Learning the history

One of the things I learned as a vicar (and something I keep reminding clergy who move from one parish to another) is that you can learn the history, but you can’t share the memory. The problem, however, is that people in any community usually act and react from the unarticulated memory, rather than from the cold fact of history.

This notion has been renewed as I have listened and talked with people here in Virginia during the last few days.

Having flown in on Friday night to Roanoke, we spent Saturday in town visiting the art gallery and watching The Artist at a local cinema. On Sunday I preached at St Peter, Altavista, and in the evening at St John, Roanoke. On Monday we spent the morning at the offices of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia before being collected and driven to meet people in Waynesboro en route to Staunton where we were wonderfully entertained by the rector and his wife. Following a cheese and wine party with the Vestry of Trinity church, I even intruded into their Vestry Meeting (always good to see how other churches run their business).

After a very comfortable night – sleep matters with a schedule of constant new people and places – we visited Stuart Hall School and saw the wonderful Tiffany windows in Trinity church before driving to Lexington for a clergy lunch. This was excellent: generous hospitality and good conversation with good people. After a visit to the R.E. Lee Memorial Church, we went on a tour of the Washington & Lee University before visiting the Virginia Military Institute. Later we drove on back to Roanoke in time for dinner.

Wednesday saw us being driven to Christiansburg where we shared in the midweek Eucharist at St Thomas’s before meeting some young people (with educational and other challenges) on an inspired FutureWorks course in the hall. We then went to Blacksburg and toured Virginia Tech where 32 people were shot dead during a planned rampage by a student on 16 April 2007. We went from there to Radford University to meet students for dinner (and informal Eucharist) before spending the night with a brilliantly hospitable and friendly couple in town.

Tomorrow will see us visiting an art gallery with friends before having lunch with the local clergy and then being driven back to Roanoke to prepare for the annual diocesan Council in a local hotel. This looks to be a busy programme including some speaking, meeting loads of people and doing some stuff with hundreds of very motivated young people. We fly out on Sunday late afternoon.

So, why the ‘history versus memory’ stuff? Well, we have met some inspiring people and seen some beautiful and inspiring places. We have heard so many stories of life and faith from so many people. And we have been learning some history as we go. As I said to some people today, it is easy to feel that we ought to apologise for being British whenever we see or hear about the War of Independence. Here in Virginia, however, it is the Civil War that cuts deep and still shapes people. Yet, driving to our hosts from the university this evening I caught sight of a banner hanging in a house window in Radford that said: ‘Liberty or death. Get out of my way’.

It seems that the American default of holding individual autonomy to be inviolable leads to illusions of independence and power that ultimately tend to dehumanise. The tragedy of Virginia Tech hangs in the air (along with other violent atrocities) and calls into question all sorts of assumptions. Apparently, however, the right to bear arms is not up for consideration.

I am a guest – a visitor. I can’t share the memory that goes deep and has shaped the psyche of people and communities here. But, learning the history raises a raft of hard questions about what makes a society good. And the experience sends me away thinking about the power of a Christian gospel that calls for a radically new way of thinking and living. Today we celebrated the Conversion of St Paul – a conversion that, precipitated by an involuntary encounter with the risen Jesus, shattered his entire world view and broke him down to the extent that he took years of rebuilding his way of seeing, thinking and living.

Conversion is hard. Easily spoken of, but costly to endure. And always easy to propose to someone else.

 

 

At the heart of a search engine

This morning I was preaching in Altavista. Until I arrived in the USA on Friday I thought Altavista was just a search engine. But, it isn’t – it’s a real place in Virginia.

We (our wonderful hosts, Bishop Neff Powell and his wife Dorothy) drove an hour and a half to get there and everyone in the church was warm, friendly and very welcoming. They even understood my non-Queen’s English English. But, going there teased my imagination at the level of searching for links that might be rather fanciful. So, before we head off to the next service in Roanoke (preaching again) here are some tenuous connections arising from preaching on Jonah in Altavista:

1. Jonah was searching for a way to escape the call of God – something I and other Christians have worked on with great diligence.

2. God doesn’t give up on us when we run away – even if he knows we are racist bigots who haven’t quite ‘got’ God’s character.

3. God links together grace and generosity with the search of ordinary people (the Ninevites) for the freedom of a new start – even when God’s ‘chosen one’ thinks his own righteousness is all that matters.

4. Jonah’s search for justice against the Ninevites hits up against God’s longing for justice for the Ninevites.

5. Being sicked up from a big fish onto a beach might represent a big hint, but it doesn’t automatically mean that you then get the point. Prejudice and self-righteousness go deep.

There’s plenty more, but that’s for starters.

Anyway, over lunch with some wonderful people one man told us some great stories from his reading of World War Two history. The funniest was about the reunion of combatant paratroopers forty years after D-Day. These ageing old guys were invited to re-enact their original parachute drop into France. Hours after they had all been dropped and identified by family members and the local Gendarmes, one was still missing. Eventually they found him propped in a bar, smashed out of his skull. When they asked what he was playing at, he answered: “You told us to do what we did when we parachuted into France. So I did. I made my way to the pub and got smashed.”

I bet that’s what Jonah wished he could have done in Nineveh. At least it would have spared him having to see people discover that God loved them after all and wanted their lives and society to reflect that.

 

 

Jonah and The Artist

I am preaching on Jonah in Altavista, Virginia, tomorrow morning. This afternoon we went out to the cinema in Roanoke to see The Artist (the must-see silent movie).

The similarities?

Pride. Prejudice. And an unwillingness to face change. Redemption (sort of). Unmerited grace to be received.

I loved the film. It was clever, funny, surprising, poignant, beautifully shot.

I love Jonah. Clever, funny, surprising, poignant, beautifully told.

And in both the film and the ancient text: love can’t be bought – but it can be rejected simply because we are too proud to acknowledge our need.

 

 

Looking more clearly

I am writing this on a flight from Manchester to Atlanta, Georgia, where I will connect to Roanoke, Virginia, and spend a week visiting the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia which is linked with the Diocese of Bradford.

The only interesting bit of the flight so far was hearing two stewards agreeing that they “love the English accent”. “Which one?” was the question I wanted to ask. One of the amazing glories of England is that such a small island comprises so many distinct accents and dialects. I always pitied the German language Assistentin who came to Liverpool in the 1970s and, having spent too long in the company of Scouse teenagers, left feeling that she couldn’t understand a word of English after all. Ask about accent and you ask about the amazing history that makes it almost impossible to define what it means to be ‘English’.

Anyway, I was reading Thursday’s Guardian on my iPad and was struck by the piece by Martin Kettle on the newly-opened Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy in London which I long to see. I love David Hockney’s work: the vibrancy, the colour, the perception of a landscape as the seasons change, the transparency of the everyday and the banal that makes you look and think differently about what you take for granted in the familiar world around you every day.

Kettle says:

Hockney celebrates drawing because… drawing is an instinctive human act from an early age, and because teaching someone to draw better is to teach them to see better. He does not add that to see better is to understand better, and thus to communicate better, but it is implicit and central to everything else.

I remember taking a holiday with my young family in Gloucestershire when I was working as a linguist specialist in Cheltenham in the early 1980s. My wife was dabbling in art and understood the importance of drawing. She made me sit down for two hours, without distraction, and draw an orange. OK, miss out the bit where she asked me why I had drawn a banana, but I learned two important lessons: (a) when you are drawing, you concentrate and focus – and you look differently at the world; and (b) there are different ways of looking and seeing.

How would you draw a chair? An ordinary, bog-standard, unremarkable upright chair? Well, I started to look at the legs, the backrest, the seat. I tried to use a simple technique to get the perspective right. After an hour or so of drawing something rather naff,  the artist told me to start again and to look differently. She told me to draw the spaces between the seat and the legs and the backrest – out of those spaces the object would emerge.

And she was right. In fact, the chair looked more real and alive than it did when I tried to draw the object itself.

I think my point here is that we shouldn’t take for granted the way we look at what we think we see. This has a theological import, too. Sometimes we need to take our eye off the presenting object and look at the ‘space’ in order to see more accurately (or, at least, more interestingly) what is before us.

