The statue of the Bristol slave trader, Edward Colston, has been toppled and tossed into the sea. Rather than discuss the rights and wrongs of honouring a man who enslaved 100,000 people, branded them with his company logo, dumped 20,000 of their dead bodies in the ocean and made a fortune in the process, I’d like to address the much more important theological point of statues of the Invisible Magic Friend.

The Invisible Magic Friend used to live up in a mountain and got upset about statues of him. You can’t make statues of the Invisible Magic Friend because he’s ineffable and invisible and lives up a mountain. You must be really thick to think you can make a statue of an Invisible Magic Friend that lives up a mountain.

And this is where the history of western critical thought comes from.

Black Lives Matters.
Charles Dickens.
USA not the republic expected.
Peanuts satire.
Sally allegiance, one nation. Amen
Christian faith.
Mornington Crescent.

Catherine Pepinster, editor of the Catholic newspaper, The Tablet
Friday, 7 June, 2013
Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

If a butterfly can set off a tornado, just imagine what your discarded apple core can do! Then add in all the discarded waste food from everyone around the world. No wonder we’ve been having funny weather for the last few years.

But it’s not just the weather that’s affected by food waste. Think of all the starving children in Africa who wouldn’t be starving if only they had food. Makes you think, eh?

The solution to all this has been provided by Pope Frankie, who took over recently from Pope Benny. Pope Frankie says we shouldn’t waste food. So there, that’s the solution. By not wasting food, food that would’ve been wasted can be giving to starving children in Africa, who therefore won’t starve.

Then there are the people who eat too much and become big, fat and lazy. They’re just as bad as the people who throw food away. If they didn’t eat so much then there would be more spare food for starving children in Africa.

Tomorrow, thousands of Christians will gather in Hyde Park to protest at all the food wastage. We’ll be demanding that less food gets wasted. Our solution to less food wastage is to waste less food, thus providing more food for all the starving children in Africa.

Christianity’s like that. It doesn’t just point to problems and say, “Oh, what a terrible problem.” It produces sensible, practical solutions, like having Jesus magic up food out of nowhere but just choosing not to do it right now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01bf1ql

It’s volunteers’ week. Among the volunteers are Sikhs. Sikhs do a lot of volunteering. Sikhs do a lot of charity work. Sikhs do it because the gurus told them to and because it makes them closer to the Invisible Magic Friend. Sikhs have been helping during the pandemic. Sikhs do a lot of good stuff.

And some others do good stuff too.

A poem by me, Richard Harries, aged 83 and three quarters.

The Invisible Magic Friend made us, not the virus.

The End.

Thank you.