Tag Archives: justice

LIBERAL / RADICAL

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BISHOP ROBERT ATWELL and I touched on the convergence of the words ‘liberal’ and ‘radical’ in a stimulating conversation the other day. Both of us were speaking of inclusiveness, accessibility, direction, purpose, of a church’s special charism or gift of grace – of getting back to grass roots. And “the Spirit is moving” it seems, because ‘liberal’ and ‘radical’ featured frequently and prominently in our excellent Church Council deliberations about Growth Action Planning here last night. (Where are we? What are we? Why are we? Where are we heading? Where could we be in 5 years? Where do we want to be in 5 years?)

Sandcastles and temples

It doesn’t take much effort to enumerate some of the ways in which church and society are changing before our very eyes, and at a rate of knots. Frenetic building (or perpetual ‘repairing’) of even our strongest sandcastles is – history shows us time and again – sooner or later to be inundated. Baptism. The ocean prevails. The proud are scattered “in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek”. (Magnificat – Luke 1)

Justice and peace

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that foll’west all my way,
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

George Matheson

It’s no accident that ocean breeze and flow keeps blowing the words ‘justice’ and ‘peace’ back into the faces of a Church comprised of many who lived through the human turmoil of the twentieth century – during which more human beings killed members of their own species than at any other point in history. We simply MUST aspire to richer, fuller, brighter, fairer, tearless promise. And our Growth Action Planning last night had the current atrocities in Syria as a backdrop to concentrate the mind, whilst one of our Council reps teaches in a school in which over 35 languages are spoken amongst the small children.

Open plan … and the old glass ceilings

Oceans level sandcastles and temples and leave beaches washed clean. And golden. An invitation. Like fresh snow the shoreline swept clean invites new footprints. “And we therefore will not fear, though the earth be moved and the hills be carried into the midst of the sea” (Psalm 46). And we ask the question, “so where are we headed now?” Levelled, shaken up a bit and cleaned, both the ocean and the land are still here. Shall we build the same old castles or shall we have a rethink? Shall we go for a bit more “open plan”? Shall we leave out the old glass ceilings? Shall we thank God that all the Synodical and Parliamentary minutes about the difference between men and women, and straight and gay, and the world’s faith traditions, and political ideologies, and representation rules – got washed out to sea, whilst the ocean and the land and the better memories – one might almost say the “divine memories” – are still here.

Parables

Once again there’s a fabulous little parable in this week’s UK Church Times. The visionary and prophetic Bishop Kelvin Wright of Dunedin, New Zealand, is reported as saying

my diocese faces extinction … but I’m not losing any sleep over this. I think several other dioceses will be watching what we do with interest

We are. And thankfully Kelvin will be as familiar as I am with an older parable

unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. – John 12.24

What will it mean for the Church – “the Body of Christ now on earth” – and for the World of the future to be both liberal and radical? Bring on the ocean – an inundation worth learning to swim in, and that right early.

Jerusalem the golden with milk and honey blest beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed. I know not, O, I know not what joys await us there, what radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare

MALKUTA DISHEMAYA

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THE KINGDOM OF GOD is close at hand. Turn about and believe it. This sums up what the launch of Jesus’ Galilean mission was really all about. And the declaration caught on quickly, spreading out like wildfire. But the actual words Jesus would probably have used were Aramaic, the common language of the area: malkuta dishemaya - ‘kingdom of the heavens’.

That did not, however, signify the ‘Heaven’ of later Christian hymns or visions of the after-life. ‘The heavens’ is simply one of the substitute phrases that devout Jews preferred to use instead of naming God directly, similar to ‘the Most High’, or ‘the Lord’, or even ‘the Place’. So the Gospel of Matthew, reflecting its Jewish-Christian background, makes great use of the idiomatic ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, while Mark and Luke give the intended meaning of the phrase, which is ‘Kingdom, or reign, of God’.

John V Taylor
Kingdom Come, chapter 2, page 17

What should the ‘reign of God’ look like in British lives at the dawn of the twenty-first century? If we were to ‘turn about and believe it’ (close at hand rather than some future state beyond the grave) what would be the effect upon the life of this world? What would be the effect upon our own lives now? What would Jesus have meant when he taught his hearers to turn about and believe …? What would the reign of God,  in the silence and conscience of our hearts, really have to say to our Western insistence that we live in a state of scarcity when the reality is that, compared to huge tranches of the world’s population we live every day in the midst of super-abundance.

Life in the nearer presence of God “would be heavenly” someone said to me the other day. But would it? Doesn’t drawing closer to God make some pretty challenging demands upon our lives? Malkuta dishemaya. The kingdom of the heavens is close at hand. But are we minded to pay it, to pay God, the slightest real attention? How would the life of the world change if we did? How would my life change if I did? How many fewer burials might take place in East Africa in the coming weeks? What would “Church” look like? Would I be moved to a deeper silence before ‘the reign of God’? Would I come to understand a bit more what is meant by the poetic silent music of his praise? Or will I keep on belting out my own song in the Lord’s strange land?

