PLASTIC SHEETS AND INNER STRUGGLES

 

PLASTIC SHEETS AND INNER STRUGGLES

It is hard to be patient with the constant requests of the poor. Are they genuine? If I give to one, why not to all? Then a woman comes. She says she has four children and has the youngest with her. Her husband is in prison, the rains have come and the roof of her shack is leaking. Could she have $25 for some plastic to cover the leaks? It so happens we too had a leaking roof. We spent a good deal more than $25 repairing it. In fact we put on a new roof as the old was rotting. Ours is one of those countries of the excessively rich and the grindingly poor.   

For centuries, people in poor countries have migrated to richer ones: the Irish to England, Italians to America, Turks to Germany, Zimbabweans to South Africa. It was quite acceptable when labour was needed in the rich countries. Suddenly, in recent decades, the rich are closing their doors on the poor. Mexicans can’t get into America, Afghans can’t get into Australia, Africans can’t get into Europe.

But they try anyway. They risk their lives in flimsy boats in the hands of unscrupulous go-betweens or they climb fences or walls. They do not give up. Anything is better than the wasted lives they live at home. There was a time they were welcomed for economic reasons; they provided labour. Now they are refused for moral reasons; they are too many and we are afraid. They will take our jobs, our benefits; they are a nuisance. The tightly pressed spring of colonialism is let loose and is bouncing back. The colonisers were happy with what they could get at the time. They never thought there would be a price for their descendants to pay.

Well, those descendants don’t seem – yet – willing to face the issue.  There is a report just out from the UK entitled, A Callous Disregard for the Vulnerable lies at the heart of the UK government, which begins;

On Wednesday, we learned that our government has taken refugees it had held at the camp at Manston on the Kent Coast and left them on the streets of London late at night. They were not told where they were, where they could go for safety or given any money.

This does not seem to have been an anomaly involving a few people – 50 were dumped from a bus near London’s Victoria Station. These people had been forced from their homes and had struggled here in hopes of safety. Abandoned in a strange place by those who were supposed to protect them, it is fair to imagine they were confused, disoriented, and afraid…

This is the tail end of colonialism and it is not pretty. There is not even a hint of understanding that these migrants are the desperate victims of a world order designed to favour the powerful. The word compassion, leave alone justice, seems far from the minds of those who deliberately exploit the weak by dumping them in a strange place without help.

Compassion is not a soft cuddly word. It is hard courageous work to think out the demands of justice at whatever cost to ourselves. We are being urged to combat global warming but ultimately, we can understand that combat will benefit us and our children. This combat, justice for migrants, seems to carry no obvious benefits for us. But, if we can stretch our minds and our hearts, reaching out to others will bring unimaginable benefits to us too as well as to them.                                                                                                  13 November 2022

 

   

THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE

 

THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE

ZANU believes that the common interests of the people are paramount in all efforts to exploit the country’s resources, that the productive processes must involve them as full participants, in both the decision-making processes, management and control (of those resources). (ZANU Election Manifesto. 1980).

In 1980 ZANU presented an obvious - and noble - proposal to the people of Zimbabwe: Vote for us and this will be our policy: the interests of the people will be paramount. The link with the people was fresh in the minds of those who conducted the war of liberation. They depended on the people to protect them and feed them as they moved around the country. After the elections, when ZANU was safely in power, they no longer depended on ‘the people’ and could govern with diminishing reference to them.

