MECHANICS AND GARDENERS

 

MECHANICS AND GARDENERS

Life goes on. We know the Russians have invaded Ukraine but what can I do about it? I can pray and that is good. But it is usually all I can do in such moments. Yet it helps to think about it. Our screens show burning buildings – not from some accidental fire but by the deliberate intention of people who do not seem to care about human life, about the suffering of children, about mothers becoming widows, about people starving and unable to keep warm in that harsh climate.

How is it possible, after all we have gone through in wars over the earth, that we still don’t put an end to war and solve our problems by listening and talking round a table? If we do listen, we learn that the Russians do have some reasons for their actions. They do feel threatened by the western alliance that has now extended to their borders.

After the Second Word War which ended in 1945, the Russians seemed intent on expanding westwards and the Americans and Europeans dreaded another war where they would have to fight, not Germany, but Russia. An American diplomat in Moscow, called George Kennan, understood the Russians and that they had always felt threatened and wanted to expand their influence in order to feel secure. Kennan wrote a famous ‘long telegram’ to his superiors in Washington proposing the Americans display their power but hold back from any threat of action.

Later he explained,  

‘We must be gardeners and not mechanics in our approach to world affairs. We must realize that we did not create the forces by which this process operates. We must learn to take these forces for what they are and to induce them to work with us with understanding and sympathy, not trying to force growth by mechanical means, not tearing the plants up by the roots when they fail to behave as we wish them to. We do not need to insist that change in the camp of our adversaries can come only by violence.’

These have always struck me as wise words. To be a mechanic is to impose your will on a machine and make it do what you want. To be a gardener is to recognise the built-in nature of the plants and work with them in the hope of producing the results you hope for.

The Russians do have a problem. But we can lament that they did not ‘work with’ the people they considered threatened them. It is not my wish to start an argument over the rights and wrongs of this crisis. It is too sad for words. As we enter this precious period of Lent, we can lament this tragedy and try in our own way to be gardeners in all the relationships in which we are engaged.     (6 March 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

 

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

The doctor’s waiting area had four entrances. The wooden floor was old but polished. Nurses and patients came and went, all intent, in a steady unpredictable flow. They shared a common purpose of healing or being healed and a common humanity. They formed a temporary community of transitory connections. Without saying so, they wished each other well. They got on with the silent thoughts or their texting. The atmosphere was charged with unspoken anxiety. Like waiting for exam results or the verdict of interviews.

It was a provisional community. In another place, at another time, they would have chatted and learnt each other’s business.  They would have broken the silence and allow connections to develop. They would have revealed who they are and what were their hopes.

          The orchard where the tree grows is judged on the quality of its fruit,

          Similarly a person’s words betray what he feels.

 

So speaks Ben Sirach and he goes on: we cannot praise a person until we hear them speak. Words are like those daubs of paint that build up the whole picture. And they reveal whether the picture is full of promise or threat. When Jesus came, he spoke extraordinary words, words that penetrated the meaning of this planet. Yet they were simple words, easy to understand, like the instructions on a medicine bottle. ‘Lose your life and you will find it.’ They were words full of hope.

 

Easy to understand but so hard to learn. The Russians have invaded Ukraine. All the words they used in the build up pronounced they are acting in self-defence. A powerful country attacking a weaker one in self-defence? It is overwhelmingly sad. There is now so much anger at this situation, so much pain and sadness. It forces us back to the words of Jesus and calls us to pray. In quiet personal prayer or in public or on the internet or whatever way. People are losing their lives and those who remain live in fear. All because we ‘cannot lose our life – in the sense Jesus means - and so find it.’

 

Can we imagine what the world would like if we could live these words? All our doctors’ waiting rooms, sports grounds, musical venues and theatres of war – are the raw material of our relating to one another. There are so many opportunities to choose to reach out to others or, on the contrary, think only of ourselves. This attack is a huge step back for humanity. After all we have been through, we cannot see it, even ‘through a glass darkly’.

 

27 February 2022

A WORLD WITHOUT FRONTIERS

 

A WORLD WITHOUT FRONTIERS

There are many ‘shocking’ passages in the gospels: Jesus healing lepers, forgiving sinners, calling tax collectors and washing his disciples’ feet. But the one thing that must have stuck in their throat was the call to ‘love your enemies’. After all the oppression they had been through – from the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Persians, the Greeks and now the Romans – how are they expected to have even a kind thought towards their enemies, leave alone love them?

Jesus came to announce the kingdom, a new world of fraternity (the word covers sisters as well as brothers, as Pope Francis points out in Fratelli Tutti). Paul interpreted it as a world without boundaries: ‘Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barriers of hatred that divide us’ (Eph 2:14).

In the Old Testament reading today, we see David sparing Saul’s life when he could have killed him. But David did not act out of love but out of fear of God’s anger if he killed ‘the Lord’s anointed’. David was a calculating politician!

