NEXT YEAR IN MOSCOW

 

NEXT YEAR IN MOSCOW

Pages have been written on two brief statements in the gospel about surprise finds and the reaction of the finders. So excited are they, they sell everything to buy what they have seen. They are seized by a desire to possess them. Everything else is put aside. Nelson Mandela could perhaps have left prison earlier if he had compromised. But he didn’t. He had discovered a vision for South Africa and he was prepared to die for it.

Alexei Navalny is Russian and, like Mandela was, he has been sentenced, in practice, to life in prison in his own country. His health is failing from undernourishment and the conditions in his cell are much worse than those endured by Mandela. He is in solitary confinement, caged in a six square meter cell and his mattress is taken away at 5.00 a.m. The only furniture is an iron stool fixed to the floor. The light is never switch off and there is no ventilation.

His crime is that he speaks the truth about Russia and his message is that those who have the truth have the power. It may take a long time but one day Russia will be free and there will be no more war. From his prison cell, he says Russia should withdraw from every inch of Ukraine and use its oil revenues to rebuild the country. He believes Russia, like Ukraine, is gaining a new sense of national identity, from this war. ‘Change is possible’, he says, and a new generation of younger, poorer and angrier Russians is listening.  

‘Prison exists only in your mind’, Navalny says, ‘I am in a space capsule traveling to a new world.’ He knows he may not live to see it - Mandela would have thought in the same way – but the important thing is that it will happen. Navalny is a Christian but he also draws on the Jewish Torah, the epic journey of the Jews to the promised land. He borrows their saying – ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ -and makes it, ‘Next year in Moscow’.

Navalny has found the treasure, as Mandela did before him and as the two in the gospel did. They ‘sold everything’, risked everything, to gain what they discovered. They had found the truth and it was so attractive they were prepared to die for it. Truth is beautiful. The ancient Greeks knew this and the poets added, ‘beauty is truth’. When the world is seized by this, there will be no more war. There will be perfect peace.   

(The above draws on a series of nine astonishing podcasts from The Economist: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/next-year-in-moscow/id16707).

30 July 2023    Sunday 17 A     1 Kgs 3:5-12    Rom 8:28-30    Mt 13:44-46

THE WHEAT AND THE WEEDS

 

THE WHEAT AND THE WEEDS

There used to be a cartoon in The Herald featuring a delightful rogue called Andy Capp. One day he eyes a smartly dressed young lady and the local vicar happens to be passing and notices. He feels bound to remonstrate but before he can open his mouth, Andy says, “I know, Vicar, there’s so much good in the worst of us, an’ so much bad in the best of us, it is difficult to tell which of us ought to reform the rest of us, Eh?”

Jesus’ story of the wheat and the weeds makes the same point: ‘do not remove the weed now in case you pull up the wheat at the same time. Let them grow till the harvest; then the reapers will separate the good from the bad.’ We live a mixed reality. We would love everyone to obey traffic rules but they don’t: they cut in ahead of you, they over take on the left, etc. Louis Armstrong wrote a song ‘Oh! What a wonderful world.’ Well, it is not that wonderful. It is very messy.  

We find it in ourselves. We have many gifts and do well. But we are aware of our darker side: our selfishness, our avoidance of challenge, our judgement of others, etc. In this we are no different from famous people – even saints. In a recent short study of St John Henry Newman, Eamon Duffy, the Cambridge historian wrote; ‘Newman strove all his life for holiness but he had more than his share of human frailties. He could be tyrannical in friendship, he was thin-skinned and easily offended, slow to forgive, even at time implacable.’

It has been said that we have the ‘weaknesses of our strengths’. I used to work under the leadership of a Jesuit who had been a British officer in India during the war. He was a strong leader in the sense that he was focused on getting the job done. But he could trample on many toes in the process; leaving people angry, frustrated and with a feeling of being used.

In conclusion, we can say the wheat needs the weeds! In some mysterious way, opposition – even from within ourselves – brings out the best in us. Our journey to holiness calls us to make friends – not enemies – of our spontaneous negative reactions.

Christian asceticism today is no longer about flagellating ourselves but in integrating our passions into our personality in a way that reflects the values of the Beatitudes. Yesterday, we celebrated St Mary Magdalene. She was a shining example of this. It can be even harder to do than carrying out the exterior penances we were encouraged to practice in an earlier age.

23 July 2023   Sunday 16 A      Wis 12:13-19          Rom 8:26-27                Mt 13:24-30

WELCOMING A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE

 

WELCOMING A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE

I visited a farmer who employs upwards from 60 to 450 workers depending on the seasons. He is not the owner but a manager employed by another manager of several farms who works for the owner, a war veteran of the Zimbabwe war of Liberation. The farmer, who once owned his own farm before Robert Mugabe’s Land Reform, has accepted his new situation, not grudgingly but with all his heart. He is back in his own country doing a job he loves with people he knows. His wife helps in countless ways, not least in being manager, that is funds supplier, of the farm football team.

What struck me was the lack of bitterness, the absence of talk of ‘the old days’. The farmer and his wife had no security – just a short contract - but this did not prevent them building a house, installing infrastructure on the farm and rejuvenating the fields and taking good care of their employees. It did not mean they were ignoring the precariousness of their situation, they just wanted to ‘get on with life’. And it is a tough life. I was there on the coldest day of the year and I noticed the farmer rose before dawn to begin his day.

