In Depth:  James Cary

James Cary

Lent is here and now is a good time to consider fasting.

Forty days may seem excessive and unnecessary. But it’s hard to make an informed decision without understanding what fasting is.

James Cary

I’m a professional writer (believe it or not) but was one of the few in my school year who did not choose English to study at A-Level.

Back then, reading fiction felt like hard work to me. For my GCSE, I had to read Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It’s a classic. But it’s long, sad and contains an awful lot of dense and wistful description of the Dorset and Somerset countryside. I now live on the border of Somerset and Dorset – in the heart of Hardy’s Wessex. I love Wessex. It’s where I live. I enjoy seeing the hedgerows, oak trees and starling formations. I am still not hungry for lengthy verbal descriptions of all of the above.

James Cary

If the past is another country where they do things differently, as LP Hartley wrote, 12th century England is a foreign place indeed.

From diet to customs, and from clothing to life expectancy, the times in which Thomas Becket lived and, crucially, died, seem so alien we might be tempted to think that few lessons can be learned from these people who were part of a church that was doctrinally losing its way.

James Cary

We are entering a season when we set fire to things: sparklers, fireworks, bonfires, and guys named Guy Fawkes. This is rather bizarre since, erm, Guy Fawkes wasn’t actually burned; he was hung, drawn and quartered, and convicted for being a traitor in service of the Pope. He was not burned as a heretic. (But don’t let that spoil the party.)

I’m not suggesting we get the history right by erecting gallows in town squares on 5 November. That won’t end well. Besides, who doesn’t love a good fire? (Okay, maybe not Greta Thunberg.) The English were certainly partial to a fire, at least until 11 April 1612, when Edward Wightman - essentially a Trinity-denying Anabaptist - became the last man burned for heresy. Should we have a national festival on 11 April where we burn an Edward?

James Cary

I’m a regular at retail store TK Maxx. I get all my shirts there, so I go in regularly to rummage.

In early August, I was startled to see Halloween gear already on display. Doesn’t Halloween come earlier every year? No surprise really: it’s now reckoned to be the UK’s biggest festival after Christmas. That’s strange for a Gen-Xer like me. In the 1980s, Bonfire Night was far more exciting; sparklers, fireworks, a giant bonfire plus the thrill of burning “the guy,” usually made from second-hand clothes stuffed with straw or newspaper. Written down, it sounds a bit Wicker Man, doesn’t it?

James Cary

Writing used to be easy. More complex and expensive, yes, but reassuringly slow. The writer would write, it would be sent to an editor who would edit. Then a sub-editor would get involved. It would be typeset, printed and then eventually distributed. Even writing letters was slow, since it was normally done by hand, then had to be folded, addressed, stamped and posted.

The internet has changed everything. Writing is instant. It shouldn’t be, but it is. And I’m not sure we’re prepared for the changes that have already taken place. For example, it is very easy to forget the situation of your reader. Previously, he may have been a commuter on the train or she may have been a friend with a mug of tea at the kitchen table. Now your reader is a someone peering at a screen. So one has to be brief. Despite the fact that the internet has a limitless amount of memory, the need to be concise has never been greater. Twitter makes a virtue of it. 140 characters can say an awful lot. This is no bad thing — one Bible verse can take a lifetime to unpack.

James Cary

Creating videos has never been easier, cheaper or more convenient. A piece of equipment worth hundreds of pounds ten years ago is now an essential part of a mobile phone given away for free on some tariffs. High Definition video cameras, creating TV-quality pictures, are now affordable by most churches, leading them to wonder whether they should not simply record the sermon as an audio file, but also as a video.

There are many reasons to consider this. Firstly, downloading video is something many of us are used to doing via YouTube or iPlayer. We are even used to watching entire programmes on computer screens as opposed to our televisions. So far, so sensible.

James Cary

It is said that ‘the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there’. One is painfully aware of this when reading Dickens or Austen — as characters have to worry about plague or propriety in a completely different way from us. But if the past is a foreign country, what about documents from past foreign countries? They can be doubly difficult to decipher.

The Bible is clearly in this latter category, as it was written long ago over the course of 1,000 years, with stories about plagues in Egypt, captivity in Babylon and battles in Palestine. Approaching the original text is something that most of us rarely do. We pack our would-be ministers off to college to learn Greek and Hebrew so that we don’t have to. But it’s worth having a look at the original Greek and Hebrew text (to say nothing of the Aramaic bit in Daniel). And, thanks to the glories of the web, you can see the first complete Greek manuscript at the www.codexsinaiticus.com which dates from around 350AD.

James Cary

How much is £140? These days, that’s only one really big ‘family-shop’. Or a month of household heating and lighting. It’s only £2.70 a week for a year. But if you hand it over every week for ten years it soon adds up. That’s what most of us do when we pay our BBC licence fee.

In the past, we cheerfully forked out the money, since BBC was the only provider of TV and radio. But as the commercial sector grew, the huddled masses began to say, ‘Hey, what are you doing with our money, when we get ITV for nothing?’. The BBC hired the likes of John Cleese and Julie Walters to deftly reassure us that they spent the money properly, and for them not to do so would be unthinkable. They produced polished self-publicising commercials, showcasing their glittering array of other minor BBC institutions like David Attenborough, Richie Benaud, Michael Fish, Terry Wogan and Noel Edmonds (in those days, Noel Edmonds was considered a plus).

James Cary

When poets talk of the birds twittering in the trees, a different picture is now evoked.

Imagine sparrows and starlings pecking away at laptops, telling the other birds who are ‘following them’ what they’re doing. Twittering or, more correctly, tweeting, reached critical mass a few months ago when Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross both decided to use Twitter. But what is it?