This process of ‘de-linking’ between governing and governed also happened in Ethiopia after the victory of Emperor (King of kings, Neguse Negest) Menelik II over the Italians at Adewa in 1896. Up to that time Ethiopia was held together, according Tsehai Berhane-Selassie, by the chewa, a self-trained army with definite links to the ordinary people. She writes:

Modernity ‘failed to bring with it the chewa spirit of two-way communication between state and population and to uphold the impersonal working principles that a ‘modern’ civil service was supposedly meant to apply. The gradual centralisation of power in the hands of ‘modern’ state monarchs eclipsed the status and crucial role of the chewa. For the salaried officials of the ‘modern’ structure land was a peripheral structure for their administrative services. The development of banks, ministries and other ‘modern’ state facilities, and resources with which the state could employ salaried administrators, effectively marginalised the long-standing role of rural people in local political matters. While the ‘modern’ state took over from the chewa it failed to adopt their idealised spirit of participation in local decision making by ordinary local people … and so paved the way for despotism (Ethiopian Warriorhood, Defence, Land and Society, 1800-1941, Tsehai Berhane-Selssie (2018) p 4 ff).

The belief that democracy is inevitably attainable by every people under heaven is looking more and more fragile as we view the increased sophistication in methods of control of those who govern us. In China, thirty years after Tiananmen Square, the government is fixed in a determined mindset that seeks to control every aspect of life and yet it was in China, almost 100 years ago, that Mao pioneered the idea of the army and the people are one.

Listening to the people – rural and urban – and making their interests ‘paramount’ is not a simple matter. But if the determination to at last set out on that demanding journey were begun, we could again begin to hope. 

 

 

 

WHERE THE DIVIDING LINE RUNS

 

WHERE THE DIVIDING LINE RUNS

The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector is one more of those simple parables told by Jesus which has an obvious meaning - and a not so obvious one. Here the person who feels secure in their position and way of life, ‘despises everyone else.’ It is obvious this is one more scene of division between those who have and those who do not have, between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor – the very kind of divide Jesus came to remove.

When we draw out the story from its original stark setting, it is less obvious where the dividing line runs. Is it so clear who are the rich and who are the poor? Who live comfortable lives and who precarious ones? Augustine gives us some poignant words about what he gradually came to understand:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and, in my ugliness, fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all …

Every person is a mixture! We are all Pharisees and tax collectors! We are conscious of how much we rely upon ‘those lovely things’. Yet we are drawn, pulled, pursued, by that inner voice that will not leave us alone. We are ‘kept from you by those things’. Our struggle is always going to be to ‘pierce the clouds’ as Ben Sira puts it. ‘You were with me and I was not with you.’ God is always ‘with us’. Our problem is that we are not with God.

‘Give us this day our daily bread!’ Our daily bread has to be our permanent attention to the inner struggle to be ‘with God’. To see things with the eyes of God, to sense the Spirit moving across our waters, our consciousness, and to courageously follow the Way. This is behind the wisdom of the ancients about ‘examining our lives’ so highlighted in Christian times and emphasised – popularized? – by Ignatius of Loyola. (i) Be grateful for all ‘those lovely things’. (ii) Expand your horizons. Review. Where is God in my day? (iii) What to do?

23 Oct 2022                Sunday 30C                Sir 35: 12-18     2 Tim 4:6-18        Lk 18: 9-14

THERE IS NO CIVIL SOCIETY

 

THERE IS NO CIVIL SOCIETY

 

Russia's problem is our system. A system was created here that created such a person [Putin]. The question of the West's role in creating this system is a very serious one. The problem is that this system didn't create a society. There are a lot of very nice people in Russia. But there is no civil society. That's why Russia can't resist.

 

These words, this week, of Steve Rosenberg, writing from Moscow, are alarming. ‘…the West’s role in creating a system … (that prevented) the creation of a (civil) society … (so that) Russia can’t resist.’ My particular interest is in ‘the West’s role in creating this system’. Even a distant observer can have an opinion and mine would be that the West never developed a generous and imaginative attitude towards Russia. Here you have an ancient Christian, cultured, society that has struggled with its identity at least since the time of Peter the Great (c.1700). Three times since then it has been invaded by western countries and, after the Second Word War, it built an enormous shield.

