Continuing to pick away at Christopher Booker's monumental work on storytelling: The seven basic plots.
His chapter on The Rule of three is particularly revealing. He outlines four (!) ways that threes are used in archetypal storytelling:
Cumulative three: each of the elements has the same value - all three have to be brought together in order for the plan to work. eg: the three treasure caves that Aladdin must go through before he gets to the lamp.
Ascending (or descending) three: where each is of more value (or more dangerous) than the last. This is a natural progression that leads to a climax. eg: Little Red Riding Hood's three questions: what big eyes, what big ears, what big teeth, or the three little pigs.
Contrasting three: where two of the three are there to give counterpoint to character or gifts of the third. eg: two ugly sisters are the contrast to Cinderella.
Dialectical three: This is the most sophisticated, where the first two are wrong or flawed for different reasons, before the best, or middle way is found in the third. eg: Goldilocks - the bears' porridge, chairs and beds, where two are tried and found faulty for different reasons, before the third is found that is just right.
This threeness finds its expression not just in story devices, and character interplay, but also in terms of the whole action of the plot.
Baptism has been in the news this week, as various parties have called for, or denounced, the revision and updating of the wording of the liturgy so that "it makes more sense to those taking part."
The birth of a baby is such a momentous occasion, we feel compelled to mark it socially, spiritually, formally in some way. After church one evening, I remember talking to a wild-eyed guy, who, on a moment's whim, had just rolled into the building after witnessing the birth of his first child. He was bursting with gratitude and a sense of amazement, and in an unfocussed way, simply wanted to express it somehow, somewhere, to someone.
The phrase in the headline refers to the similar, but arguably less noble, practice of new dad getting together with his mates for a night on the lash to celebrate his newfound status as Father.
The Church of England still baptises some 139,000 babies a year , and one suspects that many of these parents are there not because they are committed to the covenant view of inclusive salvation within the family for those who are not yet of age to decide for themselves (or indeed any other theoligcally relevant position for paedobaptism), but because they want to mark the birth in some formal way - and baptism is what you do. You get your kid "done".
Doesn't harm your chances of getting into a superior-performance church school either.
But the debate this week has been about the theological language that is wrapped around the rites for Baptism within the churches liturgy. It is just too complex, and does not connect in any meaningful way. This is undoubtedly true for the many who present for baptism who are "church outsiders", but I suspect that the meaning and relevance are also pretty opaque for the majority of insiders as well.
It's the godparents who suffer most, however.
Often chosen to cement or honour a family connection, rather than their spiritual qualities, the Godparents are a sight to behold. The stand, embarrassed and shell shocked at being at the front of a church, mumbling the responses, or staring wide-eyed in horror at them, as they read them for the first time in front of their friends and family. It's a hilarious and sad sight.
It's just that they are so very definite!
Do you trust in Christ? Thinks: I don't know what that means, and I haven't thought about Jesus since my last RE lesson when I was 15.
Do you repent of your sins?
Thinks: Not really - "sins" is not a category that I like to think in
Do you renounce the devil and all his works? Thinks: I remember this bit from The Godfather. He says this and lots of people die. Better keep quiet.
When I spoke about this to an old minister friend, he said that he found this particularly difficult. He is asking questions of people he deeply suspects are giving ingenuous answers. His answer? "I just keep my distance from them as they answer, so that I won't get hit with the lightning strike."
And here is the heart of the problem. People want the rite of passage, and potentially it is the greatest evangelistic opportunity the church has. But it is a largely untakable opportunity. They want their child "done", but by and large they do not want to prepare or train themselves for it, or to understand what it is they are doing, according to the words of the liturgy. And rarely do the Godparents have the opportunity to attend a meeting, or series of meetings where they will have it explained to them.
Tinkering with the wording may do something to clarify things - but it will not address the real problem, or create any greater opportunity for helping people to genuine faith.
Been reading a patchy book about ancient philosophy called The book of dead philosophers by Simon Critchley. It's a bit of a miscellany of stories about philosophers strung together with the question of their attitude to death, and their experience of it.
What struck me most was the way that names have so significantly changed. Stoics, for example, would happily blubber and shreik if they stubbed their toes in the shower, and you would be unlikely to find an epicurean with rows of fine herbes in their kitchen cabinet. But the bigger surprise was to discover the Cynics were not in the least bit cynical.
The Cynic philosophy originating in classical Greece essential holds that the purpose of life was to live a happy life of virtue in agreement with nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions.
Its most famous exponent was called Diogenes, who lived, naked, in a barrel in the marketplace, masturbated in public, and ate raw squid.
By contrast, modern cynicism is marked by a tendency to decry any noble motivation in how people live, preferring to reduce any character trait, organisation, political movement or idea to some base, or selfish motivation. Scepticism is often scornful and pessimistic; and emotionally jaded and filled with negativity. Not what you want to encourage in your kids.
Been holed up for the last few days with a horrid cold. Thought I'd celebrate my return to consciousness with these attempts at some more cinquains (see my first here):
The reader is the most important person in your world. You are working for them
The next sentence you write is the most important in your life. You may feel obliged to write, but no reader is obliged to read
No one will ever complain that you have made something too easy to understand.
The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader's intelligence.
Don't even start writing till you have decided what the one big thing is going to be, and then say it to yourself in just one sentence.
Words like shallow, facile, glib and slick are not insults to a journalist. The whole point of paying for a newspaper is that you want information that slides down easily and quickly, without footnotes, obscure references and footnotes to footnotes.
Remember that people will always respond to something close to them. Concerned citizens of south London should care more about economic reform in Surinam than about Millwall's fate on Saturday, but mostly they don't. Accept it.
Brilliant quote from G K Chesterton's book What is wrong with the World? which gives a new perspective on the old question. I've rewritten the quaint English for modern readers...
Evolutionary materialists paint for us a vision that all things come from an egg - which somehow laid itself by accident. The Supernatural school thinks that this world of ours is an egg brooded over by a sacred unbegotten mother hen. And this egg exists to become something more...
Continuing to pick away at Christopher Booker's monumental work on storytelling: The seven basic plots.
