THAT DON'T IMPRESS ME MUCH

 

Roadside planting, but it could be Chelsea '24

Shania Twain’s on the stereo as I drive north to Leadenham and the beginning of today’s walk. Deep into the second week of campaigning for the forthcoming General Election, a row has broken out about Sunak’s claim that the Labour party will increase everyone’s taxes by £2000, the timescale on which this will happen, and how this estimate was obtained. Starmer says Sunak lied. Sunak says he didn’t. 

Sue and I are due to take worship at Morcott this Sunday. The first reading set in the lectionary is from the book of Samuel.  To be frank, old man Samuel has become rather boring to the Children of Israel. They don’t appreciate his advice and they don’t like or trust his sons, so they demand a king, because everyone else has one. Samuel does a ‘be careful what you wish for’. He tells the people a king will very likely become a tyrant, and rig the affairs of the nation to suit himself at their expense. Are they sure this is a good idea?

In a short homily, like many others at this time, we’ll be trying to explore the question of whether the Bible can help us as we choose whom to vote for. Answer?  Well, it can’t, not in the specifics, and as far as it goes, all we can suggest is to look at what Paul wrote to the Philippians at the end of his letter to them, which comes down to following the path to Christian charity and seeing where that gets you.  Where can kindness be found? 

Even as I’m driving and in between Shania’s ministrations, Tim from Rutland calls into Radio 5 to say he’s a lifelong Liberal, but amid the twaddle being talked by the various Parties, he thinks Alicia Kearns our local (Tory) MP is doing a great job for her constituents, and this now causes him a ballot box problem. I agree. If the predicted Labour landslide comes about, there’s a strong argument for wanting some sensible far-sighted Tories in the Commons next time, wherever one’s principles would naturally lead one to place a cross. But…

A difficulty right now is that all the parties are, how shall we say, dissembling about money. Taxes will have to be maintained, or rise. They cannot be reduced,  because public services are already on their knees, particularly and most grievously the National Health Service, although social care, education, roads and national security (which includes food security) also warrant mentions.  Further ‘efficiency savings’ cannot be made, and certainly not by further devolution of responsibility to local authorities who are already on the verge of bankruptcy.  The economy cannot be ‘grown faster’ sufficiently to fund urgent needs, not even by building millions of houses which would itself raise further problems, rather than solving them. You and I will have to pay more.  But no one will say it, not even the Greens.

So yes, you’ve got it, as far as anything the politicians say right now, ‘That don’t impress me much…’

Roman road, perhaps with a service station

Out of Leadenham, I puff my way to the top of the Cliff, and set out east along Long Lane until it reaches a crossroads with Ermine Street, here just a track, well-rutted by bikes that have been powered by both humans and engines.  At Cocked Hat Plantation I hang a right and after another mile arrive at Temple Bruer.  Here, in the middle of a small, classy country housing development, is the one remaining tower of a once splendid preceptory church built by the Knights Templar. It would have had a round nave, in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Situated as it is, some ten miles from Lincoln, it was a statement of the power of this 12^th century movement within the Church, indicating independence from and rivalry with the influence of such an extensive, influential diocese. Seeing it, in the middle of the Lincolnshire heathlands (‘Bruer’ finds its derivation in the French bruyère or ‘heath’) you were meant to be impressed.  Perhaps you would have been in awe of these men who set off to travel a couple of thousand miles across Europe to defend the sites of the Holy Land. This was a multi-national enterprise capable of money transfer over great distances. A knight could hand in his wealth at Temple Bruer, or one of their many other sites, and be given a promissory note to be redeemed once he pitched up in Jerusalem. 

The Knights’ military-religious system went to the bad in the end. Their military might was reduced, and diverted to more philanthropic roles, as the centralised power of the Catholic Church grew. In our latter Dan Brown-times they’ve been the subject of speculation involving the Masonry and all kinds of extra-biblical esoterica.  The Knights Templar were always bound to become too big for their boots. ‘We’re defending Christianity on your behalf’ they would have boasted, ‘What are you doing to justify your puny stay-at-home faith?’  

And so the Church of England, the ‘Established Church’ flirts with power even today.  How do we evaluate the temptations of staying close to the national political action alongside the Gospel injunction to be ‘salt of the earth’.  Do we actually provide any discernible moderation to the actions of our state as represented by its politicians and other leaders? Or have we largely ‘gone native’, if we can still use such an expression?

I veer away across the fields to pick up Ermine Street briefly and then continue past the former RAF Wellingore on a farmer’s path through barley, wheat and kale to the outskirts of the village itself.  From here the Canadian pilot John Magee set out on the mission during which he was killed in December 1941. To him we owe the poem ‘High Flight’:

‘Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.

Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things

you have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung

high in the sunlit silence. Hovering there

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

my eager craft through footless halls of air.

 

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace

where never lark or even eagle flew –

and while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

the high untrespassed sanctity of space -

put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

 

It’s a poem which has been used countless times complete or in quotation to celebrate the lives of lost aviators. And surrounded by a big fragile blue sky, it’s easy to imagine Magee and his fellow pilots lifting above the Lincolnshire countryside to confront a clear and present existential danger.

Recent wedding at Wellingore

As I walk back to Leadenham, I stop by the churches of All Saints, Wellingore and St. Chad’s, Welbourn.  They’re both beautiful, and filled with detail lovingly applied to their blank canvasses over centuries by the giving of volunteers who from their humble lives felt a need to respond to God’s love for them and their communities.

This impresses me very much indeed.

Leadenham – Temple Bruer – Wellingore – Welbourn – Leadenham

22 km.  5.5. hrs. 16 deg. C. Variable cloud, and a flukey cool breeze.

‘That don’t impress me much’ was a massive 1998 hit for Shania Twain, co-written with her then husband Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange.  As Taylor Swift has done more recently, Twain cleverly mined the hinterland between country and pop to make international stardom. Her songs celebrate woman-power and sexuality in a cheeky, speak-to-the-listener way.  Famously, this song features the spoken, teasing line, ‘So you’re Brad Pitt’, as it sends up male fixations with hair, cars and alleged brainpower. Having overcome career-threatening vocal problems, Shania Twain is appearing at Glastonbury in a few weeks’ time.