 

The Americans were tempted to break through that shield but wiser heads prevailed and we had a ‘cold’ - in contrast to a hot – war for forty years until 1989. It was then that ‘the centre could not hold’ and the Russian empire simply imploded and all the vassal states on its periphery became independent, including Ukraine. That would have been a moment for wise restraint in the West but instead they gloated that they had won and America was now the only superpower. Someone even went so far as to write a book called The End of History. The Russians were humiliated and have spent the last thirty years preparing to bounce back. Now they have done it in an unpardonable way but at least the West should acknowledge that they, the West, are partly to blame. Instead of reaching out to Russia and doing everything possible to help them build a ‘civil’ society in a respectful way, they simply continued to gloat. Now the West has to pay and pay big.

 

I did not mean to wander into politics, if that is what I have done, but we are not good at sustained study when things seem to be going well. We only use our brains when things begin to go wrong and we ‘know how to fix it’. But we should never have allowed them to go wrong in the first place. All this may sound like a far-off reflection on today’s gospel but when Jesus praises the poor widow for insisting against the ‘unjust’ judge, he is teaching us of the need for sustained effort and prayer if we are to find our way in this complex world that we have fashioned.

 

16 October 2022         Sunday 29C    Ex 17:8-13      2 Tim 3:14 - 4:2          Lk 18:1-8

 

 

AS MUCH AS TWO MULES CAN CARRY

 

AS MUCH AS TWO MULES CAN CARRY

Naaman the Syrian comes up with a seemingly weird solution when Elisha refuses to accept any payment for curing him of leprosy. He asks for as much earth from Israel as two mules can carry. His idea is to worship the God of Israel in gratitude but he can only do this on the soil of Israel. So he takes the soil of Israel with him and transfers his thanks from Elisha to the God of Elisha.

Behind the story is one more hint that God is going to reveal himself, not just to Israel, but to all the nations. Naaman gets it, which is more than the people of Capernaum do when Jesus reminds them of this story. Gratitude is the doorway to recognition. Naaman learns this when he persists in trying to reward Elisha and the prophet puts him off and points elsewhere. Naaman is a foreigner with an open mind.

I am always struck when, without warning, people are asked to say a prayer. Their spontaneous response is often to begin, ‘Thank you, Lord, for the gift of life…’ This is a profound reaction because life itself is the greatest gift of all. God went on to give us a planet and a universe in which to dwell and grow. He gives astronomers the gift of piercing the universe for knowledge, doctors the gift of diagnosing and healing our physical wounds and journalists the gift of seeking, day in and day out, the truth about war, injustice and abuse.

We are grateful to these people and so many more who help us to grow in beauty, justice and truth. They are Elishas. If they are wise, as he was, they will not take credit for themselves. They will know they build on the work of others and, while they may accept acclaim and Nobel prizes, they will know the meaning of the words of Georges Bernanos, in The Diary of Country Priest, ‘All is grace’. Everything is a gift.

The first lesson a new born child experiences, though they cannot reflect on it, is that they are dependent. They are dependent on their parents and family for food, warmth, bathing, hugs - in a word, for love. We grow to be independent and think we can be but Jesus tells us to learn the lessons of childhood if we are to be part of his kingdom. The world is too much for a little child to take in, so they cry for their mother.

It is no different for us who are ‘grown- up’. The suffering we encounter, the wars we start, the injustices we perpetuate, the global warming we ignore – all are too much for one individual to take in and respond to. Jesus knew this and so gave us himself, his presence among us. The Eucharist is the moment we gather and celebrate his presence and recognise he shares our suffering and holds out to us the promise of the fullness of life through victory over pain and death. We take our bare earth home into our hearts and there worship the Lord who is making all things new (Revelations 21:1-5).

9 October 2022     Sunday 28 C         2 Kings 5:14-17    2 Tim2: 8-13      Lk 17:11-19       

ROMANCE AND VIOLENCE

 

ROMANCE AND VIOLENCE

People can be very patient. They sit by the road and wait for a bus for hours. Or they can be very impatient, dodging across traffic lanes, overtaking on the left as well as the right. Some of us are good at waiting. Others, with the prophet, say, ‘we cry for help and you do not listen.’

