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

 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

‘Mistrust him, Meg, I will not though I should feel my fear even at point to overthrow me too, yet will I remember how St Peter with a blast of wind began to sink for his faint faith, shall do as he did, call up on Christ and pray him for help.’ With these words, Thomas More expressed his trust in God to his daughter, Margaret. He was writing from the Tower of London in 1535 when he was indicted for treason for refusing to take the oath recognising the king, Henry VIII of England, as head of the Church in England, and faced execution.

Thomas More was afraid just like anyone else would in his situation. There are many cases of people expressing their fear in the Scriptures. Esther felt the same fear in ‘her mortal peril’ (4:17) and Jeremiah speaks of ‘terror from every side’ (20:10). Jesus himself in Gethsemane, felt ‘terror and anguish’.

When we think of Thomas More or John the Baptist or Jesus, we see the end product, as it were, when people have come through their fear and we celebrate their courage. But we know that moving from fear to courage is not an easy thing - something that just happens, like becoming an adult. It is a process we painfully grapple with. And we are introduced early to this process. We leave home to go to school. We leave home again years later to live the life we have chosen.

We know it is a stage we go through, a ‘game changer’, but it can be scary. Shakespeare’s Hamlet faced it with the immortal words, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ If we read on in his speech, we find him saying when we face a crisis, we think of all sorts of reasons for avoiding a decision!

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,

If we think about what we have to do too much we will end up running away as Jeremiah was tempted to do (20:9).

But in fact what Jeremiah did was reach out to God in trust.

The Lord is at my side, a mighty hero;

my opponents will stumble, mastered,

confounded by their failure…

Even though he was pilloried and placed in a dungeon he was triumphant. Someone counted how many times the words, ‘Do not be afraid’, come in the Scriptures; 350! One for each day of the year! A daily reminder!

25 June 2023   Sunday 12 A   Jer 20:10-13   Rom 5:12-15   Mt 10:26-33

DEATH IN NOTTINGHAM

 

DEATH IN NOTTINGHAM

A huge crowd gathered in Nottingham city centre on Thursday, June 15. What was the event? Had Forest won the cup? On a closer look, everyone was sombre, silent and thoughtful. They had come to share the grief of three families who had each lost a member in a seemingly senseless murder spree on Tuesday morning. Two were students and the third was a retired caretaker.

Civic representatives, spokespeople for the police, the students’ university and the different faiths of the city were all given three minutes to express their feelings and at the stroke of six there was a moment of silence. The camaras roved over the people, each one lost in their own thoughts.  The city was in shock.

As each speaker delivered their brief message – the most powerful one came from the Muslim Iman – it struck me how everyone had come together in shared grief. The gathering went beyond party, faith, class; it was an event of humanity at one for a moment. It was not a political event, a religious event or a sporting celebration. All the barriers that divide us were down.

Watching from 6,000 miles away, I was much moved by the different faces; young, middle aged, old. All were looking straight ahead, nominally at the speaker, but actually probing deep inside, wondering how this was possible. Were there any answers? The absolute stillness when the clock struck six was like the bending of the knee at the moment on Good Friday when Jesus dies.

But let me not reduce it to a religious event as though I want to claim it as an anonymous expression of my own beliefs. Rather it was like a post-religious visceral experience of numbness. Our society has come to this: where a man can wantonly stab three people, steal a car and run into three more. How is this possible?

As the pictures died on the screen, I found myself encouraged by the unity shown by the people of Nottingham; by their generous attendance to the grief of the families, by their silent witness to the fact that when one is hurt, all are hurt and by the kindness that welled up in their hearts setting off ripples in the community and around the world in all those who shared their sorrow.

The deaths in Nottingham, for all their bitter grief, brought us all together a little for a while.  Do they also sow seeds for a new, more compassionate, world, coming to birth?

