Three Cheers for BT: hip,hip; hip,hip; hip,hip; ......

Hello friends and fellow mariners of the Pro Papa League armada!

Disaster, disaster! Owing to fierce storms and lightning last week, we have been without the Internet since last Saturday. I have been as it were, lost at sea, confused and desolate, with no sight nor sound of fellow mariners. But now what joy, all is well! Three cheers for BT (British Telecom)! The Internet is back, and here I am bashing away (yes I have to confess that I am a keyboard basher!), desperate to renew contact with the fleet!

Recently I came across a rather delightful poem written by my favourite poet, John Betjeman, entitled 'Diary of a Church Mouse', and I can think of nothing better to cheer myself and I hope others, than to share this little gem with you. Interestingly the poet has included the following prefix - 'Lines, written to order on a set subject, to be spoken on the wireless'.

Diary of a Church Mouse

Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the Vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into Church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes......it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear the organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of year
Not once inside the Church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house.
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.

John Betjeman

**********************

Two extracts from 'Thoughts from St Alphonsus' for November, the month of 'All Saints' and the 'Holy Souls'.


"In heaven you have all you can desire. There everything is new: new beauties, new delights, new joys. The sight shall be satiated with beholding the beauty of that city. The hearing shall be satiated with the harmony of the heavenly choir. How delightful must it be to hear the saints and angels singing the Divine Praises!" (November 11th)

and

"Of all the pains endured by the holy souls, the greatest is caused by their being at a distance from their Spouse, and by their privation of the sight of Him." (November 10th)


'Our Lady Queen of Heaven, pray for us, and guide and protect our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVIth'