Category Archives: Theology

Power and nakedness

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As I write, the UK is effectively at war with Libya. We are told it is to ‘deliver’ the people from an oppressive regime. Since we are not at war in Bahrain, I suppose we must assume that the Bahraini regime is not oppressive. That does not seem to be what the Bahrainis think. In my previous life I spent some time in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. I was not over impressed by the liberty I encountered in Saudi: women prohibited from driving; women spat at for not having faces covered; shopkeepers in trouble for trading during prayer times; religious police beating women’s ankles with sticks if bare skin is showing. If we deliver Libyans from oppression, why not Bahrainis and Saudis too? The answer is a three-letter word, oil. It drips and trickles over the sensibilities of our politicians to produce a bar of hypocrisy. And we are expected to swallow it. Consider a few vignettes. (1) You live under a regime that imprisons and tortures your relatives because they disagree with those in charge, and say so. (2) You work for an organisation that presents circumstances to the advantage of those in charge, and belittles or ignores your experience. (3) You are mature in years and live alone. You are distressed by the begging letters, the hard-sell language, the appeals to emotion and better nature, the manipulative tone suggesting that by not responding you are cruel and inhuman. (4) You are angry that, despite the recklessness and financial impropriety of the last few years, you are still being shafted by banks and bankers, your taxes funding their bonuses.

What have all these in common? The answer is the abuse of power. The powerful dumping on the powerless. It can be amusing to say there’s no point in having power if you don’t abuse it and yes, I hope only for a laugh, I’ve said it myself. But the more power we have, the more responsibility that comes with it. The abuse of power stems always from the abuser’s need to bolster up her or his ego, to disguise the fear and barrenness within. And when we abuse someone else, we stop growing and harm ourselves. Miss Havisham wrapped herself in the cocoon of grief, living the same day over and over again, in the dark, and infecting Estella. The witch in Hansel and Gretel wants to consume the children rather than let them grow free. How many children suffer abuse like this from parents who can’t let them go? Gollum, obsessed by the ring of power that perverts him and all around him. We retreat into these self-generated enclosures, living behind the gates that insulate us from the world. In the words of Psalm 17, ‘they are inclosed in their own fat: and their mouth speaketh proud things’. We put on masks that hide our true selves. We make ourselves feel good by ignoring the truth and thus harming others.

To reach resurrection (Easter), we must pass through crucifixion (Good Friday). We take up our crosses and deny ourselves. This is not self-flagellation and making ourselves miserable. It is that we must break out of the cocoon of our enclosed self-obsessedness by confronting our fears and accepting them, loving those parts of ourselves that we try to cover with egocentric behaviour. Pulling down the walls that money can buy. This is the way to eternal life, what Christ called the Kingdom of God—nothing to do with life after death, everything to do with quality of life here and now. The Kingdom is experienced when we acknowledge the futility of egotism and all the things that we allow the ego to build around us. ‘My Kingdom’, said Jesus, ‘is not of this world’. It is an inner kingdom. In order to enter that kingdom we might try to rid ourselves of these spiritual cosmetics to become naked before the Divine.

This is taking up your cross: recognising the props for what they are. This is laying down yourself, laying down ego. This is spiritual nakedness. This enables the butterfly of resurrection to escape into the stratosphere. ‘Made like him, like him we rise’. And when we do, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

We have no power. We are powerless. We are absolutely dependent upon the Divine (laws of nature if you like). This means being like children – or rather, as unlike suspicious adults as it is possible to be. We need shed the skins of suspicion that have grown up around us as a result of the experiences of this imperfect world. We emerge from the cocoon lighter, less encumbered, more lovely, more delightful and more delighting. Easter is liberation – salvation – spiritual nakedness. Happy nakedness!

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Spring, ordure, simplicity

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Spring is sprung, de grass is riz, I wonder where dem boidies is? Dem boids is on de wing. Ain’t dat absoid? De wing is on de boid.

Profound poetry for this time of year. Days are lengthening, and len(g)t(h) gives us Lent. Time for a spiritual detox, a spiritual spring clean. Get rid of what you don’t need any more. What don’t I need any more? It’s funny how I repeat behaviour from my childhood, behaviour that was necessary and productive then, but has outlived its usefulness and is counterproductive now. If I have any defects at all, one of them might be related to this. I could profitably use Lent to resolve to explore the reasons why I react to certain situations in the way that I do. I need to learn to stand outside myself, as it were, off centre, on the edge. I learnt long ago that the view is better from the edge, and it’s easier to see the big picture when standing on the edge that it is when one is in the middle of the crowd. I’m going to try to remember to stand outside myself and observe what is going on in my mind before I react to circumstances that try my patience. And there are many.

I am struck once again by the randomness and unpredictability of life. The hip joints that misbehave. The sun-spots that threaten to disturb our communication systems. The despots of the middle East that get their comeuppance—with heaven-knows-what consequences for the oil supply that feeds our lifestyles. The movements of the earth’s crust that devastate cities. The diseases and other natural events that disturb our lives. We never know when the cells in our bodies will start to behave differently and begin to multiply unchecked. We never know when the bacteria that live in our guts helping us to digest food will find their way to places where they cause trouble. Coping with uncertainty is part of life. We can’t change the past and we can’t control the future. Some people imagine that illness or disasters are brought about by ‘God’ as a punishment. Are they really so egotistical as to think that God plans his activities around their actions? The beginning of Luke 13 is a text that should be wheeled out when people spout this self-absorbed rubbish. Luke tells us that there’s nothing about what happens to us that speaks of God’s judgement. Rather, the point is that life is unpredictable – tragedies occur, in this case brought about by an oppressive governor (Egypt? Bahrain? Libya?) but they say nothing about God. Punishment: no. Consequences of choices: yes.

In the same Biblical text Jesus speaks of the value of manure as fertilizer. Some commentaries go so far as to suggest that Jesus—shock, horror—had a sense of humour. Let me tell you, girls and boys, how deeply satisfying this is to someone like me whose sense of humour extends well into the scatological. When I am confronted by someone laying down the law, I find few things more comforting than imagining that person on the throne of a morning. I spent 30 years earning my keep by teaching anatomy, with my hand in body parts that other hands don’t reach, and any of you involved in politics, especially Church politics, will know how important it is to be able to dodge flying dung. Manure is the product of digestion, the residue of what we take in. Manure is a fertilizer. The baobab tree needs Elephant dung for germination. Rowan berries and others need to go through the gut of a bird to help them germinate. To put this in a psychological context, you might say that we can let the manure of our experiences provide the fertilizer for personal growth.

So this is my suggestion for Lent: let’s take time to use the residue of our experiences and learn from them, allowing them to fertilize growth within us. We might be able to shed old ways of doing things, old ways of thinking, when we see that they have become unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. Like a snake shedding its old skin as it grows, or the pupation of larva to adult. There’s no point in making ourselves miserable by giving up stuff we like: Lent has nothing to do with being gloomy. It’s about letting go of what we no longer need. Happy Lent!

And the product of shedding our old skins …

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be out delight
‘Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Joseph Brackett 1797-1882 

