成人快手

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Dr Marika Rose.

Good morning, and happy bank holiday, whether you鈥檙e working or taking the day off. In medieval Europe, public holidays were often carnivals, where the ordinary running of things got turned upside down. Servants would be served by masters, clowns and slaves would be crowned as carnival kings, and the rules of good manners and appropriate behaviour would be suspended for the day.

The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin said that carnivals let people catch a glimpse of the world transformed, hierarchies upended, rulers toppled and the poor and despised of the world elevated to positions of honour. They let people imagine a world in which everyone was equal, in which everyone got to feast, in which everyone got to speak their mind without fear of consequences. But rather than revolutionizing normal life, carnivals often acted instead as a safety valve, enabling people to let off just enough steam so that when things went back to normal, everyone was ready again to accept a world in which some people were valued more highly than others, in which some people were always hungry, in which lots of people had to hold their tongues for fear of the consequences of speaking truth to power.

Lord Jesus, as your mother Mary said, you bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly; you fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty. Help us to imagine our world as a carnival where everyone鈥檚 needs are met, everyone gets to speak and to be heard and unjust structures of power are overturned. Let us catch a glimpse of that topsy-turvy world, and carry it with us out of the bank holiday and into the rest of our lives. Amen.