h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I get you.

When I was a teenager, the organist would sometimes have to work on Sundays. (She was an ER nurse.) Or she'd be taken suddenly ill. They'd pull me out of Sunday School and say, 'Play.' So I'd sit down at the piano.

I didn't have any fancy preludes, so I'd play a medley of hymns from the book. People always said they enjoyed that.

I think that, whatever philosophical notions were floating about, our ideas about God were shaped by these gentle old songs. Which, let's face it, were mostly about how cool Jesus was.

'Thou, my everlasting portion, more than friend or life to me...'

'When clothed in his brightness, transported we rise...'

'He leadeth me, oh, blessed thought, oh, words with heavenly comfort fraught...'

'Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come, and I hope by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me, when a stranger...'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjfToqk5w5g

Yes my friend! I get that! I understand. And I love the thought of you playing those gentle old songs. They are gentle old songs! They are comforting. With visionary otherwordly lyrics. . A perfect balance.

That's such a great picture. Thanks! My Dad would have just loved that story.

His favourite hymn was Lord of the Dance. By Sydney Carter.



Quite an interesting write up actually, about that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Dance_(hymn)

Sydney Carter mentioning Shaker music, and other planets. .

is that?

dance, dance wherever you maybe, or dance then

way catchy tune

does anyone else get t rexy some where down the line, or is that just me

I first heard 'Lord of the Dance' in a pub. On my birthday. We'd gone to hear an Irish group with some friends, to celebrate. We got pretty drunk, and ended up singing along.

Later, I used to sing it with Quakers. Also joyful. Bless Sydney Carter for rescuing 'Simple Gifts'.

Here's a nice slideshow to go with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3LJgXcTayA

This song always makes me think of the Dance of Shiva, anyway.

well I have been drinking

who wants to dance?

have you ever heard Dance, dance to a drum beat?

No.

beautiful link Dmitri,

s'cuse my dancing

*simpost*

Morning all! heheh.

I'm using the extra hour, (clocks gone back),to commune with the spirit of ethernet. .

T rex, the dance of Shiva, yes! yes! splendid! I started leaping around myself, listening to it again just now, even though I'm wrapped in a blanket. It's a orange/red blanket. I look like a leaping Buddhist monk .



I had such clear recall last night, thinking about church and hymns and it all, I was all of a quiver. . I realised a lot about community, and essence, and how those early experiences shaped the journey of my life, and how the essence reappears, wrapped in different guises.



I'm doing some interesting reading on this trip. I must have the right books with me, because they keep speaking to me, paragraphs leaping out of the Void and knocking me over, (in my orange blanket ).

Essence.

I'm re-reading Oliver Sacks/Hallucinations. Extraordinary book.

The chapter about religious and mystical fervour, a sense of the holy, the universality of such feelings, part of our human heritage, and neurologists can now isolate the part of the brain that creates these feelings, which is awesome!!!!

And yet ..... and yet ......despite the explanations, he still holds open the door of mystery.

I personally love that balance of science and mystery. Or, if not mystery, at least personal responsibility in the face of seeming mystery.

'To speak of a biological basis ... a very specific neural basis.. is only to speak of natural causes. It says nothing of the value, the meaning, the 'function' of such emotions,of the narratives and beliefs we may construct on their basis.'

quote Oliver Sacks/Hallucinations

That's interesting isn't it? . The narratives and beliefs! (I'm imagining Peanut staring at the screen through a hangover, what's cactus on about now? ) I love it.



I once asked my Dad how come the Bible was full of ghosts and visions and otherwordly happenings. It was just so natural to spend Christmas with this wonderful picture in our carol book of this shining angel in golden attire, appearing to the shepherds. 'The Angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around'.

And the burning bush! What about the burning bush that Moses saw! I see like that,( I would exclaim to my Dad) The wonder of everyday visions. Consider the lilies of the field ....the creases in the curtains .. the light through stained glass ... the shine in someone's eye .. how come Jesus was tortured .... (that tore me apart) ... and then there's William Blake and everything.

And yet if you mentioned this subject matter outside of the boundaries of the religion, (or outside of my trusted Dad), it was a bit taboo.

And my Dad said hah! possibly a lot of the visions in those days were brought on by asceticism, fasting etc. it affects the brain, and was I eating enough? . But then he would explain, in his own way, that anyone's brain can go there, you don't have to be an ascetic, it's what we attach to the visions that matters, if we need to attach anything at all.

And then his eyes would fill with tears, he felt the pain of the world very deeply, and I would have nightmares about blood on stained glass.



hmm. So I've been thinking about that forever.



And the other thing that rocked me was .....Aldous Huxley. I'm also re-reading The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell. I love that book. A paragraph jumped out at me.

I'll go on about it another time ...

. Lucky you.

Moi? , surely not

Ok a little one, I got off lightly this morning

cc sounds like you had a wonderful relationship with your Dad to be able have trusted discussions like that.

I have a fond memory of Moses and the burning bush on one of our church holidays we had an arts and crafts session, we had to draw or depict a story from the bible.

So I got a flat bit of cardboard, made a plasticine Moses with a twig as a staff, he looked like Morph with a cotton wool beard and moustache .

I picked twigs from the bushes out side and stuck them in the cardboard to make a bush and cut out cellophane flames. Painted the around the bottom of the bush black and scuffed some earth in for texture and then for extra effort painted the cardboard a sort of sandy colour.