Prisons of one sort or another

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I see no evidence of luxurious living quarters in prisons. I see no evidence of any ‘liberty hall’ atmosphere. I saw a place where men live every day according to a strict timetable, freedom removed, locked up for more than 11 hours a day. Small cells, barely enough room to swing a cat, each with its own loo, and some with a very basic shower. I see facilities for productive work, sport, and some leisure activities. I see the work that the prison chaplains do. I chat to a few prisoners. I saw one young man from overseas with neurological disease, dying in prison because rules don’t allow him to be released to die at home. Cardinal Hume said he rather liked rogues: ‘you never meet a conceited rogue’, and I heard at first hand what a relief it was for one man to let down his pretence, to ‘come clean’ and to accept and be accepted and recognised for what he was. I became aware of the energy we waste trying to put on a show, to pretend to be what we are not. The energy we use and the trouble we go to to hide behind spiritual fig-leaves. We hide from ourselves and from each other, and thereby in the search for what we think is liberty we become enslaved to pretence. Liberty is not freedom to, it is freedom from. Face-to-face honesty is what strikes me forcibly about Jesus in the Gospels. Up front, challenging, sometimes taken as offensive. If people are offended by our straightforwardness, we might remember that it is they who choose to be offended. Heart speaking to heart was the theme of the Holy Father’s recent UK visit. That is the only real form of communication. In my theology, when heart speaks to heart, or face without spiritual cosmetics speaks to face without spiritual cosmetics, we enter the realm of the Divine.

Just think how much we might achieve if instead of using energy to manufacture masks, we use it to bring healing and delight to the world. Our last mask is shed as we emerge from the chrysalis of old habits, obsessions, the need for praise, and the need to be noticed, into the fully adult form, known in biology as the imago. Imago Dei, the image of God in whose image we are made. In Latin, the plural of imago is imagines. Imagine. Envisage. The Divine visage. The face that shines with purpose. He who sets his face to do what he must do, no matter what the cost. Leaving behind. Growing up. Renunciation. Relaxing from pretence into reality. Relief. Liberation. Homecoming.

Child-rearing

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Too much religion harms people, so don’t teach your children about Christianity until they are old enough to choose for themselves. Too much food makes people fat, so don’t feed your children until they are old enough to choose what they like for themselves. Isn’t this the most pernicious piffle? Consider:

  • Tom Daley made an impact in European diving competitions when he was 9 years old. A 13 year old climbs Mount Everest. A 16 year old climbs some of highest peaks in the world. What are those parents doing?
  • A child of three has been found vandalising cars in a street near his home. Primary school children make teacher’s life hell. Jamie Oliver says the UK is not doing enough to tackle the current child obesity ‘epidemic’. What are those parents doing?
  • Love-licence-laxity. Discipline-structure-encouragement. Mothering-smothering-oppressing.
  • How can a young bird fly if it’s kept in the nest? How can it deal with falling? How can our immune systems learn to cope with microbes if we are always scrubbed clean? Let them eat dirt.
  • Jesus’ ministry was about enabling people to take charge of their lives, not controlling them. ‘Be who God intended you to be and you will set the world on fire’ St Catherine of Siena. 

A government minister has suggested that people should not have more children than they can afford. Immediate outcry: people have the right to do what they like. Does any of us have any rights at all? If we do, at whose expense? Individual or society? Some animal societies police themselves by getting rid of antisocial elements. This is seen in apes (we are apes, remember), fish, insects. Look at ants for a model of society where each member knows its place. What makes us specifically human? I see plenty of Our Lord’s teaching that commands us to help the poor and needy, but nothing that commands us to indulge antisocial behaviour or encourages anyone to idleness. Rather the opposite: we are to take responsibility for ourselves in order to help those who ask for it, or who obviously need it. From each according to ability to each according to need. What implications does this have for a welfare state?

Twelve ways to raise a crook (written in 1969 by a former Vicar of Chesterfield)

  1. Begin from infancy to give the child everything he wants. This way, he will grow up to believe that the world owes him a living.
  2. When he picks up bad words, laugh at him. It will encourage him to pick up ‘cuter’ phrases that will blow the top of your head later.
  3. Never give him any spiritual training. Wait until he is twenty-one and then let him decide for himself.
  4. Avoid the use of the word ‘wrong.’ It may develop a guilt complex. This will condition him to believe later when he is arrested for stealing a car that society is against him and he is being persecuted.
  5. Pick up anything he leaves lying around – books, shoes, clothing. Do everything for him so he will be experienced in throwing the responsibility onto others.
  6. Let him read any printed matter he can get his hands on. Be careful the silverware and drinking glasses are sterilized, but let his mind feed on garbage.
  7. Quarrel frequently in the presence of the children. Then they won’t be too shocked when the home is broken up.
  8. Give the child all the spending money he wants. Never let him earn his own. Why should he have things as tough as you had them?
  9. Satisfy his every craving for food, drink, and comfort. See that every desire is gratified. Denial may lead to harmful frustrations.
  10. Take his part against the neighbours, teachers, and policemen. They are all prejudiced against your child.
  11. When he gets into real trouble, apologize for yourselves by saying ‘I never could do anything with him.’
  12. Prepare for a life of grief – you will have it.

Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

Beginning and end of life

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Some people seem to find it extraordinarily difficult to produce offspring, whilst others seem to pop them out like pellets from a shotgun. Too few or too many. Most reproductive problems arise because in mammals like us, the embryo develops in the mother’s belly, whereas in other creatures development takes place in the outside world, or in an egg. In humans, the relationship between mother and fetus is complex and ill-understood, and the wonder is that it does not go wrong more often than it does. This is all fine and dandy from an academic point of view—and the evolution of reproductive biology is utterly fascinating, but when these events do not go according to plan, from a pastoral point of view the effects are devastating. The loss of a growing life, a hoped-for family member. The necessity to grieve for the much-loved though as yet unseen miniature boy or girl. The most difficult moments of my pastoral ministry have centred around such loss of life. There are no easy answers.

Then there’s the other end. How can you cope with the parent who to all intents and purposes has left this world, and yet whose heart and lungs continue to plug on? This is a real problem in dementia, when the person we knew was lost weeks or months or years ago, but yet the still breathing physical body houses someone we don’t know and who doesn’t know us. Coping physically is one thing, but coping emotionally and spiritually is an entirely different matter. There are no easy answers.

I am very moved by the agonies of those that have to cope. All I can offer is support and human comfort. I spent 30 years of my life using human corpses as teaching aids for medical students, so I acknowledge that I have an uncommon attitude to the physical realities of death. In a curious way, though, I think this helps me to cope better with the emotional and spiritual aspects. And if it helps me to cope, I hope it makes me better able to be of use to you in these awful circumstances.

Somewhere between the beginning and end of life is childhood. Below you’ll find some comments on child rearing. The thing that shocked me most was when I realised that I had not been as good a father as I used to think I had been. And that same phenomenon—the realisation of the extent of our self- deception—is the cause of most of the grief I encounter in my pastoral ministry: the regrets and shame that hits people, often when it’s too late. How do we deal with this? Christian doctrine deals with it in a lovely way. Try me some time.

 

Sin is life unlived

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I watched Chocolat on TV the other day. I’m not that keen on chocolate—I like salty things more, always have—but I liked the film. Profoundly spiritual, you might say it’s a story of redemption by chocolate. In case you don’t know, the story goes something like this. A freethinking woman arrives in a repressed French town and sets up a chocolate shop. A woman without a man, a woman from outside the community—that’s already enough to scandalise the locals, most of whom are of the ‘my family have lived in this village since 1568’ mindset. (Sound familiar?). She has—horror of horrors—an illegitimate daughter who is bright and cheerful. Can it get any worse? Yes it can, and it does: worst of all is that she is passionate and enjoys life. Some people just don’t like others having a good time. It comes as a big shock to the ladies in the film who enjoy ill health. It threatens the mayor’s power who does his best to ruin things for the newcomers, and who terrorises the parish priest into saying only what the Mayor approves. The newcomer uses her chocolaterie skills to make friends. She becomes a confidante. Over the delights of chocolate, people start talking to her and each other about their dreams and fears, joys and sorrows. Repression lifts, new life dawns. There’s a great moment near the end when the Mayor himself falls victim to his sensual humanity by pigging out on chocolate, falling asleep in the chocolate shop window. It’s reminiscent of the downfall of the odious killjoy Mr Bulstrode in Middlemarch, and quite as satisfying. Perhaps the best bit of the film is when the camera cuts from a scene in which the consecrated wafer at Mass is placed on the communicant’s tongue to the next scene when a chocolate delicacy is placed on the salivating tongue of a customer. That says it all, really.

