The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Eight: Discordia

Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears 
Inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe
Across the Universe - The Beatles - Lennon & McCartney

Good evening. Apologies for my tardiness. Sunday was spent nor sermonising but being potential vomcano while at work following a wild night on the Welsh borders while simultaneously planning a rather magnificent wedding in the castle grounds this Saturday (and watching Downton Abbey). Monday was Cheshire Constabulary's Traffic Light Re-education Camp (and XFactor).

Today is the day. I write this on the train to Liverpool. I'm off to the Northern Tate. Today's sermon was going to be entitled 'Pillow Talk.' It was going to play you Doris Day singing the film's title and wax lyrical on the two leading men in my life.  As I lay in bed last night, I had mused on the solace of the spinster and how my two best friends in the Shire are both 12 years my junior and male. They are also polar opposites. One shall be named Middle Wallop, after the army ball he invited me to. The other, Minimal Techno, due to his preference for such sounds, preferably in Germany where his big gay mohawk stands out less. I was going to extol their virtues. How Middle Wallop rescued me from an incestuous, crossbow toting, crack house with no heating in the snows of February. How Minimal Techno performed the same function in less dangerous but equally revolting cat litter mixed with hair extension hell, flat of filth, but no!

This must wait, perhaps for some emotional, misty, nostalgic sermon when I've gone. Today's sermon is DISCORD.

The Judgement of Paris - Rubens

Paris ran off with Helen of Troy. That's the famous bit. The one with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom and a Trojan horse. But was what it's cause? Helen's beauty? Ish. The actual cause came from Eris or Discordia (the Roman version). She'd been snubbed from a party and was not amused. So, she arrived at the party, and as all wonderful baddies do, introduced an apple to the proceedings. It was not any apple however but a GOLDEN apple from the Garden of Hesperides (a very nice garden which was known to have lots of apples and lots of snakes). Upon this apple was the inscription καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest one").

Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera with her peacock, Athena with her owl and Aphrodite with her dove. They then engaged in a somewhat misguided beauty contest, seeing as Aphrodite was the Goddess of love and beauty. They asked Zeus to judge which of them was fairest, and eventually he, reluctant to favour any claim himself, declared that Paris, a Trojan mortal, would judge their cases, for he had recently shown his exemplary fairness in a contest in which Ares (Aries) in bull form had bested Paris's own prize bull, and the shepherd-prince had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the god.

Each goddess wanted to be judged the fairest, so they each undressed and presented themselves to Paris naked, in hopes of appearing more sexual than the other two. While Paris inspected them, each attempted with her powers to bribe him; Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered wisdom and skill in war, and Aphrodite, who had enhanced her charms with flowers and song, offered the world's most beautiful woman. This was Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus. Paris accepted Aphrodite's gift and awarded the apple to her, receiving Helen as well as the enmity of the Greeks and especially of Hera. The Greeks' expedition to retrieve Helen from Paris in Troy is the mythological basis of the Trojan War. 

This is why Eris is also known as Discordia, the upsetter of apple carts, the giggler, the chaos causer.

She's my favourite Goddess.

She doesn't toss that golden apple about for nothing. She's upset and angry and is balancing the scales. She wasn't invited to the party. The world is in imbalance and must be righted. An Old Testament eye for an eye. Tooth for tooth. Hurt for hurt. Not terribly New Testament or Buddhist. No turning of cheeks or feeling compassion for the suffering that caused the behaviour. Just good old fashioned smiting. With an apple.

Disney understands. In Sleeping Beauty, Malificent wasn't invited. If the organisers of the christening had simply popped a welcome in the post, all the later pricked finger, blind prince episode could have been averted. Cause and effect. Flora, Fauna & Merryweather could have saved their magic.

According to the star stories, I was born when a new dwarf planet named 2003 UB₃₁₃  was right besides the sun if you were to look up from my bed in Stepping Hill Hospital. This heavenly body was only found 7 years ago and was called Xena for a while. There's lots of discussion about the how and whys of how scientists name things here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet) I'm glad she kept her Greco Roman title. It may only be a dwarf planet, but it's important to me. As you can imagine. I have Erisian tendancies.

As much as last week at Burning Man was all about the love, this week has been throwing those apple bombs and asking people how they like them.

On Monday, I resigned. Upsetting the castle applecart. I have new dreams to follow. This morning's discord was brought to you by the letter M and the number 9. 

Mother enjoys arriving early with 10 minute buffers around each activity. I told her last night, that I would meet her at the front door at 9am. I hadn't slept til about 3, musing Pillow Talk sermons, so I was snoozing when I heard her march up the stairs to militant strains of Classic FM.

'Have you decided not to bother?' says she.

'No, I'm going to stay in bed all day............

I'm only joking........

I thought we said 9 o'clock'

'I need to buy tickets and a coffee'

'It's a ten minute walk to the station'

'It's quarter to nine already!'

'I learnt how to tell the time a number of years ago.'

'Do you want to go on your own?'

Complete silence for the following 15 minutes. At 9, I'm at the door with mother waiting as a impatient bull. She's a Taurean Ox. Immoveable. Immutable. A mighty monument. 

We set off. I put my headphones on. She walks 5 paces infront. At 9.05, she says she'll rush ahead to make sure there's time to collect tickets. At 9.12, I arrive and meet her at the gothic railway entrance. At 9.13, I'm buying my breakfast coffee and muffin. Train arrives, on time, at 9.24. We are on the move.

'I don't know why you're always so angry with me,' says she.

'Because you nag me all the time!'

'No I don't.'

'You do.

'I don't.'

'OK. You are wisdom and reason and perfection. I am irrational and wrong.'

'Good.'

'Good.'

Our lovely day out begins. No spinning wheels required.

A trip out does you good

A new British band called Bastille will sing us out with a perfectly apt song named Flaws.

'You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve
And I have always buried them deep beneath the ground
Dig them up. Let's finish what we've started
Dig them up. So nothing's left unturned.'

Peace be with you

x