After Christmas and Easter, The Kingdom

 Not so long ago, we were celebrating the birth of our friend and comrade, Jesus of Nazareth.

Soon, we will be recalling in sadness and gratitude the attempt to murder him.

Or, rather, to have him murdered.

One of the oddities of the present House Arrest us that time had stood still; our lives have become nothing more than the arrival of the recycling truck at 6:45am each day to pick up the discarded glass bottles at the bar/restaurant opposite. Then breakfast, lunch and dinner, laundry and ironing, the weekly dusting and vacuuming: all enlivened with a weekly trip to the grocery store (money permitting), the deferred cleaning projects, as pictured, and waxing and waning of potted, forced spring bulbs.

In times passed, those markers of time passing, Christmas, Easter, Whitsun (Pentecost) and Harvest Festival, allowed all three classes to come together in Worship.

In between, 'The Tolling Bell' across the fields, as my birthday-twin and friend, Anglican Canon Peter Challen, used to remember to us, reminded The Laborores, yoked to their plough (or, rather, the Thieves' plough) that The Horatores (Those who prayed), on behalf of The Belatores (Those who Fought: on behalf of, increasingly, as the paid Mercenaries, of Those Who Preyed upon The work of The Laborores, rather than, as earlier, the actual fighters, The Belatores themselves: witness the fading, dusty Regimental Colours that used to hang from the ceilings of Country Churches and from Cathedrals, still.

Come war-time, Piers Pliwman would give up his Drudgery of The Ceaseless Furrow for three square meals a day, more certain than in the vil, and rusk death and mutilation.

Now, we are dragooned off from the fatuous pursuit of 'stuff' in the shops, or if 'excitement' on The Terraces or The Screen for The Great Boredom of 'Lock-in'.

Often, if Solitary Confinement, 'relieved' as described above, and photographed, earlier.

No more: no weekly Collective Worship, no daily Mass, however, even at remote distances across the fields.

Only Daily Drudgery and Bullying from The Small Screen.

Woe!

Jesus, of course, offered more.

Just as we celebrate all new life, we, especially celebrate the New Life he described: Our Father's Imperial Rule, The Kingdom of Heaven.

That #truesocialism replaced Theft and Usury, which we now call Capitalism, with Gift and Co-operation: 'What is my, and our, contribution, now that we are fed in advance: just as our Father feeds the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, giving no thought for The Morrow?' Just as the gulls of Littlehampton call out to their friends, '#TheTideHasTurned #TimeForBreakfadtandDinner.

Of course, The Thieves and Usurers *within his own 'Community'* sought to have him murdered (as the three synoptic Gospels record): not at their own hands, the cowards, but by goading the Occupying Powers into attempting to murder him by Crucifixion: an innocent man ( 'I find no fault in him' ) but one who named the Capitalists Zionists Satanists Child Killers (The Thieves and Usurers).

And discomfitted them by telling The Truth.

As then, now.

But not for ever.

In His Holy Name.

John Courtneidge, Littlehampton, Tuesday 22nd February 2021