The story is about liberation from small-mindedness, from ties that bind. It’s about allowing ourselves to be led into a place of wide vision where we take delight and create delight for others. This is Hebrew salvation: salve, save, salaam, shalom (the words are all related), wholeness, security, peace. Chocolate liberates the gutsy love of life in that French community, and this is what the Christian Gospel is all about. It’s what the consecrated wafer at Mass can do for us—if we let it, or maybe I should say if we stop preventing it. Why is it that so many people think the Christian message is all and only about ‘that shalt not’? This is a terrible reflection on churchgoers, some of whom in the past, and maybe in the present, do nothing but finger-wag and criticise others. I apologise for them. I pity them. I’ve said it before, and I say it again, paraphrasing early Churchmen, God became human so that humans might become divine. The glory of God is a human life lived to the full. Dumitru Staniloae, a 20th century Romanian theologian, writes: ‘the glory to which man is called is that he should grow more godlike by growing ever more human.’ And again, ‘Love for God, or more strictly, thought taken for God, represents a continuous contribution toward more and more authentic relations among humans.’ These authentic relations come from talking to one another about our dreams, our fears, our joys, our sorrows. In the words of the priest in Chocolat: ‘we can’t go around … measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. We’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create … and who we include.’ Yes, yes, yes! As we prepare for Well dressings and carnivals and fairs and summer holidays, it’s good to remember that Our Lord came so that we might have life, and have it in abundance. Enjoy what the Divine Lord provides for you, and help others to do likewise. Sin is life unlived. What is your chocolat?

Vulcan, Gaia and Homer

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In April, Susan and I were getting ready for our hols to see family in Texas. We were to be joined at Newark airport by ‘our’ Ed from Dublin. There were plans for a road trip into Colorado, visits here and there, and—by no means unimportant—at least one Texan steak. Rarely had so much hope been pinned on so short a holiday by so many. There was, I have to confess, a certain smugness in me: ‘ha ha, suckers, we’ll be having a good time while you lot are suffering from politician-itis’. Well, girls and boys, the day before we were due to depart a volcano erupted. And kept on erupting. You can guess the rest: no US trip for us. Who’s smug now? It was like a bereavement, and one that had to be grieved for, but we had it easy compared to some who were stranded in less than comfortable surroundings, and others who had to make their way home by all sorts of means—exciting maybe but doubtless expensive. What did I learn from this? I suppose what I should have learnt is not to be smug. No chance. It was good for me to have it thrust in my face that pinning all my hopes on some event in the future is foolish: it may not happen. Many of us spend too long regretting the past and looking forward to the future, so we miss out on the present. To living in the present is to live out of time—no before, no after, just now. That is eternal life: quality of life, not quantity.

Let’s imagine the planet is alive. It needs to let off steam from time to time, its volcanoes being just like pores on our skin that every now and then shove out secretions. Volcanoes as blackheads, or pustules. Now, if God created the cosmos—and Holy Scripture tells us God did—and if God said ‘it was very good’— and Holy Scripture tells us God said just that—volcanoes must be part of God’s plan. Oh, what a surprise! The world does not revolve around humanity, and certainly not around me (a hard lesson, that). Uncertainty rules in your and my lives just as much as it rules in subatomic physics.

If you don’t like my fantasy, maybe you prefer a story from the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In When the world screamed (you can read it on the web), Conan Doyle saw the earth as a living creature that took unkindly to engineers drilling eight miles into its surface. Now in 2010 we have warnings of the potential hazards of drilling into the seabed, with the possibility of the drill releasing pressure under the earth’s crust and causing a cataclysm that wipes out species left, right and centre. We have, too, the reality of oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico. As Sugar Kane (M Monroe) said in Some like it hot (has there ever been a better film?), ‘it makes a girl think’.

