'Cross my palm with silver,' the doorstep Gypsy used to say. 'Let me look into my crystal ball and I will see your future,' was a similar ploy at the annual fair. 'Old Moore's Almanack' has had a long and profitable life. These homely practitioners in the second sight industry have had more illustrious antecedents, Mother Shipton or Nostradamus, shall we say. We are now approached by yet more illustrious followers, economists and biologists amongst them. Old-style and new-wave soothsayers alike must expect that they will at some stage be regarded as deluded or worse. The future has a habit of turning out to be rather different from what might be anticipated.
Nonetheless, the future continues to beckon. And if there are few today who expect to discern the future set out in tea-leaves or economic surveys there are other enticing sources, the biblical documents, for example. And the readiness with which commentators will describe earthquakes and other disasters as being of biblical proportions suggests that there are good reasons to be concerned about the readiness of some to interpret the apocalyptic documents (e.g. Revelation) as though they were a coded pointer to coming world events.
The prophets have been seen as masters of second sight. Peering into the future was undoubtedly part of their commission but they are more readily understood as pointing out what the present state of affairs will lead to. They concentrate on present complacency and its successor unmitigated disaster. For them the future is far from inevitable. It is an impending choice.
Caution is necessary. Like the man who treasures a reference saying that he has a great future, always has had a great future and always will have a great future, things are not always what they seem. The prophets probe the underlying issues.
Of course, political parties and others have to declare what they see to be the ideal society they envisage and work towards it. That leads to improvement. It also leads to the formation of oppressive ideologies and to the building of castles in Spain and utopias.
BORDER STATEMENTS
Every building makes a statement, they say. And two very big statements are made in the vicinity of the Border. Hexham Abbey is a majestic building; Jedburgh is, if anything, more majestic and it has the advantage of elevation. It is a man-made Rock of Gibraltar, dominating its locality to breath-taking effect. Hexham can descend into the earth to boast of the best Saxon crypt in the UK. The four-bedroomed suite was mislaid for centuries; in 1725 it was discovered, with its Roman stonework and inscriptions as good as new.
BARROW FACE-LIFT
St Mark’s church, Barrow-in-Furness was built in 1878 and had a massive refurbishment in 1987. Chairs and carpeting were the least of the innovations. The website says the church now has about 100 in its regular worshipping congregation. The Vicar is Tony Ford. Three other new parish churches were dedicated on the same day as St Mark’s in 1878. And what statement does the St Mark’s building make? The Church of England backs innovation and adaptation.
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