The marquee is up, occupying half of the car park of the Black Swan in Asselby, ready for the pub to re-open - at least for outdoor drinking - next Monday. On my photographic forays I used to finish off a session with a pint in some country pub. I’m now wondering just how many local pubs will re-open next week, and how many have closed their doors for good…
Licenced today: Crickhowell... which often appears in lists of the best places to live...
Though my sample is small - just the people I meet when I’m out taking pictures - I get the feeling that, with the end of lockdown 3.0 in sight, people are particular friendly, approachable and up for a chat. I march up to people, on the slightest pretext, merely to exchange a few socially-distanced pleasantries. They all reciprocate, even though, with a full beard and 'mad professor' hair, I look like a guy who sleeps under a bridge. I was taking pix in the village of Wheldrake the other day, when a lady in an open-topped sports car pulled up. “Would you like a drink?”, she asked. “No, thank you”, I replied. “Well”, she said, “if you want anything, I’m here”… pointing at the house just behind me. I think I missed a trick there.
Clara's cottage in the village of West Lutton...
Beswick Hall... a grade II listed building... just like my lovely home in Asselby...
Out with my camera today, around the wolds villages. This is a ford - one of many - in Lockington...
In the Christian purview, God can read our thoughts. Is there any evidence for this? No. It just says so in verse after biblical verse. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether” (Psalm 139).
I’m very glad my thoughts are private. I have illogical thoughts. I have unkind thoughts. I have envious thoughts. I have lustful thoughts. This doesn’t make me a bad person, of course; it just makes me normal. The point is how we deal with thoughts like these, and whether or not we act on them.
It’s borderline insane, first to imagine that a divine supervisor has unfettered access to our thoughts, and, second, to insist that God is judging us - and probably condemning us - for the content of these thoughts. In Matthew 5:27-28, for example, Jesus warned his disciples that looking lustfully at a woman was just as reprehensible as committing adultery.
We can’t control the content of our thoughts; they bubble up unbidden like water from a spring. We can’t even control what kind of thought will enter our minds in the next few seconds, and yet we are told that we must. Any deity who commands us to attempt the impossible - and then punishes us when we fall short - is not a “loving God” at all… but a psychopath.
Public transport in the village of Wheldrake...
Today is Good Friday, when millions of people around the world are convinced that Jesus “died for our sins”. The concept of vicarious atonement is complex, intricate and difficult to understand, without being in any sense profound. It is such a vital component of Christian faith that it’s easy to forget how immoral it is. God sent Jesus down to earth, to ‘atone’ for our sins (that is, to pay a debt he did not owe). Paul described the divine transaction that took place when Jesus died on the cross: “God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross” (Colossians 2:13-15).
Vicarious atonement is more usually known as scapegoating. Our sins and misdemeanours are loaded onto a scapegoat which, literally or figuratively, is driven out into the desert to die of hunger and thirst. In absolving us of culpability, scapegoating first undermines and then demolishes the notion of personal responsibility. What a loathsome idea! If I do you a grievous wrong, it is up to you to decide whether or not to forgive me. Can I honestly claim to have been forgiven already, by a third party who I have not personally wronged?
Licenced yesterday: a detail from the 8th century Anglo-Saxon cross in Ruthwell Kirk, Dumfries and Galloway...
I was wandering around New Earswick yesterday, looking for springtime pix, when I passed a couple of young lads with their bikes. I usually give kids a wide berth, for at least half a dozen different reasons. Given half a chance I imagine they would beat me to a bloody pulp, go though my pockets, steal my camera, throw me into a ditch and urinate on my lifeless and broken body, before pedalling away, laughing. It’s possible that my uncharitable views need to be revised.
One of the lads called out to me: “Do you know how to put a bike chain back on?” Though it’s been at least half a century since I messed with bike chains, I managed to ease it back onto the sprockets. “Wow!”, the boy said. We then chatted about this and that; after months of lockdown, maybe kids appreciate some inconsequential conversation too.
Licenced today: the Black Bull Inn, in Coniston...
