Good
morning and welcome to today’s Sunday Spinster Sermon brought to you with the
battle cry ‘Lead the revolution in your bedroom & set all the zippers
free!' The week began with a mighty T10 over in Asia and ended with the Olympic
Opening Ceremony in England.
Many zippers will have been set free. Grindr, the all male find-a-friend app
crashed. Love has been shared across the land.
This leads
us to today’s first reading. A short tale of love and loss inspired by the
young bucks strutting around the Castle I type this from and my interesting
period of fallow.
The Greek
myth of Diana and Actaeon can be
found within Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The tale recounts the unfortunate fate of a
young hunter named Acteon who was the grandson of Cadmus, and his encounter
with chaste Diana, goddess of the hunt. The lovely goddess was nude and
enjoying a bath in a spring with help from her escort of nymphs when the foolish
but exceptionally handsome man unwittingly stumbled upon the scene. The nymphs
screamed in surprise and attempted to cover Diana, who, in a fit of embarrassed
fury, splashed water upon Actaeon. He transformed into a deer with dappled hide
and long antlers, robbed of his ability to speak, and thereafter promptly fled
in fear. It is not long, unfortunately, before his fellow hunters and his own
hounds track him down and kill him, failing to recognize their friend.
Not a
problem to be found whilst using Grindr.
The myth
was explored through dance and art and poetry and music in a soul enhancing
extravaganza on the BBC this week.
If you’re lucky enough to get BBC
iPlayer you can watch here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01l8tgh/imagine..._Summer_2012_Dancing_with_Titian/
Or if you
visit London
this Summer the installations and original Titians are on display http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/metamorphosis-titian-2012
The second
element of today’s Spinster Sermon must of course be the Opening Ceremony
of the Olympics. Another fusion of dance, history, myth, art, poetry,
fairytale, theatre and magic. All the wonderful lefty multicultural crap, as a
Tory MP so eloquently tweeted.
Thanks to
Danny Boyle, I have finally started watching sport. I hated it as a child. I
was forced to watch it on TV, in the same way I was forced to go to church on a
Sunday by an over zealous father with Creationist tendencies. Once you added
bullish, bulldyke PE teachers and skipping training bras to go straight to a
cup size before going to Secondary School, my sporting fervour was somewhat
diminished. I must have been one of the few children at school who adored
English and Maths and Science but would actually bunk off to avoid the agonies
of a PE class.
The
pageantry of the weekend has transformed this. I can now see sport as theatre,
sport as storytelling, sport as beauty. (Sunday Worship to follow confirms
this)
I’ve never
achieved the dizzying heights of success that these athletes earn through years
of determination and endeavour. This led me to wonder what would be my top ten
moments so far? What have been my Olympian moments? Moments where I’ve transcended
the every day to become a champion? I have no wedding day or first born to
celebrate. No marathon or race won, so what have been my moments of perfection?
These were
the top ten that came to mind as I mused last night.
- Hearing that I looked beautiful in the moonlight by my first love as I lay naked on the two single beds pushed together
- Flying a Cessna over the Okavango Delta I’d just mokoroed down
- Getting A grade A-levels on the same day as my little brother and seeing mum cry with happiness
- Learning dad would live after signing papers agreeing he was brain dead
- Swimming with sharks off Dyer Island in South Africa
- Learning I was going to present the BBC documentary IpsoFacto when I was 15
- Kissing an ill-fated pararmour under the stars on a sampan in the South China Seas
- Being fed a joint and a ribena by two separate boys after a night clubbing in Leeds, too content to move
- Strutting in heels through a heavily armed PLA in a square in Beijing on route to an Asian Football Cup party without authorisation but high so feeling authorised
- Sitting in my house on Lamma Island after a big party thinking about the friends I’d made and life I’d created, thinking, I did this.
They’re my
breathtaking moments. Amongst hundreds of others. The ones that come first to
mind. I encourage you to think of your own. They’ll make you smile.
Now for
some light relief with our Sunday Worship: http://wheelr.tumblr.com/post/27937753079/hotlympics-the-hunks-of-london-2012
No Tom
Daley is not there, he has a 12 year olds head and can be googled easily.
I leave you
with another piece of lefty multicultural art. A spot more Italian Renaissance by the very clever Alt-J.
Til morning
comes, let’s tessellate.
Peace with
be you
x
No comments:
Post a Comment