When we speak of ‘saints’ we normally mean baptised
persons who have been formerly declared as such by the Catholic or Orthodox
Churches after a long investigation into their lives. But there are so many people we could equally
call saints who have never approached the waters of baptism. These are people who have pursued noble
personal goals with immense courage and perseverance. They have “reached for
the sky”. The Ascension is a feast where
the clouds are pierced for a moment and men stood their gazing into the beyond
(Acts 1:11).
I was thinking these thoughts when I listened to a
radio programme about Tony Garnett. He
had a traumatic experience at the age of five. For some seemingly still unknown
reason, his parents decided they could not have another child and his mother
died as a result of a “back street” abortion that went horribly wrong. His
father was so devastated he took his own life nineteen days later. The family
cared for Tony but they refused to answer his questions believing he was too
young to understand.
He was driven with a desire to “know the secrets”
even though when he did he hid them away even from himself. He transferred his ache to understand other
“secrets” – one of which made him famous. In the 1960s he collaborated with Ken
Loach to make a film on homelessness in a post-war Britain. In the early years
of that decade the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, told the voters “you never
had it so good”. But the film, Cathy Come
Home, was a powerful exposition of the lack of compassion among some social
workers. The Minister of Housing called Garnett and Loach to his office. “What can we do”, he lamented. In the end they did little and the housing
situation in the UK is worse today than it was fifty years ago.
Although Tony Garnett is not an angry man, he does
sound like a modern day prophet. He
admits there have been great advances in society in the past half century but
they have come, he says, at the cost of a loss of compassion. “We have a country that doesn’t care as it
used to.” His experience is of the UK
but his views have global impact. Now 82, he sees the emphasis today on
individual freedom; people are absorbed in a competition for personal survival.
They concentrate on their own goals with little concern for building
relationships with others. We have got
the balance wrong, he says, we are building a society of unconnected
individuals, each striving for their own well-being. We have forgotten that we need each other,
that we need relationships and community if we are to be happy.
13
May 2018 The
Ascension
Acts
1:1-11 Ephesians
4:1-13 Mark
16:15-20
