I've been waiting at the back of the chapel

[venta]

Hello. I'm not dead. If you're one of the very, very many people to whom I owe an email, a phonecall, a visit, or anything like that then my sincere apologies. Life has been getting in the way considerably of late.

However, in lieu of proper communication, why not read all about the extreme confusion induced by some carved prophets in Sheffield last weekend.

I spent quite a lot of time on Sunday lunchtime at a wedding rehearsal. I am being a bridesmaid (next Saturday, in fact) and apparently this needs extensive rehearsing. However, due to the layout of the church, the number of bridesmaids, etc the net result of this was that I spent around an hour staring at a carved wooden pulpit.

Which was fine, because it was a rather nice carved wooden pulpit.



Sadly, the church was rather dark and I had only a (flashless) phone with me to take photos so the pictures aren't really very good. You probably can't see from the above the finely carved birds and foliage round the edges. You can probably make out that there are four heads in high relief staring out at the congregation.

The heads are...

Jeremiah:



A rather piratical Daniel:



Ezekiel, complete with flashing eyes and floating hair (beware indeed):



All thoroughly respectable biblical chaps with very straight noses. They all have very faint halos appearing above their heads, and twiddly scrolly banners bearing their names. Which is just as well, or I wouldn't have had the faintest clue who they were.

Last, but not least, we have Moses. I'm afraid this is a pretty poor photo, but it's the best of a bad bunch.



What you probably can't see is that Moses has no halo. There may be sound biblical reasons for this, which I don't wot of. However what you possibly can see is that he has horns. Or, rather one horn and one snapped off stump. Why the blithering chuff does a carved image of Moses, in a South Yorkshire church, have little Mr Tumnus horns? This is an aspect of theology which has hitherto totally passed me by.

(I asked the vicar. He didn't know either. But it was a small church and he's the vicar of about 18 different small churches and clearly had no idea of Moses' fauny pretensions until I pointed them out.)

Comments

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I hope that the actual occasion that necessitated your bridesmaid practice went really well this weekend!