But the Good News Is ...

Thinking I could time it between sleet downpours, I have just returned, freezing and drenched, from walking down our lane to post some letters. I set off optimistically. It is that time of year when, even allowing for freak weather conditions, there is an occasional hint of something better in the sky, a moment of pearly blue or of iridescent sunshine breaking into the grey.

Such moments happen in the lives of nations too. Hope dares to show its face when, in attempts at conflict resolution, powerful people shift their positions in regard to one another, be it ever so slightly. Such moments can change the whole landscape of international relations, and hence the lives of millions. We have glimpsed this happening at the Geneva peace talks where, on Saturday, parties to the Syria conflict momentarily changed their seating arrangements. First, the government representatives and their opposite numbers sat on opposite sides of the table, across from one another. Then, briefly it seems, they sat side by side before moving into separate rooms to consolidate their positions and make their separate cases to the UN mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi. While these manouevres may prove to have been a diplomatic sleight of hand, or simply happened by chance, is it too soon to think that they might also be a landscape-changer?

The government’s ceding (or offering, depending whose side you are on) of the right of passage out of Homs for women and children means that although women and children are still currency for use in other people’s power games, everybody seems to have remembered, if only for a moment, that they are also human beings.

It is the remembering that matters because remembering is about returning to a familiar place, a better one perhaps, or seeing a familiar face, once a friend but now an enemy, and wanting a new and better, more truthful and compassionate life with that person. When a line of blue appears while it is still raining, one remembers Spring. It is not a moment of eager anticipation about longer warmer days about to come, because winter is still too much with us, but of remembering what the lanes and fields look and smell like when the light changes and there is a suspicion of warmth in the air.

There is a difference between right remembering and simplistic nostalgia. Right remembering orientates people towards truth about the past, making for the possibility of a new and different future, a new reality in the present. Where Syria is concerned the future remains uncertain. Winter is still too much with us, with a worst case scenario in which Homs could yet become a new Srebrenica. Hope is not really hope if it loses sight of present reality.

So we, and the Syrian people, hover between seasons of light and darkness, and between conflict and healing. As these talks continue, which all people of faith pray that they will, there is the faintest possibility of some kind of new beginning for this troubled region. It would be beyond our wildest dreams if this were to happen, but wild dreams and the will to heal are bound up in hope and worked out in a determination to stick with, and believe in, the work of a holy God.

About Dogs

A couple of weeks before Christmas our old dog, Molly, had to be put down. She had enjoyed a good life in every sense. She was good and she made our lives good. Dogs seem to be gifted with ‘goodness’. Perhaps other species are as well, but seldom in such an uncomplicated way as dogs. Dogs know about trust and they know how to endure, for the sake of those they love, all kinds of unwarranted and unexpected situations. For Molly, one such situation entailed being in a car with her owner for more than 10 hours in freezing temperatures. A few inches of snow had fallen on the M11, back in  2003, causing gridlock, but together they endured the situation by sharing a sleeping bag which he happened to have with him in the back of the car.

Dogs oblige you to share your life with them, whether or not you realise it. Sharing one’s life with the dog (and they leave us little choice in the matter) is not like the sharing involved in any human relationship. There is a certain amount of ‘taking for granted’ which is OK between us and dogs, but which might not be OK in other family relationships. The reason for this is that dogs only understand what they choose to understand.  They only understand what adds to the sum total of the goodness of the arrangement which you have with them. This is what I have discovered through sharing my study with two dogs.

Over the years, we have had seven dogs and, with the demise of Molly, we have just acquired an eighth, although he is still with his mother and two of his siblings for the time being. I have agreed with my husband that the new dog can be based with him, in his office, but I doubt the arrangement will last. I do not think that he realises, as yet, that no amount of complaining will persuade a dog that his or her presence can at times be unpleasant, from a purely odorific point of view. Or that sudden barking is both uncalled for and distracting, as is snoring, loud lapping of water and other licking sounds. But I would not be without them. Their goodness, despite the practical drawbacks of having them in the same room, aids the creative process.

