I have just come in from ferrying one of my wrinklies to the home of two others for a 'shut ins' communion.  When I was training for ministry one of my supervisors said he always liked to take at least one other person with him when he was doing a 'home communion' because it is a better symbol of the church gathering.  I think he is right - and sometimes it gets a few done in one go, which is also helpful from a logistics perspective!

As they chatted about past events and remembered their children's childhood (before I was born...) one of them observed that 'God gave us memory so there could be roses in December.'  I like that - it has depth and meaning, it is hopeful and honest.  It may be that supermarkets and hothousing make it more figurative than literal, but to me it carries a powerful truth: 'Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.' 

I have now typed it into 'Google' and find it is far from original, indeed it originates with J M Barrie, may have been part of a song sung by Vera Lynn and is certainly the name of a book about grief.  Yet it was 'a word in season' for two elderly women on a dull February afternoon when communion happened.

Sorry, bad puns once again.

In the early 1980's a jolly band of cartoon friars advertised crisps.  They probably wouldn't be allowed to nowadays, crisp eating is hardly synonymous with healthy lifestyles or the being of a monk-type person.

Today I was reading about a 'Chalcedonian Corelation' for the interdisciplinary nature of practical theology, which I'll get to in a bit, but its reference to 'logical priors' took me back to my engineer days and the images conjured up by 'Bayesian Priors' (which are mathematical). 

In my imagination, Bayesian Priors were an order of rather rotund monks in brown habits with jolly faces who laughed a lot - and probably understood some of the mathematical concepts about as well as most Christians understand Chalcedon.

Logical Priors sound much less jolly - they are tall, thin monks in grey habits with long noses and serious expressions.  They are very kindly folk, but deadly, deadly serious.

So, to Chalcedonian Correlation (which maybe should be Caledonian Correlation since it comes from Scotland!)

It asserts that there are four factors...

• Indissoluble differentiation
• Inseparable unity
• Indestructible order
• Logical prioity of theology

Indissoluble differentiation (which to a mathemetican doing calculus is a nonsense btw) means that theology is not history/psychology/anthropology etc and vice versa - the disicplines are not each other and definable boundaries exist.

Inseparable unity means that despite this, the various disciplines can inform each other and, perhaps (though this is now my interpretation) are part of greater whole through which God's revelation occurs.

Indestructible order means that there is effectively a hierarchy of authority.  Crudely, this suggests that subjects that refer out to others are higher up (I think) the authority tree.  Thus, theology has precedence over sociology because while theology may call up sociology, the converse is not (so they argue) true.  The logical priority of theology is, they assert, given.

I think this idea - which does get a bit more discussion in the book which I have yet to read, is interesting, but not automatically universally seen as true.  I can see that a psychologist or anthropologist, for example, could make a parallel argument asserting the logical priority of their field, since they may well perceive theology differently.  There is nothing wrong with the basic idea of a logical prior, it is just that beyond mathematics, it is more difficult to decide what it is.

Maybe there is a Logical Monastery somewhere where all the Logical Priors spend their days earnestly seeking their correct order?  I suspect the KP Friars have far more fun though! Any thoughts?