Sobriety Bites: The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Three

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.