It is also a constant reminder of how God’s own goodness is revealed in the sheer doggishness of dogs.  As a result, talking to the dogs leads into prayer and prayer sustains creativity, although the dogs are quite unaware of any of this, believing that one is talking only to them in an oddly passionate and grateful way. Their response is to lie back, paws in the air, lips slightly flapping to reveal some magnificent teeth, and eyes half closed in something resembling bliss. Since Molly died I have started reading poetry to our remaining dog. She is enthusiastic but, sadly, quite uncomprehending, although she listens and stares intently. I sense that she is trying to make up for her friend’s absence, and for her own loss, by being even more of a dog than she already is, out of loyalty and devotion. She met the new dog yesterday and seemed more or less indifferent to him which is a sign of approval, of the relentless forward movement of life and of the goodness of God.

Justice, Mercy and Smacking

On Saturday, the Guardian reported that a woman who was filmed smacking her overwrought five year old ‘at least four times’ on the backside has been sentenced to a six-month community order. The chairman of the bench declared that she had to be “punished”. (The Guardian, [National] Saturday, 11^th January, 2014)

The worst thing about corporal punishment is that it degrades and humiliates the victim. But the ‘punishment’ meted out by the court to the child’s mother was also degrading and humiliating, and all the more so for having been brought about by her partner’s secret filming of this particular incident, which he claimed was one of many.  Humiliation heaped on humiliation seems to be what this punishment was designed to inflict, made all the worse for being reported in the press. We can only imagine what all three of the people involved – the parents and the child – will be having to deal with emotionally over the coming months, as a result of the humiliation inflicted through it, if they want their child to emerge from the experience undamaged. 

The remorse and recrimination which will surely follow begs the question: does the public and prolonged humiliation of the perpetrator really make for healing and for the transformation of this particular dysfunctional family relationship, especially the one which exists between the mother and her child? I am not arguing that the courts should uphold indiscriminate smacking.  My point is that when a mother (who is beside herself with stress, and possibly other emotional and physical issues) smacks a five year old who is in the extreme throes of a tantrum, she should not be criminalised.

Smacking is becoming taboo. With taboos comes hypocrisy.  Smacking is not something you talk about very much, especially if you have resorted to it from time to time. In the context of family relationships, we can be one thing in public – gentle and loving parents, while being another in private – people with human emotions which can get out of hand and do real and lasting damage if forgiveness and healing are not allowed to take place between those involved.  Furthermore, violent actions are seldom entirely the fault of one person, although this in no way justifies them. We are all responsible for violence because we are a violent society; to the extent that when we are not actually engaging in violent actions or speech, we are being entertained or titillated by violence through what we read or watch.

 Taking a mother to court for smacking, especially in this particular instance, suggests that we are all caught up in a degree of hypocrisy concerning this area of domestic violence. The hypocrisy stems partly from the confusion which exists between the generations regarding the way corporal punishment is to be used, if at all. Thirty years ago smacking was permissible, though not regarded as particularly desirable. Before that, corporal punishment was frequently meted out in schools and occasional incidents of smacking,  in a normal family environment,  were quickly forgotten. There is also the deeper implication of collective fear and self doubt about the extent to which our own fascination with violence makes for a vicarious enjoyment of seeing that, in incidents like the one described in the Guardian, ‘justice has been done’.

It is this which has made the article in question newsworthy and which gives all of us permission to condemn the mother’s regrettable actions while at the same time failing to question the real motives which may have lain behind the partner’s filming of the incident. Of course he was concerned about the child’s safety and well being, but part of that safety and well being must surely lie in taking responsibility for the mother. One cannot help but wonder what else had been going on that day, and perhaps for many days, which caused this woman to lose control of herself in dealing with a five year old’s tantrum? And what other complex political motives lay behind the court’s sentencing?

In all of this I am reminded of an incident in the life of Jesus when a woman ‘caught’ (today there would have been hidden cameras) in adultery, the worst of crimes in the socio-religious context of the day, was dragged before him for a ‘verdict’ before being stoned. But his verdict came as a question “Which of you is without sin? Let him be the one to cast the first stone.” The woman’s accusers were quite probably adulterers themselves, but that is not the only sin of which they were guilty. They had other reasons for wanting to publicly denounce and humiliate her. Some of these stemmed from the fear of having to come to terms with their own double standards, and duplicity. The woman served as a scapegoat for those thoughts and actions of which they were ashamed, so it mattered to them that someone else be ’punished’.  Is there not something comparable going on in the case of the woman sentenced to six months unpaid work for smacking her five year old?