25 December 2006
A rumour of angels
Those of you who follow these postings religiously will of course be aware that today is Christmas Day. Some of you will also be aware that the Eastern Daily Press does not publish on Christmas Day.
As a result I miss a week and return to your lives on New Year's Day, when I will have none of the usual attractions associated with that date - looking back to the future, forward to the past and sideways at what other writers are saying.
I will also not be including a series of puzzles or a quiz to demonstrate how many things I know that you don't. This is in case you retaliate with a series of much harder puzzles and a much longer list of things you know that I don't.
I do hope that you enjoy today and remember whose birthday it really is. Here is Christmas described in other words by C S Lewis:
In addition to the physical or psycho-physical universe known to the sciences, there exists an uncreated and unconditioned reality which causes the universe to be; this reality has a positive structure or constitution that is usefully, though doubtless not completely, described in the doctrine of the Trinity; and this reality, at a definite point in time, entered the universe we know by becoming one of its own creatures and there produced effects on the historical level which the normal workings of the natural universe do not produce; and this has brought about a change in our relations to the unconditioned reality.
Or, as Peter Berger put it, any serious inquiry into human experience will reveal a rumour of angels.
Happy Christmas.