A special page is available to me to see what some visitors typed into a search engine to find this blog. The most frequent is the title my readers know – As the sun in its orb. I have said in the introduction to this blog that its title is extracted from the saying of Bishop Giles de Bridport about the Use of Sarum – The Church of Salisbury shines as the sun in its orb among the Churches of the whole world in its divine service and those who minister it, and by spreading its rays everywhere makes up for the defects of others. Certainly in the thirteenth century, Salisbury Cathedral fulfilled the role in England that Lyons, Rouen and Cluny did in France by its example in celebrating the Mass and the Office faithfully and with great diligence. Much of the liturgical revival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was owed to the Benedictine revival of Solesmes and Dom Guéranger, then by the effects of the Romantic movement in Germany, England and Belgium.

Some of the naughtier fiends on the Internet have referred to my blog as Where the sun never shines – as if I were someone bitter, negative and miserable. I do not recognise myself in such a description, and this is certainly a case of psychological projection of those who wonder why the Torres Strait people have not yet converted. Presumably our friend was not there with his machine gun to make it happen! Passons…

The next search term is interesting – a storm on the sea. I often use nautical analogies, and it is part of me as an amateur sailor. I was out on the sea today in a fresh 10-knot breeze and a moderate sea swell without “white horses” or very few of them. The light was absolutely wonderful, just one day after bad weather. The sea turns a deep green-blue and everything is fresh and new. Storms at sea are frightening things, and it is better not to be in a boat or on a ship when they happen! I remember as a boy of 12 on holiday with my family in Portugal, in August 1971, and a storm blew up. The sky turned black, and the wind whipped up the sea to its full fury. I was able to admire it all from a stone pier at the fishing port of Viana del Castelo near our campsite. Certainly the Romantic in me – Sturm und Drang and all that!

I have to remember that some people typing in strings of words are not necessarily looking for my blog. How about – celtic anabaptist false church? I have discussed something of the modern Celtic revival (or caricatures thereof). This string is quite odd, as the Anabaptists were extreme Protestants in Germany and England in the sixteenth century, and most of the Reformers, especially Luther, eschewed their extremism. I see no connection between the Celts and the Anabaptists. False church is an expression often to be found with those who would relish being modern incarnations of Torquemada, Bernard Gui and Heinrich Himmler. Again, I am not concerned with where the sun doth not shine, but rather with beauty and love, not with the kind of “truth” that makes humans hate each other.

The Union of Scranton intrigues not a few, that union comprising the Polish National Catholic Church and the Nordic Catholic Church led by Bishop Flemestad. Whether or not this Union would expand into England or European countries further south than Norway and Sweden, or west from beautiful Bavaria, we still need to be patient and await the outcome of the decisions to be made by the Bishops of the Church of England about consecrating women and making sure everyone assents to it – or, we would hope, pull back from the brink.

Now, irrationality of a vengeful god might have been typed in by the person concerned with Celtic Anabaptists or the Commies under the bed! I deal rarely with the question of the early Old Testament notion of God. Some bloggers have done much more than I in the field of Biblical studies. I have to say that some of those Biblical passages where God is said to have killed people for their sins are hard to accept and reconcile with a notion of forgiveness and infinite mercy. This is a problem that makes the Gnostic “solution” seem attractive: the “god” doing all the harm is the Demiurge whilst the true God is far above – and innocent of evil. But this is not the answer offered by orthodox Christianity. Finally, it is a mystery.

Those who are interested in Norwegian churches do well to keep looking on Google. There are some very beautiful places of worship in that country of the great North. As a kid, my imagination was fired by Grieg’s Peer Gynt and its mythology of mountain giants and trolls. I doubt most internet trolls have flaming red hair, but who knows. Perhaps the sun never shines in those caves in the deep fjords where the trolls bash away on their computer keyboards. I wonder what they eat! I have never been to Norway, but perhaps one day…

Ubi caritas et amor – indeed, the tabernacle of God’s presence is charity and love. I love the little motet by Maurice Duruflé based on the Gregorian melody.

What is the suns length of its orb? That would seem to be a question for an astronomer or a geographer. Of course, the orb is a sphere, and the sun is spherical like the earth, all the planets and their moons. A mathematician would not speak of the length of a sphere, being a multi-dimensional circle, but rather of its diameter. There is of course the sun’s path which is in reality the daily revolution of the earth, giving us the impression that the sun moves. This apparent movement is compounded by the orbit of the earth around the sun, the seasons and the observer’s position on the earth. The title of this blog refers to the liturgy of the Church of Sarum with the brilliance of the sun as a metaphorical image.

I admire inquiring minds, simple innocence seeking knowledge and ever learning. Oscar Wilde said:

Like all poetical natures he [Christ] loved ignorant people. He knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea. But he could not stand stupid people, especially those who are made stupid by education: people who are full of opinions not one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed up by Christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God’s Kingdom.