It was this that made me look at Mark’s Gospel differently several years ago (while writing Marking Time). The point of the gospel (and the filter through which to read the text and understand Jesus) is to be found in chapter one verses 14-15:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

For the Galileans, the only evidence that God was among his people again – that there was truly good news to be heard – was that the blasphemous Roman occupying forces were leaving. But Jesus asks people to look differently. The question now looks like this: “Can you possibly dare to believe that the holy God is here among you again… even while the profane Roman pagans remain? Dare you conceive of the possibility that God might be with you… even while your problems persist and resolution seems either impossible or, at least, remote? Dare you look differently (for the presence of God) in order to see differently in order to think differently (about God, the world and us) in order to live differently in the real world as it is now, but with a driving vision/narrative that imagines a different future?

The rest of the Gospel illustrates just who were those who could ‘repent’ (literally, from the Greek) ‘change their mind’… and who were those who just could not. Read it in this way and see the rather shocking picture that emerges.

Hockney is bewilderingly brilliant and exciting. I don’t look at a bend in a Yorkshire road and see orange fields and technicolor trees as he does. But he compels me to ask whether I am missing something in the world around me simply because I don’t stop and look and question and wonder.

Martin Kettle’s observation has wider pertinence:

… it seems to me that Hockney and his art express and address the kind of people and country that he and we wish we were. There is something religious in his work. And when Hockney takes a pop at Hirst, I, for one, will cheer, because he is taking a pop at the kind of country we have become, in which attitude is more important than morality, price trumps value, and in which to shock and make a name is privileged over doing something lovely or true.

 

Boris and the airport

I was driving over to a primary school in Ilkley this morning (dribbly rain and mist over the wild moors) and listening to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was being interviewed about the British Government’s apparent approval of the idea of a new London airport (after Heathrow, Gatwick and City – Luton and Stansted don’t count as they are nowhere near London). The wisdom and feasibility of such a new venture will continue to be debated, but that isn’t what grabbed my attention.

Boris responded to an insinuation that it would take decades to build the thing and would, therefore, not be worth starting. He said that just because it might take a long time didn’t mean it shouldn’t be started. And this reminded me of something else: cathedrals.

When the architects and builders of our great cathedrals began their work – driven by imagination and a vision for a future – they knew they probably would never see the finished article. They would be dead – the building would take generations. Liverpool Cathedral (Anglican) was started in 1904 and almost everybody involved in imagining, designing and building it was dead by the time it was finally completed at the back end of the twentieth century.

Or think of gardens. Capability Brown designed some of Britain’s most glorious gardens, but knew he would never see what he had designed because by the time the trees and plants had grown, he would be long gone. This didn’t stop him doing it.

I took a couple of academic friends to the pub this evening to talk about a range of matters. At one point the conversation ran onto the shortsighted utilitarianism of current university funding methods in England. It seems as if the ‘now’ is all that matters and the Market will control all our destinies. Any idea of vision (what should a university actually be – and for whom and for what end?) or long-term constructiveness gets lost under the pressing immediacy of instant financial viability. Yet, I guess this is just one more example of a pragmatic culture which has lost track of its guiding narrative, its traditions and memory – living in and for the ‘now’ and hesitant about building for someone else’s future that can’t be guaranteed anyway.

Pessimistic? Maybe. But, any culture needs people who imagine a future, invest in it, know why they are doing it and who it is for. They must be driven by a vision for a society that doesn’t confuse ends (people/society) with means (the Market).

I don’t know if Boris is right about the airport. But, he has the right perspective on time and investment.

 

Wot – no media?

Is it possible any longer to live without electronic media? I write this on my laptop with my mobile phone next to me on my desk (I am expecting a call) and a load of tweets telling me to watch Sherlock on iPlayer.

The Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), as part of its ten-year Reform Process, identifies every month a ‘Project of the Month’. (Which reminds me of when I read about the American funeral directors who were trying to improve ‘the bereavement experience’ by nominating a ‘Crem de Month’ award…) This is seen as an imaginative way to disseminate good practice, creative ideas and good stories. Today I got the EKD Newsletter (email ekdnewsletter@ekd.de)) and was struck by this month’s winner.

