one talent, until you realise that a "talent" was the equivalent of about a million dollars today. The master was staking a major investment in that man.)

It's very similar to the story of the wise and foolish builders (Luke 6 and Matthew 7). And who can hear that without remembering...?

Would it be correct to read "combination" as "conspiracy"? ("Secret combination" sounds like something you use to unlock your bicycle.)

Thanks Zil - I've been lagging for a few days but I've almost caught up again now. Yes, these chapters are a bit dry in places. I can imagine many people reading them in the same spirit that they slogged through the Wars of the Roses at school. If you want something even dryer though, try 1 Maccabees. (I don't know about 2 Maccabees - I never managed to finish 1 Maccabees!)

<winge>That makes you approximately four years younger than me. It sucks to get old. I wish I could be a stripling again.</winge>

Alma 56:30: "Antipus ordered that I should march forth with my little sons to a neighboring city, as if we were carrying provisions to a neighboring city." That's exactly what I thought it meant. I simply said the word (for me) conjured up a mental image. We don't use the word "stripling" much nowadays. If there were an "NIV" version of the Book of Mormon, I suppose it might have "juvenile" instead. But it was not supposed to be a deep insight. I cannot quote you chapter and verse right now, but they are definitely referred to at some point as "righteous men".* *Doubt now assails me. Perhaps I'm remembering something I read on this thread rather than in the actual BoM.

I have heard of the "stripling warriors" before. I know what a "stripling" is, but I can't dissociate it from being "stripped" naked. My mental image is of a bunch of naked guys with swords and shields running around chopping people's heads off. It's odd that Helaman should call them "little sons" - were some of them perhaps not fully grown? (They are described as "men", not "boys", though maybe in that language there was no separate word for "boy" and boys were just called "young men".) Also maybe they were "little" in age, not physical size.

Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?

I have walked around Uffington Castle many times and don't remember ever seeing any signs of a wall. I haven't found any speculative pictures of what it looked like, but im sure i do remember seeing one on TV once. I think its generally believed there was once a wall, but it would have been a wooden stockade, not a stone wall. (The motte and bailey castles built by the Normans would originally have been wooden too, though later replaced with stone.) Offa's Dyke may have been a mound and ditch, but it was nearly 200 miles long, so no mean achievement. I don't know if it originally had a wall or not, but I did find this picture: Another example would be Hadrian's Wall, but I don't think that had an earthwork - it was just a wall. As was the Roman wall around London. That wall was still intact in 1066, and it allowed the Londoners to repel William the Conqueror. (That's right! Whatever you may have been told, London was never conquered by the Normans! William tried twice, but was repelled both times. He eventually had to negotiate a peace, whereby they would recognise him as king provided he didn’t interfere with their affairs. That is why to this day London is not only its own city - quite separate from Greater London - but its own county*.) Only a tiny fragment of that wall now exists, next to the Tower of London: (BTW only the lower part of that wall is Roman - where the stonework is darker. The upper part is much later.) *One reason why Matilda never became queen after capturing her rival was because she refused to recognise the special status of London. The Londoners slung her out of the city and reinstated Stephen as king.

When you're at the bottom of the social scale, I don't suppose it matters much whether there's a king at the top or a bunch of squabbling aristocrats. When the French gave Louis XVI the chop, the people "of high birth" pretty soon went the same way. Fun fact: Marie Antoinette's final words were "I am sorry monsieur, I did not do it on purpose". (She had just trodden on the executioner's foot.)