After the funeral…
Well, Leicester made a pretty decent job of it, despite not being York.
I liked the poem by Carol Ann Duffy - a lovely piece of writing.
I spotted what made Philippa Langley and John Ashdown-Hill wince in the eulogy: the speaker twice said "London" instead of "Ludlow" (in Shropshire).
Could have done with less Philippa Gregory and Julian Fellowes among the talking heads. She isn't a historian and he is a pompous ass. At least they had Helen Castor there, anyway.
Some of the historical sniping seems strange, though. Even if Richard had done everything some people claim, why single him out for opprobrium? Alexander II of Scots' reputation has never been demonised for publicly bashing the infant MacWilliam heiress's head against the mercat cross in Forfar. Francesco dei' Medici, a much-admired patron of the arts and sciences, seems to have been complicit in the so-called 'honour killings' of a sister and a sister-in-law. Richard III has never been accused of killing or harming people for kicks: it's all political, not personal, unlike the allegations of serial rape against Richard I as Count of Poitou. Consider, too, the career of 'Saint' Constantine, 'Equal to the Apostles': seizing the throne in a war against his father-in-law and brother-in-law (who both ended up dead), and the murky circumstances around the deaths of his eldest son and his own wife. There are churches dedicated to the bastard (and I use the term accurately: his mother, a tavern wench his father had picked up on campaign, often shares church dedications with him…) and people actually pray to him.
However, the service also highlighted for me some of the basic problems of Christianity. There's the sheer absurdity of Western Europe being steamrollered by a Middle-Eastern cult, a Mormon-type spin-off of Judaism: readings about Egypt, Israel, & c. All its geographical and mythological reference points are on other continents. At school in RE, it baffled me that I was expected to regard as adoptive ancestors a bunch of guys traipsing around in the desert, while my real ones didn't count until they were made to convert. (And yet Christians often get hot-under-the collar at people taking up "exotic Eastern religions" such as Buddhism. Pot, meet kettle…)
And then there was the guff in the sermon about real power being in "weakness", the obsession with humility, suffering & c. "But take away our pride", said the hymn. Why? That is all many people have to keep going. Pride is a virtue, not a "sin". An authoritarian religion needs to keep people on their knees, tell them that it's better to be poor and humble, the better to dominate them. "Pie in the sky when you die", as another young man who died too soon wrote.
I liked the poem by Carol Ann Duffy - a lovely piece of writing.
I spotted what made Philippa Langley and John Ashdown-Hill wince in the eulogy: the speaker twice said "London" instead of "Ludlow" (in Shropshire).
Could have done with less Philippa Gregory and Julian Fellowes among the talking heads. She isn't a historian and he is a pompous ass. At least they had Helen Castor there, anyway.
Some of the historical sniping seems strange, though. Even if Richard had done everything some people claim, why single him out for opprobrium? Alexander II of Scots' reputation has never been demonised for publicly bashing the infant MacWilliam heiress's head against the mercat cross in Forfar. Francesco dei' Medici, a much-admired patron of the arts and sciences, seems to have been complicit in the so-called 'honour killings' of a sister and a sister-in-law. Richard III has never been accused of killing or harming people for kicks: it's all political, not personal, unlike the allegations of serial rape against Richard I as Count of Poitou. Consider, too, the career of 'Saint' Constantine, 'Equal to the Apostles': seizing the throne in a war against his father-in-law and brother-in-law (who both ended up dead), and the murky circumstances around the deaths of his eldest son and his own wife. There are churches dedicated to the bastard (and I use the term accurately: his mother, a tavern wench his father had picked up on campaign, often shares church dedications with him…) and people actually pray to him.
However, the service also highlighted for me some of the basic problems of Christianity. There's the sheer absurdity of Western Europe being steamrollered by a Middle-Eastern cult, a Mormon-type spin-off of Judaism: readings about Egypt, Israel, & c. All its geographical and mythological reference points are on other continents. At school in RE, it baffled me that I was expected to regard as adoptive ancestors a bunch of guys traipsing around in the desert, while my real ones didn't count until they were made to convert. (And yet Christians often get hot-under-the collar at people taking up "exotic Eastern religions" such as Buddhism. Pot, meet kettle…)
And then there was the guff in the sermon about real power being in "weakness", the obsession with humility, suffering & c. "But take away our pride", said the hymn. Why? That is all many people have to keep going. Pride is a virtue, not a "sin". An authoritarian religion needs to keep people on their knees, tell them that it's better to be poor and humble, the better to dominate them. "Pie in the sky when you die", as another young man who died too soon wrote.