Tag: Pagli-ji

Take your Ease

Photo of me taken by ‘uncle’ Andy.

It is two years, in mid-August, since Mr G began his ponderings.
As those who followed the Ponderings at that time will know, it was an idea of mine and I became the Patron.
I lead an especially busy life so I haven’t been able to write to you as much as I would have liked but I have always been around to give Mr. G my wise advice. He has sometimes taken it!
I have been  purr-fully delighted that so many of you now follow the articles, photos and thoughts not only of Mr. G but some of his friend.

Sadly we lost one of our dear friends, Joyce, recently. She brought us such pleasure with her photos and reflections. Mr. G is going to reproduce some of them in the early autumn.
Many of us have enjoyed the antics of the Latton Foxes. For this we thank our Vicar Lynn not only about the foxes but all the menagerie that occupy the Latton Vicarage grounds.
Another regular contributor has been Mr. G’s friend, Gill Henwood. We have been able to catch something of the brooding joy of the Lake District as well as accompanying Gill on her jaunts around Europe. Mr G told me that her trip to Prague around the Christmas season. It was a truly magical experience for him as. Through Gill’s reflections, he revisited some favourite haunts in that great city.
Piers the Poet as we like to call him has contributed a number of wonderful poems and I am sure there is more to come.
Others have added their contributions and this is fulfilling Mr. G’s aim of encouraging people to share the Blog and enrich it with their own take on things.
Thank you for all who have contributed and those who follow. It is much appreciated.

Now Mr G has agreed to take a short break from the Blog but will be back very soon so don’t go too far away. As his patron and really his ‘boss’ I have agreed to pay his usual wages whilst he goes swanning  around I know not where. He says he is doing research for further Blog items. We wait and see!
Meanwhile, I shall have a little rest myself as you see from the photo above.

You must try and do the same.

I offer you this little prayer to help you chill out in the Lord.

Yours purrfully
Pagli-Ji,
A friend to all my ‘servants’

THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT

A Theological Reflection …… sort of!

How would the Church of England deal with the statement that “the cat sat on the mat” if it appeared in the Bible?

The liberal theologians would point out that such a passage did not of course mean that the cat literally sat on the mat. Also, cat and mat had different meanings in those days from today, and anyway, the text should be interpreted according to the customs and practices of the period.

This would lead to an immediate backlash from the Evangelicals. They would make it an essential condition of faith that a real physical, living cat, being a domestic pet of the species Domesticus, and having a whiskered head, a furry body, four legs and a tail, did physically place its whole body on a floor covering, designed for that purpose, and which is on the floor but not of the floor. The expression “on the floor but not of the floor” would be explained in a leaflet.

Meanwhile, the Catholics would have developed the Feast of the Sedentation of the Blessed Cat. This would teach that the cat was white, and majestically reclined on a mat of gold thread before its assumption to the Great Cat Basket of Heaven. This is commemorated by singing the “Magnifi-cat” and “Felix namque”, lighting three candles, and ringing a bell five times.

This would cause a schism with the Orthodox Church which believes tradition requires Holy Cats Days (as it is colloquially known), to be marked by lighting SIX candles and ringing the bell FOUR times. This would partly be resolved by the Cuckoo Land Declaration recognising the traditional validity of each.

Eventually the House of Bishops would issue a statement on the Doctrine of the Feline Sedentation. It would explain, traditionally the text describes a domestic feline quadruped superjacent to an unattached covering on a fundamental surface. For determining its salvific and eschatological significations, we follow the heuristic analytical principles adopted in dealing with the Canine Fenestration Question (How much is that doggie in the window?) and the Affirmative Musaceous Paradox (Yes, we have no bananas). And so on, for another 210 pages.

The General Synod would then commend this report as helpful resource material for clergy to explain to the man in the pew the difficult doctrine of the cat sat on the mat.

– Author unknown

A contribution from our sponsor, Pagli ji