Going against the grain: Bishop Michael Curry's sermon!

I was not intending to publish a second article today but the inevitable reaction by the politically correct to Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon (https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2018/05/19/bishop-michael-curry-full-remarks-royal-wedding.cnn/video/playlists/royal-wedding-prince-harry-meghan-markle/) at the Royal Wedding today forces a response.
The bishop’s talk of love in it’s many forms will with an inevitability that matches that of night following day bring forth lectures about “equal marriage” and how gender and sexuality are irrelevant. With the condemning stricture that those who say otherwise are bigots.
As the bishop realised well into his sermon, he had the clock to contend with and thus may not have been make all the points he would have wished to make had he the time, which he had not.
The media already have reported that members of the viewing public who watched the wedding on their TVs and heard the sermon have called the wedding “world changing”. They are of course wrong.
There is a mistaken tenancy of people to over estimate the importance and significance of what are called “momentous events”. The fact is that an event such as the royal wedding so many saw on the TV today held in St. George’s chapel is akin to one of those old 35mm slides in a projector. The slide itself is small measuring 36 x 24 mm. However placed in a projector in front of a powerful lamp and before a magnifying lens the image on the screen that has been erected is much larger. The fact is that what so many witnessed today was two people, obviously in love, get married. Their surroundings, their status, the status (celebrity, princely and otherwise) of the congregation had the effect of magnifying the perceived significance. This was no accident. That is because the building in which it was held, like the castle itself was designed to do what it did. Impress and convey a sense of awe. To make the person think; “Here lives a great and powerful ruler!” Over the years a lot has been invested in Windsor Castle to achieve precisely these results. Similarly, that is the reason for the princely and royal styles. To convey a sense of authority, which in the past was very real but now is largely ceremonial and social.
So let us return to the bishop’s sermon and make some points that the bishop sadly did not have the time to make:
Many of those who were avidly watching the wedding were let us say, “ladies of a certain age”. Thus we will hark to the film, “The Sound of Music” and start off with “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start!”
For us this will be Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2:
“1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
The particular words to which we draw your attention Dear Reader are; “And the earth was without form, and void….” You see, the bishop talked of love. God’s love. But this love required a form, a structure, and one was created, the world as we have it, with all it’s contents flora and fauna and mankind.
The crux of the issue is that love requires form and structure. And that form and structure cannot be anything at all. It has to be the right form and the right structure.
All of which brings us to the point where we can explain the image at the top of the article!
You see, my grandfather turned his hand to carpentry. As did my father. I have examples of their work. There is a common saying in woodworking circles; “Wood’s grain is a like a cat’s fur. If you stroke the cat’s fur in the wrong direction, the cat hisses. Stroke it in the right direction, the cat purrs. Working with the grain will yield good results. Working against the grain will give you endless grief.”
Now hearkening once more to the clerics at the wedding. It was pointed out to the congregation that the Almighty knows all things. And since when He was on Earth, the Good Lord trained and practiced as a carpenter, one can be absolutely confident that the maker of the trees of the Earth knows all there is to know about cutting planing and making things from them!
Which is of course why marriage is a union between a man and a woman and NOT a man and a man or a woman and a woman or a trans-gender person to a trans-gender person or any other “unconventional” combination thereof!
Now we KNOW that this will be an unpopular statement to many but there it is.