One heartwarming result of the volcanic eruption was the insurance companies suddenly discovering a belief in God. What’s the relationship between the laws of nature, which we haven’t yet fathomed, and God? Are they the same? Read John 1 in the cultural context of the time. Obviously, since God created the cosmos, God also created its laws. Is God more than this? What is the cosmos in? In my humble opinion, we can only deal with these issues in metaphors: scientific metaphors like black holes, spherical universes, big bangs, expanding universes, and theological metaphors like creation, and eternal, and Divine Wisdom, and Divine love. As someone trained as a medical zoologist, I see no conflicts, but rather lots of connexions. Life is all about consequences of action or inaction—‘just stuff that happens’ as that well-known theologian Homer Simpson says—and Christianity is not so much about what happens, but rather about how we cope with it, with ourselves and with each other as it happens.

Resolutions, earth to liberation

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I don’t know what to write. I asked she-who-must-be-obeyed for ideas. She said ‘write about new year resolutions, and how if we’ve made any and already broken them, we might like to try making some that are realistic.’ Or words to that effect. Why do we set ourselves unreasonable targets? Wouldn’t it be better to accept ourselves for what we are, and set reasonable targets? In my last letter I wrote that the best Christmas present would be to accept ourselves and each other as we are. To be aware of our own gifts and skills and faults and failings means that we have our feet firmly planted on the earth. The Latin word for earth is humus (as any gardener knows), so this is humility. It has nothing to do with grovelling. Rejoice in your gifts and skills, and be aware of your failings. And then, look carefully at how your qualities affect what you do, and how you do it. All this is part of mindfulness.

If you watch Gavin and Stacey (and if you don’t, you should) you see a group of people, at the same time both ordinary and extraordinary, who simply accept each other for what they are. They don’t try to change each other, and they don’t force each other to do what they don’t want to do. Many of us are assailed by the expectations of others who want us to do what we are not comfortable doing. We are fools to try and satisfy them. It never works when we try and force a square peg into a round hole: we end up harming both peg and hole. Of course, we live in an imperfect world, and we sometimes have to try and please the boss if we want to be paid, and so on, so there are bargains to be struck, but there comes a point when we have to accept that peg and hole are just not compatible.

This is not all about self. We need to be aware of the relationship between self and society. We all have our part to play, so we can’t just do what we want without considering our impact on other people. Most of society’s problems result when what ‘I’ want takes precedence over what anybody else wants— ‘because I’m worth it.’ What a load of rubbish! But when we succeed in matching the peg to the hole and play to our strengths, we are able to let the divine light in each of us shine out to light the way for others. ‘And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.’ (Marianne Williamson). If you’ve got it, flaunt it—for the benefit of the world!

How many Christmas presents have already been chucked out? When will we realise that fulfilment is an attitude of mind, and not a product of a new kitchen, or a new 3-piece suite, or anything we buy from St Tesco’s or St Asda’s? Eternal life is what I’m talking about. Eternal does not mean everlasting, and neither does it mean life after death. It means timeless, outside time, independent of time. It means living in the present moment, not fretting about past or obsessing about future. We can’t control the future—we are not in control of anything, and the sooner we realise that, the better. We can’t control our biological processes and as we see from recent events we can’t control the weather or what is happening on or beneath the earth’s crust.

Accepting that I can control nothing is liberating. It frees me from trying to be in control and perfect— which is just as well since I am an imperfect muddle. It frees me from trying to impose my will on others—which is just as well since I might be wrong (a hard admission, that!). It’s a recognition that I’m human and will one day shuffle off this mortal coil. This is what Ash Wednesday is about: ‘dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.’ Some people think this is gloomy. Not for me. I think Ash Wednesday is a wonderful festival of being human. To be reminded of our mortality reminds us to put the past to bed, stop fretting about the (uncontrollable) future, and to get on with the here-and-now, moment by moment, allowing each other to shine for the good of all and the glory of the Creator. I do not find this at all easy. Maybe I need to stop trying.