But the message is: ‘Wait! Even if it come slowly, it is sure to come.’ I belong to two countries; one by birth, one by adoption. The one gives me hope for the other. One waited seven hundred years for freedom and does not have it fully even now. The other waited seven decades for freedom and it too does not have it fully even now. Both, in their frustration, resorted to violence but the violence only yielded a partial solution. You cannot force solutions, unless you are a mechanic. But people are not machines. They cannot be fixed.

Waiting does not mean you sit on your hands and do nothing. But it does mean you trust a solution is on the way and we do all we can to allow the solution to emerge – even if it comes slowly. It is like the farmer. They are quite different from the mechanic. They work with vigour to sow their crops but they cannot force them to grow. They have to wait.

The poet WB Yeats wrote, ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone / It’s with O’Leary in the grave.’ Those leaders, who, like O’Leary, had a romantic optimistic view that goodness and truth would triumph, are now being challenged by the men of violence who want to force a solution. They did force a solution but it didn’t satisfy the people.

So they had to go back to waiting. And now, after a hundred years, a solution is finally in sight. So it is with them. So it will also be with us. ‘We are only servants.’ We do what we can. We cannot force the river to flow faster. 

All this is common sense but it is hard for us to wait. We want solutions and we want them now. We need the gospel to tell us: authentic permanently satisfying solutions only come through patience. And patience is a word that comes from the Latin patio, meaning suffering. A patient in a hospital suffers in the hope of healing. So it is with us; we suffer but our suffering is not useless. It is the raw material of a solution.

2 October 2022    Sunday 27 C          Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4      2 Tim 1:6…14    Lk 17:5-10

 

A SOUND LIKE THE RUSH OF A VIOLENT WIND

Pentecost is remembered and celebrated this weekend. It is the final act in the drama that started in Bethlehem with the birth of Mary’s child. The seed that he sowed felt on rocky ground but it also fell in fertile soil. His closest friends gathered in Jerusalem, hesitant and fearful, behind locked doors. They had learnt much and had high hopes but they did not know where to begin or what to do. ‘Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the whole house. … All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.’

Robert Bridges adapted the twelfth century Amor Patris et Filii and put it into modern English with words that included, ‘who formest heavenly beauty out of strife’. The Spirit forms beauty out of our terrible human mess. Here is an example of ‘strife’ I read some time back: Two Guinean boys, Yaguine (14) and Fodé (15) stowed away in a plane to Europe and were discovered dead in the luggage hold. A letter was found in the clothes of one of them which read in part:

Excellencies, leaders of Europe. We have the honourable pleasure and great confidence in writing to you about the reason for our journey and sufferings, we the children and young people of Africa. But first we send you the most delightful, charming and respectful greetings. Be our support and our help. We beg you for the love of your beautiful continent, your feeling towards your people, your family and especially the closeness and love of your children whom you love like life itself. And also for the love and friendship of our Creator ‘God’ the Almighty who has given you the background, ability and wherewithal to build well and organise well our continent so as to become a beautiful and respected friends among others … So if you see that we sacrifice and expose our life, it is because people suffer too much and we need you to fight against the poverty and to put an end to the wars in Africa … We beg you to excuse us very very much for daring to write to you les grands personnages to whom we owe great respect. Yaguine Koita et Fodé Tounkara.

I do not think anyone can read these words without a tear coming to their eyes. The letter was written more than twenty years ago. It seems at first sight a hopeless task; two young boys facing a mighty continent. And yet who knows what tiny ripples of hope this letter set off? The Spirit is at work all over the world connecting the hopes and sacrifices of children and adults everywhere. No journalist can capture what is really going on. The situation is not hopeless. People are finding their voice. It may not be the rush of a violent wind – how we would love that it was – but ‘a sound of silence’ such as Elijah heard (1 Kings19:12). Can we hear it too?

June 5, 2022          Pentecost    Acts 2:1-11 1 Cor 12:3…13     Jn 14:15…28