I thought it was a wonderful example of someone grasping an opportunity – even if it was hard and without a secure tomorrow – and just becoming engaged. The story of the Sower in the gospels tells us of a man whose project first fell by the wayside and others picked up the pieces. When he tried again, he didn’t have the resources to keep it going. When he was able to provide these, the whole thing got entangled in bureaucracy. Finally things started to come right for him and he had good crops – some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty.

There are many people living by the wisdom of the Gospel even if they would not put it in those words. They are actually living the ‘poverty of spirit’ described by Jesus as the essence of the kingdom of God here and now. That kingdom is not some fairytale in the skies but the breaking forth of authentic values in our world; values which have the power to change our world permanently for the better.

I describe here something on a local level but it is also true on the global level. In reflecting on the war in Ukraine, Grigory Sverdlin, a Russian who loves his country says, ‘The war is not popular in Russia and Putin’s days are numbered. After he goes, there will be dark days in Russia for ten years.’ Then, be believes, Russia will revive into something new and beautiful. ‘That’, he says, ‘is my optimistic view.’

16 July 2023         Sunday 15 A         Is 55:10-11  Rom 8:18-23      Mt 13:1-9

THE FUTILITY OF ‘FALLING OUT’

 

THE FUTILITY OF ‘FALLING OUT’

The budget was $20 million to make The Banshees of Inisherin. The film made $49.3 million. What was the attraction?  I felt uncomfortable with it from the beginning. It fitted no categories. There was no plot, no adventure, no romance. None of the characters were ‘attractive’ except maybe Siobhan who fled the community. What was it all about and why did 80% of viewers approve of it?

It is the story of two friends living on a small island off the west coast of Ireland during the civil war in the 1920s, who fall out. Colm finds Padraic dull and meeting him every day for a drink numbs his creative spirit. He refuses to join Padraic at the pub. He is trying to compose a new song for the fiddle. Padraic becomes obsessed with a desire to mend the relationship and go back to where they were before. Colm becomes more and more irritated and threatens to cut off the very fingers he plays the fiddle with. Padraic doesn’t believe him and the whole issue escalates.

I was glad when it was over. It was a horror film and I could see nothing attractive in it. Then I consulted Mr Google:

‘As a study of male loneliness and swallowed anger it is weirdly compelling and often very funny’.

‘What begins as a doleful, anecdotal narrative becomes something closer to mythic in its rage and resonance: McDonagh (the director) has long fixated on the most visceral, vengeful extremes of human behaviour, but never has he formed something this sorely heartbroken from that fascination.’

I realised I had missed the point. The film is a glimpse into the deeper darker horror of which human beings are capable.  A friend wrote, ‘I LOVED the movie.... I found it funny, moving and thought provoking by turns. I thought it was beautifully shot, superbly acted and captured the LACK of romance in a tiny island community... starved of news... bored... with an intense familiarity among the islanders to the point of claustrophobic desperation... loneliness. But the main thing I got from it was the futility of “falling out” over perceived differences ... drawing huge parallels with brother fighting brother on the mainland.’

I should stop here but am tempted to underline that phrase, ‘the futility of “falling out” over perceived differences.’ This is an apt comment in our civic environment as we approach elections.

9 July 2023    Sunday 14 A     Zech 9:9-10    Rom 8:9-13          Mt 11;25-30

 

 

 

A LEAP OF IMAGINATION

 

A LEAP OF IMAGINATION

For those of us whose daily tool is no longer a badza or an axe but a laptop, the first word that pops up when we turn it on is ‘Welcome’! There is a wide spectrum in which that word occurs. At one extreme, like with the laptop, it is a function of a business relationship – the equivalent of saying, ‘thank you for buying our product. Come again!’ But it is the other extreme that we can explore.

When does saying ‘welcome’ pass from being a pleasant thing to being one which is extremely demanding? In holiday time, it is a joy to welcome family and friends to our home. We prepare a nice room, design pleasant meals and plan some entertainment for our visitor. We enjoy their enjoyment of our efforts.

There are, inevitably, some visitors we would rather not receive as they are prickly or difficult in some way and demand huge patience from us. But still, we rouse ourselves to make the best of it and hope they do not notice our irritation. But let us get to the point; there are people who come into our lives who are going to upset us, not just for a few days, but permanently.

Immigrants in the past have often been welcomed as they provided labour and initiative. The United States of America was built on welcoming people fleeing hardship and persecution in their own countries. Britain’s railways and bridges were often built by Irish people fleeing hunger and poverty in their own land. It is a sensitive thing to say, but Zimbabwe too benefited economically for a while from the ‘know-how’ of people from Europe.

But all these examples carried a downside where the immigrant could be oppressed – or become an oppressor – in their new country. That was the past. Now we have a new situation where immigrants the world over are by and large unwelcome. Countries claim they cannot absorb them and some go to extraordinary lengths to discourage them. Britain wants to export ‘illegal’ immigrants to Rwanda.

The crisis points to the huge disparity between rich countries and poor.  It also calls for a leap in imagination and an open heart; a recognition that to welcome another may change my whole life AND the recognition that this change will benefit ALL of us in the end. How? It is not obvious. The gospels do not go into details. They simply say, ‘anyone who looses his life for my sake will find it.’

The rest is up to us. My own little experience was when I was led to understand that people living with mental disabilities had desires just like all of us and had their own gifts to share with any one who would welcome them.                                                                                    2 July 2023            Sunday 14 A          Zech 9:9-10            Rom 8:9-13           Mt 11: 25-30