Merger in the cathedral
AFTERTIIOUGIIT JOHN WELLS
Ecclesiasticus Chapter Thirteen and Verse Two: 'Take not up a burden that is above thy strength, and have no fellowship with one that is mightier and richer than thyself : for how agree the kettle and the earthen pot together? This shall smite, and that shall be dashed in pieces.' These words (intones the Reverend Basil Pratt, Minister-in-Charge of the Free Non-Denominational Church of the Aeolian Succession, Flitwick) that ring like a clarion blast on a crude shepherd's flute from the dusty pages of the Apocrypha, that book that has been Apo Kruptoe, hidden away for so many cen- turies, may strike the twentieth century ear with a somewhat archaic resonance. 'Burden?' we ask. 'Kettle? Earthen pot? What are these to us? We have a washing-machine. Perhaps even a colour television.'
And yet it may be that those words, breathed into the living clay in the infancy of man, can still have a real significance, a message and meaning for those of us, in the words of the Surrey poet Mrs E. F. Porage, 'abandoned 'mid Life's Carnival upon the seat of Time.' Take not up,' we read, 'take not up a burden that is above thy strength.' Since the untimely re- tirement of our last minister, the Reverend Silas Mantovani, after the accident he incurred while attempting to lift poor old deaf Ben's manure cart off his foot last year, I have grown ever more sensible of the very real burdens laid upon the incumbent of this benefice. Apart from the heavy sacks of anthracite needed to stoke the boilers for the heating of the church, there are the wrought-iron trapezes, chairo- planes and Armenian swings peculiar to our rites to be moved in and out as Sunday suc- ceeds Sunday in the calendar of our Aeolian year. This is not taking into account the great weight of theological reading necessary to any minister who wishes to remain abreast of doc- trinal developments in Aeolian belief, the profound responsibilities of a Sergeant of Souls entrusted with the spiritual drilling of his squad to a standard acceptable to Our Great Com- manding Officer at that last Passing Out Parade we must all one day attend. Above all the burden of maintaining the purity of our aeolian faith.
'Take not up a burden that is above thy strength, and have no fellowship with one that is mightier and richer than thyself : for how agree the kettle and the earthen pot together? This shall smite, and that shall be dashed in pieces.' For some time now rumour has been rife and speculation unstinted. The Church of Eng- land, if the financial correspondent of the Aeo- lian Gleaner is to be believed, is attempting to lay the hand of ecumenical fellowship upon the assets of the Aeolian Church. There is talk of Unity. Commentators have spilt rivers of ink in drawing the attention of the public to 'a healing wind' and to 'the reknotting of age- old ties.' The Archbishop of Canterbury has posed before the television cameras administer- ing the kiss of life to our Praepostor McG rotty. A great tidal wave of hysterical ecumenical en- thusiasm is walking abroad. It behoves us all to take a short and icy look at those overtures that have been made to us in the name of ecumenism.
The Aeolian Church, it is perhaps otiose to repeat, is based and grounded on a love of the Divine Being. The Divine Being in question, in so far as He has been revealed to our earthly ears, is the harper-God Aeolus, Lord of the Wind. We believe that he lived in the air, invisible but clearly audible to his two disciples, Bert and Alf Cobbold, in the village of. Burpham in Sussex, for four minutes on the afternoon of 4 August 1923, during which time deafeningly loud military music was heard in the heavens and three bat- talions of khaki-clad angels performed mystical manoeuvres in the firmament. This aerial dis- play, we are told, was accompanied by the sound of a mighty voice crying, 'Get a move on yourselves, you horrible idle men,' and various supernatural phenomena. Trees were seen to melt into a toffee-like consistency, the sky turned red, and extra-terrestrial beings in pastel colours were observed hopping at an unnatur- ally slow pace through the landscape on electronically bleeping pogo-sticks.
Since then the Aeolian Succession has estab- lished itself in several parts of the British Isles. We gather at certain times of the year to com- mune with Aeolus as He breathes through the spinneys and telegraph wires. We meet Sunday by Sunday to observe the increasingly com- plex rituals of the Spiritual Muster Parade, the Ethereal Naafi break, the Thirty-Six-Hour Pass—during which we enjoy in a symbolic sense the Fun of the Fair on festal and ferial roundabouts and liturgical swings—and the more rigorous ST or Spiritual Train- ing, when we like to be chased mercilessly round spiritual obstacle courses by our stronger brethren in striped vests and crew cuts shout- ing high-pitched commandments. On the basis of the standard of spiritual drill achieved at the final Pass Out, we believe that places in the Battalions of the Air are allotted : the 'crack' souls will find themselves among the Elite of the spiritual guards, the 'slackers' in the ephemeral equivalent of the sanitary squad.
Taking into account what are described as 'minor nuances of belief' between our two Churches, the Anglicans have offered a com- promise solution to these differences. They are prepared, we are told, to throw in any claim on the Virgin Birth, the Divinity of Christ, Original Sin and the Resurrection, and are pre- pared to accept Hardy Amies's newly designed berets for bishops as a concession to Aeolian military iconography. In exchange they will adopt the Aeolian liturgy and theological position in Coto. 'What's it matter what a simple working bloke like myself or the wife believes,' as the Bishop of Wimbling wrote in his diocesan magazine Groove last week, 'as long as we're one big happy family?' Is the Aeolian Church, I ask you, prepared to throw in its hat with a successful company of camouflaged deists and heretics like the Anglicans? Do I heave coal and move heavy apparatus about week by week because I am a wishy-washy Anglican? If the kettle and the earthen pot are brought together will not the delicate filigree of our belief be dashed to pieces? To reasonable men unity must seem the only logi- cal possibility. But as Aeolians we thank God that we are not, reasonable men. And now if you will take your seats on the chairoplane, we shall spin dizzily round and round singing in Hymns Aeolian and Bizarre Number Ninety- Three, 'It listeth where It goes, the Wind, Hark, Windy Ones Above!' Let us, at least, keep our feet on the ground.
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