That evening I got a prize of a small dairy milk bar and a from the families. I was so chuffed with my efforts, winning a bar of choc was the icing on the

Dmitri, I heard Dance, dance to drums at the Sunshine club, a holiday scheme over the summer. For 2 and half hours a day over a week, you could drop your kids off and they would be suitably entertained by volunteers

We played games like Duck, duck, goose, did arts and crafts, juggling, sang songs, not exclusively church ones, and played instruments, had a bible story, we would be set challenges to do at home, like learn something off by heart from the bible

At the end of the week everyone got a certificate, the volunteers put in achievements for each child and wrote out with them what we had enjoyed and achieved. It was yellow with an orange smiling sun on it and you could decorate it with gold stars

We did a show and tell in Church on Sunday.

Not the drums though, that would have been a bit too happy clappy for some tastes

Your camp sounds likes my Vacation Bible School. Only the couldn't let us dance. Baptists, really...

I get that, CC. Yes, exactly.

Look at it this way: what's over there doesn't match what's here. As Noah said, if he wanted to talk to his grandfather Enoch, he had to go to the edge of the world.

No dancing, what at all even at weddings and that?

No dancing. No dancing at weddings. No dancing at all. There was an old joke:

'Why don't Baptists do it standing up?'

'Someone might think they were dancing.'

People are growing out of this gradually - my sister's kids go line-dancing, and one set of grandchildren do Ukrainian folk dancing to please the other grandparents.

And yes, it's pallaingly dumb. It comes from some out-of-date sociological phenomenon. Mainly to do with the evils of the waltz. Which was introduced, I believe, about the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

Is everyone all right after last night's storm? I hope so.

Here, it wasn't too bad. We woke at 5.00am, to hear the wind whistling and see the silver birch in our garden bending, but by morning the rain had stopped and it was a bright and breezy day. I was supposed to go to Shoreham but, when I checked on the National Rail website, all the trains were either cancelled or delayed. We went for a walk instead and saw one tree down on a road, a number of branches and some fencing broken. Certainly nothing like the famous storm of 1987.

We're ok thanks

Blew over early morning, drove carefully to Cornwall later on and now safely in a cosy caravan admiring a very rough sea.

Been wondering about you all too

Take care, folks.

Evening all!

I love the burning bush, Peanut! And the bar of diary milk for the prize. Well worth the artistic endeavour, that's so adorable, I love it.

So, we all got through St Jude then? Glad you're all OK .

St Jude being the name of the storm. Today being St Jude's Day. I had to check up on him, the patron saint of lost causes? According to a Guardian article I saw.



So, sounds like its effects were quite localised then?? How strange. Here on Brighton Marina it was a raging wild storm.

I heard it approaching in the night, it started as a low moaning sound along the beach, a very primeval sound, and I had peculiar half dreams of dinosaurs sloshing around in a swamp, which spooked me. So I decided to listen to Planet Rock on the radio most of the night. . A miracle! Blessed radio waves.

Then the low moaning sound got closer and it battered the marina for the entire night.



My thoughts go out to those who lost loved ones, or had their homes ruined, or are still without power.



And on another topic, RIP Lou Reed. Co founder of The Velvet Underground. I can't believe Lou Reed has gone. A cultural icon.

I'm all of a quiver about this. I need .

'Music producer Brian Eno once summed up the Velvet Underground's influence by saying: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.

The punk, glam and alternative rock movements of the 1970s, '80s and '90s were all indebted to Reed, whose songs were covered by the likes of REM, David Bowie, Nirvana, Patti Smith and countless others.'

Thanks Lou.



And and and speak soon ....

PS. I was quoting BBC news, by the way, the bit about Lou Reed. Sorry, forgot to credit.

I could never sum it up that intelligently. . If I could, I'd write a Guide Entry.

I'm just ahhhhh Lou Reed, where did White Light White Heat (Velvet Underground song) take me? If I could find the words ..... where did White Light White Heat take me???

Glad that the storm didn't hit anyone here too hard! Over here in South Africa we're having very welcome light rain right now.

R.I.P. Lou Reed from me too!

Hey Peanut mentioned Morph! I remember him! We in South Africa only accepted the evil of television in the mid-seventies; my grandparents had a colour set, my parents later got a small black-and-white set. One of the programs I enjoyed very much and I'm sure influenced my early artistic efforts was 'Take Hart' with Tony Hart and also featuring Morph!

I now see he passed away in 2009 so R.I.P. Tony Hart also.

But Morph seems to still be going strong! I see he's animated by Aardman Animations who also did Wallace and Gromit.

Hi everyone

Glad you are all ok, hopefully SA has weathered St Jude ok too, but not expected back in wifi range until the end of the week, so will have to wait for their storm story.

Re the effects of the storm, while the storm itself wasn't quite as bad as 1987, it still packed some welly. I think quite a big difference is preparedness, we got plenty of warning, travel advisories, action plans put into place by individuals and councils, emergency services and engineers.

Where we live it was ok, windy and heavy rain but I know that it is beguiling, venture not further afield and the rivers are ranging and the coast frothing and plenty of power outs.

I liked the naming of the storm, I thought if anyone was going to look out for me it would be St Jude

Dmitri your joke made me Those are very strict dancing rules

I was a big fan of Tony Hart Willem, and Morph.

I was sad to hear about Lou, SA had this qotd a few days ago When they are here be thankful that they are here and when they are gone be thankful that you knew them. And with Lou we were lucky to have him for so long