Jesus, on the other hand, is urging us to remove the ‘great gulf’ referred to in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus at his door (Luke 16:26). Jesus calls us to go to the frontier where we cannot bring ourselves to say a kind word to some people who irritate us beyond endurance! They could be in our own family, in our work place or in our society. ‘If you love those who love you what thanks can you expect?’ our gospel asks us today.

Jesus wants a breakthrough in our world; between Russians and Ukrainians, Tigrayans and Ethiopians, migrants and those who close their doors to them -and all the other divided people in the world. And with us, is there a message too? Who is my ‘enemy’? Who am I called to reach out to? To love? 

I know it is easy to ask these questions and they can remain theoretical or abstract. We can also give thanks for the barriers we have overcome. I often think of how I came to view people who are mentally handicapped in a completely different way. It was a gift for me. And I am sure you have had similar experiences. We are called to go on breaking down these barriers wherever they are. The kingdom is ‘among’ but it is not yet fully there!

20 February 2022         Sunday 7C       1 Sam 2:62…23           1 Cor 15:45-49             Lk 6: 27-38

WHAT A TRAGEDY!

 

WHAT A TRAGEDY!

A reader, so disappointed by the ending of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, decided to read the book again in the hope that the ending would be different! So the story goes, and whatever the truth of it, it illustrates our disappointment over tragic endings. I was one of the many who turned to the news last Sunday morning in the hope five-year-old Rayan, who had fallen down a 100-foot deep dry well in Morocco, would at last be rescued safe and sound. Hundreds had kept vigil during the five-day rescue attempt and now the moment arrived when he could be safely extracted from his little prison. Jubilation! But, alas, only for a moment: the child was dead.

People on the spot, and watching around the world, went numb. They knew it might turn out that way but they hoped ‘against hope’ that there would be a happy ending. There was consolation in the show of human solidarity across boundaries and Pope Francis pointed to the ‘beauty’ of this. But there was no escaping that awful feeling of pain and disappointment. How wonderful if he been found alive! But he wasn’t. The world moved on and the story dropped from the headlines.

Yet knawing questions remain. Is that really the end of the story? Is tragedy just what the word means; an awful human disaster and it ends there. Herbert Chitepo and Thomas Sankara are assassinated. Josiah Tongogara and Princess Diana die in road accidents. Cyclones and tsunamis kill thousands and destroy homes and livelihoods.

We are caught between wanting our planet, our only home, to be a place of happiness and happy endings and realising that it has never been that way and tragedy is our constant companion. I often go back to St Thomas Aquinas: ‘God does not want evil but he permits it. And that is good.’ When I first heard these words, I was shocked. It is good that God permits evil? I do not know if Thomas elaborates. I suspect he doesn’t because who can? You cannot get your mind around the reality of evil being ‘good’.

Yet we often get hints that tragic events lead to some good result. I won’t try to give examples: There is a starkness in the concept that does not bear too much analysis. We just have to stay with the paradox. We see ‘good’ people suffering tragedies and we see ‘bad’ people seemingly enjoying life without suffering. But tragedy, pain and disaster are like the shards in the potter’s workshop. They are the price we seem to have to pay in order to create a wholesome humanity. 

13 February 2022  Sunday 6C  Jer 17:5-8    1 Cor 1512…20    Lk 6: 17…26    

THE POWER OF WORDS

 

THE POWER OF WORDS

‘Doesn’t it show that a simple little conversation can change things? Its huge. The power of words is a lot better than the power of the gun. I’m chuffed.’ The speaker was Patrick Murphy, head of the Irish South and West Fish Producers’ Organisation, on learning that the Russian government had heeded his request that they moved their naval exercises further out to sea as they were threatening their fish with all their explosions and rocket drill. ‘I’m shocked really, I didn’t think that little old us would have an impact on international diplomacy’, he said.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of a seraph touching his lips with a live coal and purifying him so that he could announce the words of God to the people and we have been living off those words ever since. And in Luke’s gospel we have an example of Jesus telling, not the Russian navy, but Peter to ‘put out into deep water for a catch of fish.’ Peter is astonished for he knows about fishing and fishing is done at night. But there was something in the power of Jesus’ words that moved him to obey, and we know what happened.

It is so easy to say nothing, to keep quiet. It is safer and keeps us out of trouble. But our readings today prompt us to reflect on those words of Qoheleth about ‘a time to keep silent and a time to speak’ (3:7). Many times we fail to speak when there is a real need to do so. The whole case of abuse in the Church is a case in point. But the need is far wider. In families and communities we see someone getting into trouble but we say nothing. We are afraid to speak because we might be blamed later on. Or we feel we might be breaking the family unity.

An America researcher, George Vaillant, is part of a team that has studied behaviour in a large sample of people over decades. One of his conclusions is that people who are happy in their eighties enjoyed good relationships in their fifties. This may not sound like a major discovery; maybe it is obvious. But his point is that happiness is based on sound relationships. And we can take this further and say, sound relationships grow when people speak honestly to each other and know when to ‘keep silent and when to speak.’   