One week – no media involved getting groups of young people in Württemberg to hand over their mobile phones, not watch television and not use a computer for one whole week. If you read German, follow the link. Basically, each person kept a daily diary, recording their experiences – what was hard and what they discovered positively from the experience. Daily meetings and activities were run in order to keep the kids motivated. At the end of the week there was an evaluation of all that had been experienced and learned, and the phones, consoles, laptops, etc. were ritually returned. (The kids were probably dribbling with anticipation by this time…)

What is interesting is that many of the young people discovered new creativity, spent more time with their families and communicated more and better with them. You know – talking and old stuff like that.

Yes, some failed to make the week – often (interestingly) because the parents couldn’t bear missing their diet of television.

And the point of it all? To question the nature and volume of media consumption and to improve media literacy among the young people so that they are in more control of their media consumption rather than being controlled by it. One teacher commented of his class: “For one week we gave the children their childhood back.”

Apart from the imaginative nature of the project itself, it does touch on issues being raised in England: the way the media shape our minds, the nature of childhood, and how to measure the well-being or happiness of our children – given that British children appear to be some of the unhappiest in Europe.

 

World record

In the margins of the last couple of weeks I have been following on the Internet the progress of boats in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. The reason – given that I know as much about boats and rowing as I do about astrophysics or brain surgery? The son of friends was rowing the Atlantic alone in order to raise £100,000 for two charities.

Yesterday he arrived in Barbados. He came second by 26 minutes to a two-man crew. The others still haven’t landed 24 hours later. Andrew Brown broke a new World Record for fastest time across the Atlantic for a solo rower.

This is amazing. It makes me (at least) feel feeble. How determined do you have to be to decide to row the Atlantic alone, prepare for it and then actually do it?

Andrew’s feat says something powerful about the strength of the human will as well as the human body.

But, I’d still like to know what went through his mind when, rowing three hours on and three hours off (for sleep), he felt alone on the ocean, under a sea of stars, wondering what life is all about.

Or, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just concentrated hard on the task to hand. Whatever, this is a fantastic achievement and I look forward to hearing the story behind the story.

 

 

Assisted dyeing

If you want to turn your white sheet red, make sure you only put red dye in the water.

If you want to ensure that the evidence you collect fits the conclusions with which you started, select for your committee those who begin with the same assumptions and conclusions as yourself.

The Commission on Assisted Dying has done just that. We also knew its conclusions before the publication of its report this morning because it had been widely leaked. But, even if no leaks had dripped out, the conclusions would not have been a surprise.

Two challenges this morning: (a) Look at the constitution of the commission and use your imagination to work out how they came to the conclusions they did, and (b) spot the difference between the campaigning goals of Dignity in Dying and Falconer’s conclusions. This commission is only independent in so far as it was self-selected and self- established. Loads of groups and bodies involved in the debate refused to speak with them.

So, before giving their report too much credence, just imagine the credibility an ‘independent’ group of evangelical Christians would have been given if they had established a ‘commission on abortion’ and concluded they were against it?

Assisted dying is a hugely important (as well as contentious) ethical matter which demands serious debate on philosophical, theological, anthropological and pastoral grounds. But the presentation of this commission and its coverage in a sympathetic media needs a massive dose of caution. On any other subject it wouldn’t have been taken seriously.

Update: link to Church of England response.

Further update: good BMJ post offering wider view.

 

The reading list

Two days in and three books down.

 
I haven’t the first idea what an algorithm looks like or what it does or how it does it. It’s something mathematical and that finishes it for me. But Robert Harris‘s The Fear Index takes an interesting look at the sort of thing that went wrong in the financial and banking sectors: hubristic gamblers ceding too much to computers on the grounds that they can do the sums quicker. The moral questions come thick and fast.
 

