THE LORD IS NEAR TO THE BROKEN HEARTED

MANY OF MY READERS WILL HAVE been present earlier today at the Eucharist Service for Sunday Trinity 11, at which, like myself, they may have noticed a sort of symmetry between today's Responsorial Psalm 34, and the day's second reading, from Ephesians 5, a Letter from St Paul, and events taking place in modern British politics involving Mr Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (above), a man who wishes to lead the Labour Party and Britain to a "New Jerusalem", and Lord John Buttifant Sewel (below), recently filmed snorting cocaine off the breast of a prostitute while wearing her bra and prior to that a Labour minister.

MAKING THIS LINK MORE OBVIOUS was the return of Mr Gordon Brown, formerly of this parish, as they sometimes say, who felt it his duty to advise members of the Labour Party on the thorny issue of whom they should choose as their future leader.

BROWN WAS AT HIS IMAGINATIVE BEST, with his speech suggesting he had also been at church this morning, as he stated that "our hearts can be broken" if Labour was not in power and was unable to do anything to change the world. Brown was relatively clear in his message, without actually venturing Corbyn's name. Indeed, when he stated that the party should be careful not to choose someone "unelectable" I detected some confusion among his no doubt carefully chosen audience: might he be referring to himself? We shall never know.

MEANWHILE, IN HIS LETTER to the Ephesians, St Paul, ever full of advice and in this aspect so similar to Gordon Brown, told us about the ways of the Lord: "be careful how you live", "do not be foolish" and "do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery" are certainly wise pieces of counsel that Brown might well have imparted to his former cabinet colleague Lord Sewel, whom I imagine to be rather heartbroken himself at the moment, now that he can no longer walk the way of a Lord.

HOME FROM THE HOLIDAYS

ONE OF THE OCCASIONALLY INTRIGUING aspects of taking a holiday is that of wondering whether all will be well on one's return; this is sometimes turned into an understandable worry on the part of those insecure people who fear that their world may have either changed beyond recognition in their absence or at least have managed to get along perfectly fine without them -- indeed not noticing their absence at all.

ON RETURN FROM MY OWN restful fortnight or so on a secluded beach, with occasional forays into the local hills, beyond the reach of electronic devices of any kind, I am pleased to see that nothing much has changed in my absence.

THE COUNTRIES IN EAST AFRICA and the Middle East continue on in their several different manners of attempting to turn themselves into unpopulated stretches of skeleton-strewn rubble; the United Kingdom and the European Union are still at loggerheads; and immigration is still the prime issue on the table in the offices of The Daily Mail.

INDEED, A MORE DISTRACTED LOOK might allow one to believe that the world and time have moved back a generation, given that the Labour Party is about to split itself again over whether to choose a lady or a left-wing lunatic in order to lead it to certain defeat for the next fifteen years, the transport unions are on strike, Cilla Black is in the hit parade and Greece is on the verge of revolution.

"BEING HOLIDAY, THE BEGGAR'S SHOP IS SHUT," announces Romeo in Act V Scene 1 of Shakespeare's turgid and unlikely soppy tragedy Romeo and Juliet, but although it is holiday time in Greece the begging knows no end; nor does the patience of the kind-hearted naïve politicians who continue to give money to a country full of mendicants that hasn't invented anything since geometry. 

AS THE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR GARY GULMAN has wisely pointed out, a civilisation that managed to invent maths, science, astronomy and democracy must surely be a good investment. Unfortunately this activity stopped around two thousand years ago, when the leaders of Greece seem to have held a meeting in which it was decided that all this inventing was hard work and they would keep to one simple project called "salad". Although in principle salad was never going to be as profitable as the above-listed sciences it may in all fairness have looked like the Greeks were onto a winner, even if they were putting all their cubes of Feta in one basket.

I HAVE A JAR OF FETA in my fridge at the moment, along with a quart tub of "Greek-style" yoghourt, their latest capital venture, but -- alas! -- both of these products were bought from my local branch of the supermarket Lidl, the modern equivalent of the German storm troopers trampling across Europe.