18 June 2023    Sunday 11A    Ex 19:2-6    Rom 5:6-11   Mt 9:36-10:8

‘A JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS’

 

‘A JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS’

The discussion was about vaping. The presenter said it is a problem with young people. They see it as a substitute for smoking – not harmful to health and yet giving a kick like smoking. Besides, it is ‘cool’ and there is peer pressure to get into it. But, she said, it is now known to be harmful though maybe not so much as smoking. Further, she said, it is addictive and we don’t really know its long term effects but research is far from positive about them.

Her guest agreed and said the government should do something to discourage vaping. One way would be to sharply increase tax on it and she suggested other ways of arresting its effects. It was the other guest’s response that struck me. He said the difficulty is that many young people are searching for meaning, identity – anything that would enable them to cope with life. And he used the word ‘narrative’. ‘They have no narrative.’

He was raising the conversation to another level, a frightening level. Is it really true that many young people have no ‘narrative’ in their lives? I understand his meaning to be; their parents and family have given them no base, no tradition, on which they can build their lives. There are no fixed points to start with and so it is unclear where they can go.

Normally a person grows beyond his or her upbringing or training and develops their own story or ‘narrative’. But if there is nowhere to start, there is a danger a person will have no confidence to set out at all. So the alarming conclusion is; the downside of our progress in affirming human rights and individual liberty is that people have cast off their moorings before they have the compass of their ship set. If one has no idea where one comes from it is going to be difficult to see where one is going.

All this reminds me of a distinction I have come across, from George Kennan, which I have used a number of times. It is between the mechanic and the gardener. The good lady, above, who wants to increase taxes, is like a mechanic. She believes you can ‘fix things’ by making certain adjustments. But the man in the discussion, whose name escapes me – as does hers, was pointing to a more fundamental issue, the foundations of growth.   

With all our progress, we may have succeeded in uprooting our young people so that they are now adrift in a ‘journey without maps’. It is hard for a parent to see their son or daughter in their late thirties still searching for what they really want in life. Many of us grew up in a time where family, tradition and our faith helped us make our own way. Today, it seems, these landmarks are often no longer there.

We may believe that soon there will be a swing back to older sureties, however modified. But in the meantime a whole generation suffers.

11 June 2023

THE TRINITY

 

THE TRINITY

Happily, we have some knowledge of what we mean by the Trinity, the celebration we have this Sunday. Jesus told us about his Father and his great desire to fulfil the mission given him by the Father. He also said, he and the Father are one and that they would send the Holy Spirit so that people everywhere might have ‘life to the full.’

That is about as far as the Scriptures go in revealing the Trinity to us, though mighty volumes have been written to expand on this basic knowledge. Schoolchildren of my generation were told it is a mystery, which, of course, it is. But our teachers seemed unwilling to allow any further questions.

If you travel by air from Harare to Nairobi you may see the peak of Kilimanjaro jutting through the clouds. It is a landmark and you know that it is the summit of a huge mountain at the foot of which are forests and farms, settlements and towns – all full of people with their hopes and anxieties, joys and sorrows.

The glimpse you have of the mountain peak is a peek (excuse the pun) at the richness of life among the multitude of people at its base. You know nothing about them in detail but you know they are there in their abundant variety. St Paul has a far deeper perception of this when he writes, ‘What no eye has seen and no ear heard, what the mind of man cannot conceive; all that God has prepared for those who love him’ (1 Cor 2:9).   

This glimpse is enough for us for now. It is enough to know there is a whole mystery awaiting us: the mystery of God and of our place in him. There is no way we can describe or understand these things. Ours is to approach the unknown on bended knee but with excitement and trust. ‘You will understand when you are bigger.’ How often have parents said this to their children.

We have to grow bigger in the Spirit. We have to get to the point, like Job, where we say, ‘You have told me of great works that I cannot understand … having seen you with my own eyes, I retract what I have said and repent.’  His questions have not been answered but he has come to grasp that he cannot approach God with the normal human intellectual tools we have. God is beyond. His is to bow his head in humble submission.

So we come to the Trinity with great joy, great trust, great anticipation and there is one little clue – if that is what it is. The Trinity is community: three in one. Each distinct and yet all one. We are made in the image of God and are to reflect this distinctiveness in each of us while recognising our full identity is to be one with one another.