THREATENED WITH RESURRECTION

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Parker J Palmer

THE QUAKER WRITER AND TEACHER Parker J Palmer is one of my spiritual heroes, one of those really inspirational people I sincerely hope I’ll meet in person some day. Meanwhile I meet him continually in his books, in others’ books about him, and in contemplation and reflection. I often turn to Parker’s thoughtful writings. They’re full of pearls of wisdom that I mull over continually for days on end.

Today I’ve been re-reading The Active Life. Chapter 8 -

Every life is lived toward a horizon, a distant vision of what lies ahead. The quality of our action depends heavily on whether that horizon is dark with death or full of light and life …

… when we envision a horizon that holds the hope of life, we are free to act without fear, free to act in truth and love and justice today because those very qualities seem to shape our own destiny  …

What is it that keeps us, individuals and churches, from seeing an horizon full of light and life up there ahead of us? Palmer speaks of his encounter with Julia Esquivel’s small book of poetry Threatened with Resurrection, and of how its title turned his mind upside down; of how he recognized that he’d often been fearful of life itself, and the movement toward new life, more than he had feared death in its various forms. And he retells the apocryphal tale of a blind man healed by Peter “in the name of the resurrected Christ” whose first response is, “You fool! You’ve destroyed my way of making a living!”

Am I, are we, in the Active Life, threatened by resurrection? Too dependent on old ways of “making a living”?

 

See also: Center for Courage & Renewal

9 ENG LIT 9.45 MATHS 11 HAPPINESS

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DR ANTHONY SELDON, Master of Wellington College gave Church Times its Back Page interview this week.

… We started the “happiness classes” at Wellington in 2006, grounding them on the Positive Psychology of Professor Martin Seligman. He tried to move people from a sort of minus five state of fear and loneliness and unhappiness to a sort of OK state, and then to a plus-five kind of flourishing state. We try to build up children’s resilience, because you can’t stop bad things happening to them.

We try to change their mindset to one of being grateful — which involves things like thinking of three things to be grateful for before going to sleep. We encourage them to pay serious attention to their physical body because with a healthy body it’s easier to have a healthy mind. And we encourage young people to give to others, because the core of our model is looking after others …

Truly, there are some marvellous and extraordinary people in the world today. In the last few days alone (to keep this post brief) I’ve been awe-struck by the grace, ease and “possibilities” of – and advocated by – Benjamin Zander; by the prophetic imagination of Dee Hock and friend, David Herbert, who recognised it early; by the poetic inspiriting of the poets Rachel Mann, and Jo Shapcott and Daljit Nagra, (to whom Rachel brought my attention), and Sally Purcell (to whom Fr Roger Clarke brought my attention).

I’m still reeling from having delighted in the artistic majesty in The King’s Speech; and Maggi Dawn tweeted her friends in the direction of what will doubtless be a blockbuster, The Insatiable Moon, in British Cinemas from March.  And I see, every day, the marvellous and the extraordinary in the family, friends, parishioners, fellow citizens all around me.

And today the Master of Wellington College speaks of happiness classes, of Martin Seligman and Lord Layard. Imagine: 9 English Lit; 9.45 Maths; 11 Double Happiness. Day after day there’s something new and glorious to get stuck into. As the old hymn has it: “New every morning is the love …”

When all is said and done, there’s yet more to be done and said. Some world-changing to be brought about, some world-creating to be engaged in, some justice and peace to be striven for, some hunger and thirst to be satisfied, some shelter to be provided, wells to be plumbed, and gardens to be raised up, good earth to roam, and seas and skies to be traversed; all that is really Real. Truly, it’s a wonderful life.

SOUND OF SILENCE

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HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU HEARD SOMEONE TELL YOU that, though they’re not regular Sunday worshippers, they hugely value our church buildings as a space for silence?

I would hazard a guess that you’ll have heard those words at least as frequently as my day to day contacts illustrate a need for quiet space in all our lives … and in our worship.

How many more people would worship regularly in our churches if we didn’t crowd out the entire space with performance pieces of one kind or another?

People need quiet space, in churches, and in liturgy, because we need time to ask our own questions of God, and we need time (and quiet enough) to hear some answers.

I keep running back to Fr Timothy Radcliffe’s “What is the Point of Being a Christian?” when I need a ‘wisdom top up’. There’s plenty of wisdom and plenty of ‘quiet’ between this book’s covers …

Why doesn’t God just give us what we want: peace and justice and happiness for all?

Because He’s not “a powerful, celestial superman, a sort of invisible President Bush on a cosmic scale who might come bursting in from the outside”, suggests Fr Radcliffe (p.16): “God comes from within, inside our deepest interiority. He is, as St Augustine said, closer to us than we are to ourselves”.

So the sound of silence, and the consequent space for contemplation, needs to be granted equal status alongside (note, alongside, not without) “another round of Abba Father, please, boys and girls …”