Julian Barnes has written a beautiful novella in The Sense of an Ending. Apart from the narrative itself, which kept me intrigued until the final page, the writing is wonderful. The idea of someone having to re-write their history in the light of information that arises later in life about events that happened when younger is a familiar one to anyone with a pulse. But Barnes ruminates on mortality, relationships, loss and regret. And there is a poignancy running through the narrative that captures the common experience of thinking that life should be better than it usually is:

Just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. (p.105)

 
Discuss.
 
John Bell needs no introduction. For many people his name is synonymous with the Iona Community. HIn addition to his prolific output of music and hymnody, he broadcasts on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. He is never boring – he uses words as if each one matters and finds the language to engage as well as inform. Rooted deeply in the language and content of the Bible, he brings to his speaking and writing a prophetic, reasoned passion that demands an equally biblical response. His second volume of ‘thoughts’ and essays is entitled All That Matters and cannot be read without some response.

 
One taste reflects back onto the questions raised by Harris and touches on Barnes’ sense of mortality:

The prophet is someone who reads into the present state of society and discerns two things: the consequence of present actions in advance of a crisis, and an alternative reality which is worth striving for. (p.55)

 
A fourth book, which I am reading a bit at a time, is David Crystal‘s wonderfully informative and entertaining The Story of English in 100 Words. Number 7 is ‘Mead’ and in Old English you could call someone who had drunk too much of it ‘medu-werig’ (mead-weary). From Barnes I learned the word ‘lucubrations’ (look it up – I had to!), but I can see I’m going to get far more use out of ‘medu-werig’.

 

Happy happy happy

What a wonderful start to 2012.

Manchester Utd lose at home to bottom-of-the-table Blackburn Rovers. Then Manchester City lose to a last-gasp goal by Sunderland. Add to that the return of Steven Gerrard to Liverpool’s growing-in-confidence team and the sun is already shining though the clouds of a Yorkshire winter.

But, there’s more.

Since Bradford City FC came to the Cathedral for the Carol Service they have been scoring goals and winning. I’m just saying…

Anyway, today saw me standing in for the poorly Dean of Bradford in the Cathedral pulpit and thinking aloud about God’s knack of changing people’s names. To understand ‘Jesus’ we have to go back to the beginning and God’s covenant with Abram in Genesis.

• Abram becomes Abraham and is called to be a blessing to all peoples. Not just himself and his own nearest and dearest. Not just his own tribe or class or race. Not just those who are like him.
• His wife Sarai laughs at God when she is old that God likes to bring new life where it all looks a bit dead – fertility out of barrenness, newness after loss (as Brueggemann put it). She calls her son Isaac – laughter opens the door to a future.
• Jesus might well ‘save his people from their sins’, but what does that mean – even when we hear it from an angel? The clue lies in Abram and that invitation to be a blessing.

God’s people are to live and give their lives in order that other people might see who God is and what he is about. Failure (despite the warnings of the prophets) led to the loss of all that spoke of God’s presence. Jesus fulfils the calling that was always the calling of God’s people – and lives and gives his life in order to show the world who and how God is. His church is then called to bear his name – that is, to reveal in its life, priorities, values and character the life, priorities, values and character of the Jesus we read about in the Gospels. In other words, the Body of Christ is to be … er … the ‘body of Christ’ – that when people see, hear and touch ‘us’, they see, hear and touch something of the Jesus we read about in the Gospels.

Simple. If only.


But, this is the only test of authenticity the Christian Church has. And, if we take it seriously, we must face the challenge of allowing everyone else a change of name that opens up a future and doesn’t condemn people to being trapped by their past or present. That is grace and it is what Jesus does all the time for those who have been allowed to believe that Immanuel is God for some people, but not for them.


Anyway, all that came out of Luke 2:21 and the naming of Jesus in the Temple. Unfortunately, the sermon began with me showing a paperweight my in-laws gave me for Christmas about ten years ago (and which I still use on my desk) which tells me that Nicholas means ‘Victory of the people’ and ‘thinks winning thoughts’. We’re still looking for that one…


So, a start to 2012 that involves good football results and a renewed challenge to be Christ-ian. OK for starters, I think. (And sympathy to fans of the Manchester clubs. Er… Hmmm.)