The key is that we are responsible for each other. If we take courage and speak when it is necessary, we not only contribute to another’s long term happiness but we achieve our own. When we lose our life we find it. We too can be ‘chuffed.’

6 February 2022    Sunday 5C  Is 6:1-8       1 Cor 15:1-11       Lk 5:1-11

   

PEOPLE WHO FORGET …

 

PEOPLE WHO FORGET …

“People who forget history are destined to live through it again”. The speaker was Hans Werk, former member of the SS (Schutzstaffel, ‘political soldiers’) of the Nazi time in Germany in the 1930s and ’40. He was speaking to a group of young Germans after the Second World War of his deep shame at having been part of the operation which deliberately set out to kill all the Jews in Germany and the lands it occupied or planned to occupy - a total of eleven million people, equivalent to the entire population of Zimbabwe. This was Hitler’s ‘final solution’ to the Jewish ‘problem’ and it led to the death of six million Jews.

As if to underline Werk’s message, how many of us can remember ever hearing of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, eighty years ago, which is being remembered this week and which drew up the plans to put this operation into effect? If we ever knew, we have probably forgotten. And yet Jewish people are deeply aware of the threat that still remains because people forget. Unbelievable as it may sound, there are people who deny, in spite of overwhelming evidence, the slaughter, the Holocaust, ever happened.

Our reading from St Paul this Sunday speaks of ‘delighting in the truth’ and in Luke’s gospel we read of Jesus ‘winning the approval of all.’ But when Jesus tried to build on his initial welcome in Nazareth, they suddenly turn on him in rage. They had forgotten their history. Israel had failed many times; in the desert and after the people were settled in the ‘promised land’. Their memory was short and they soon found themselves in exile in Babylon. They were unable or unwilling to remember and learn the lessons memory provides.

We can be selective about memory. Zimbabwe has a memory; a memory of opportunity based on race. Education, health, employment, access to land, advancement to leadership roles – all were based on the colour of a person’s skin. But we seem to have forgotten all that because all these things are – largely though not totally - still being denied to people. The difference is that now it is not colour that distinguishes people but power. The Liberation War was all about empowering people but we have forgotten.

It is deeply painful but true: people who forget their history – be it personal or group - are destined to repeat its mistakes. This saying is attributed to George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher, and was slightly adapted by Winston Churchill just after the war when he warned in the House of Commons, in London; ‘those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.’

30 January 2022    Sunday 4C   Jer 1:4…19 1 Cor 12:31-13:13      Lk 4:21-30

 

 

THE SEED GROWS

 

THE SEED GROWS

‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen’. This is the climax of our three readings this Sunday. The opening one, from Nehemiah, speaks of the rediscovery of the Book of the Law after the exile when the Jews returned to rebuild the temple. The people are moved to tears when they hear the words and realise how they had abandoned the way of the Lord. They want to start anew. The second reading, from Paul, describes how we all have different gifts and each of us is needed for the task. And gospel from Luke recounts Jesus coming to his hometown where he announces these words about ‘being fulfilled today.’

All the hopes and longings of people are about to be realised. There is a feeling of expectancy and Jesus says, ‘your desires are being fulfilled even as you listen.’ What were they to make of it? Certainly, they did not wake up next morning to a new world of justice and peace for all people. But they did wake up, if they knew it, to a new process that was now set in place. God had always been at work in his creation but now he was actually present, dwelling among his people in the flesh. He was one of them. And because of this, new things would start to happen. People would say, ‘we have never seen anything like this before’ (Mark 2:12).

A little example from daily life. I had a pork pie on the way to Zambia once, just beyond Karoi. It must have been well past its ‘best before’ date for I was very ill and could not attend the meeting in Siavonga. They took me to a clinic and fixed a drip and within minutes I felt better; a process was under way that changed everything. Jesus set in motion a process and people were drawn to him and they formed a community which grew in the cities around the Mediterranean and then spread over time to the whole world.  

This process is still going on and Pope Francis often refers to it. Our lives are the living out of the process; we benefit from what others have done before us and we make our own contribution to those who follow us. The ‘fulfilment’ is happening all the time even if we don’t see it. It is like our immune system, constantly working in our bodies but we hardly know it and seldom pay attention to it. It is protecting us and freeing us to do the things we want to do. Mark again; ‘Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know’ (4:27).

This is what we mean by hope. It gives us the knowledge that we are moving towards a goal and we will certainly get there. People in the Middle Ages  translated this hope into pilgrimages, often to Jerusalem. They would set out, often on foot, for the holy city as an act of devotion which symbolised their life-journey.

23 January 2022          Sunday 3C      Neh 8:2…10              1 Cor 12:12-30            Lk 4:14-21