Anglican-Orthodox dialogue in happier days

From the 1950s onwards, my father was a member of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, founded during the 1920s to promote greater dialogue between the East and the West (at a time when Rome, the abortive history of the Malines conversations notwithstanding, largely eschewed ecumenical contact). Dominated in its early days by the larger-than-life Nicholas Zernov and his formidable wife Melitza, it hosted annual conferences that drew such speakers as Donald Allchin, Anthony Bloom, Lev Gillet, Kallistos Ware and Rowan Williams. The following is an undated fragment chronicling aspects of a conference clearly held in Durham, whose unknown author (almost certainly an Anglican) captures some of the spirit of the Fellowship in its heyday.

1. PRAISE MY SOUL THE KING OF HEAVEN
TO HIS FEET THE TRIBUTE BRING
Oh my gosh, it's half past seven -
How can I expect to sing?
Yawning, moaning,
Stretching, groaning,
Here the damned alarm clock ring.

2. LOAFERS IN YOUR SEATS ADORE HIM,
YE who SIT THERE FAST ASLEEP
Yes we know this talk would bore Him
And that question make him weep.
MAKING Speeches
FRAMED AS QUESTIONS
Voicing contemplations deep.

3. VOICES SO DISTINGUISHED MEET US,
KALLISTOS INTONING prayers,
Rowan's velvet Welsh tones greet us -
When he speaks we know he cares -
Canon Allchin's
Reading poems
And Elizabeth BRIERE'S

4. LITURGIES which run forever
Vespers drag on hour by hour
Standing always SITTING NEVER
Held up by the Spirit's power.
Evensong and
EARLY matins
In the shade of Durham tower.

5. DRINKING beer with Greeks and Romans
Every evening in the bar.
ALCOHOL IN OUR ABDOMENS
Helps to make our thinking shar-p
Thinking deeply
Drinking deeper
Theologians that we are.

The Office: The Moral Subtext

The Office ended yesterday and while there were wonderful moments throughout "No Place like the Office," the closing sequence was surprisingly moving, from Andy's lament: I wish there was a way to know you're in the "good old days" before you've actually left them, to Creed's philosophic: No matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make their place home.

The best, however, was saved for last and (appropriately) for Pam: There's a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn't that kind of the point? Could this be the reason why The Office struck such a chord in a decade so racked by political polarization and anomie? Far from being larger than life, the characters of The Office were all too human. For all their foibles and flaws, ordinary people living humdrum lives showed a degree of loyalty and commitment to fellow members of their community that compared favorably with the world at large.

The undoubted humor of The Office frequently obscured its moral subtext, yet in "No Place like the Office" the viewer was reminded of its importance.

Well worth watching in its entirety, the final sequence appears below.

NBC no longer provides a link, but there is a Youtube version here.

On the English Character

Linklater's wartime novel is a wonderful foray into both the English and Italian psyches (not to mention a truly entertaining read).

Much of what he learnt surprised him. He had always heard that the English were an arrogant, wealthy, and aggressive people; and he was astonished to find that they thought of themselves as very mild and easy-going creatures, chronically hard-up, and habitually deceived or over-ridden by their continental neighbors. They did, however, take pride in their sense of justice, and to Angelo this was quite incomprehensible; for he had often heard of the many millions of Indians, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Basutos, Zulus, Kikuyus, Scots, and Irish whom they held in slavery.

They were curiously heartless, he decided, for although they were far from home, he never saw them weeping and sighing for their distant wives, their deserted lovers, and their half-forgotten children. They wrote, indeed, innumerable letters, but said remarkably little in them. They ate enormously, and were continually making jokes that no adult European could understand: Angelo did his best, but was forced to conclude that their sense of humour, though deceptively robust, was quite elementary. The private soldiers grumbled prodigiously and professed a fearful cynicism about the intentions, practice, and good faith of their Government; yet strangely continued to serve it with zeal and do their duty with alacrity. They appeared to become dirty very easily, for they were always washing themselves. They talked a good deal about fornication, but looked askance at the Americans for their excessive indulgence in it. They all regarded football as a more exacting and therefore more praiseworthy art than making love, and many of them preferred it.

Angelo one day persuaded Simon to speak of English politics. Did Simon, he asked, truly believe in democracy?

'Yes, I think I do.' he answered. 'It doesn't work very well, of course, but what does?'

'Would not the ideal government,' asked Angelo, 'be that of an autocratic ruler who was also a philosopher?'

'Not in England,' said Simon. 'No one would admit that it was ideal, in the first place, and in the second we regard philosophy as a rarefied sort of entertainment, like chess or the more difficult crosswords.'

'You are a Conservative, I suppose?'

'Yes,' said Simon, 'I suppose I am. I have never actually voted, but then I am a member of the Church of England, and except for an occasional wedding I haven't in fact been in church since I left school. The Conservative Party and the Church of England are rather similar in that respect: you can belong to both of them without doing much about it. - I belong to two or three very good clubs, now that I think of it, that I never use though I still pay my subscriptions - But what I do believe in most devoutly is the party system, because when you get tired of the party in power you can always kick it out. You can kick it fairly hard, indeed, throughout its tenure of office. I should say that democracy is really represented by a party with a mind that knows how to act, a tender bottom that tells it when, and a well-shod electorate.'

***************************************************************************

'But there again I see the unfairness that rules the world!' cried Angelo . . . 'Life is war, and we who are virtuous may well lose every battle but the last one.'

'That,' said Simon's friend with noticeable stiffness, 'is the prerogative of the English.'

'Because you are good?' asked Angelo.

'It is an attractive hypothesis,' said Simon.

'There was a time when we aspired to goodness,' said his friend, 'and the world regarded us as hypocrites. Then we decided to pose as realists; and the world said we were effete.'

'But why do you win your last battles?' asked Angelo.

'We are amateurs,' said Simon's friend with a noisy yawn, 'and the amateur lasts longer than the professional.'

Eric Linklater, Private Angelo (London: Buchan and Enright, 1986; orig. pub. 1946), 90-91, 112-113.