True authority and the conflicts of today

Jesus provokes the religious leaders of his time in a number of contexts. He disturbs the status quo by threatening individual power bases, including religious ones. He outrages the authorities by openly challenging them in his teaching and through subversive behaviour, such as driving out the money lenders from the temple. But most significantly, he threatens their authority by winning people’s trust. He connects with people. In other words, he connects with the truth which they inherently sense but seldom hear spoken, or witness in the lives of the powerful. In Jesus they experience truth as something understood at a primary level of human consciousness. They experience truth, rather than just hear it discussed. This is what makes the authority of Jesus recognisably authentic.

Authority comes with trust. True authority is always given, or entrusted, but it does not always come with power. In fact, Jesus refused to be seduced by power. As a result, his authority challenged and disturbed the powerful. The authority of Jesus was not the same as political power. Through the authority given him by the Father, he inspired and changed lives and convinced people of the love of God, but he did not get rid of the Roman occupying forces. Instead, with the authority given him, he radically changed the destiny of the world. He set it on a different course.

It is authority and not power that is needed today with regard to the conflicts raging in the Middle East. We need an authority which is vested in God’s love for all of humanity, and so capable of changing the world, but which at the same time has been entrusted to our leaders by us, through the democratic process. Trust has to have been earned if authority is to be freely given. It is probably fair to say that political authority is rarely earned in the way God would have it earned, with the exception of one or two rare individuals – Myanmar’s President Aung San Suu Kyi being one which springs to mind.

Entrusting authority to world leaders does not exempt the rest of us from taking responsibility for what they do with it. So they should know that we expect and demand that the wisest, most truthful and most judicious course of action be taken in our name. For us at present, this involves taking responsibility for our country’s active engagement in  a conflict which has been brought about by violent extremism borrowed from religion, and from the lust for power. There are issues of genocide, our own security and that of other countries at stake, all of which return us to the question of authority rightfully earned and exercised in the interest of the freedom and safety of all. ISIS has no such authority. This is also true for those who facilitate or support its actions.

People of faith, as well as those who do not think of themselves as religious, should give religious and secular leaders who are engaged in the urgent business of defeating this particular evil their full and heartfelt attention. Giving such attention is a business which concerns us all. Attentiveness means being alongside the world’s leaders in heart and mind,– in other words, in that part of the heart which also thinks. This does not mean agreeing with them. In fact attentiveness will inevitably face us with some uncomfortable truths regarding other conflicts that we have caused, been involved with, or simply stood by and allowed to happen, Gaza and Israel being one of the most recent examples.

Nevertheless, where there is a heart and head attentiveness, there is also hope. We have had brief and surprising glimpses of what this kind of attentiveness could lead to. Who, for example, could have imagined that a group of leaders whose countries have long distrusted one another and, in some cases, declared themselves to be in a state of mutual enmity, would sit around a table in order to plan how they might best work together to overcome the evil being manifested through the murderous activities of ISIS? The scenario is of course far more complicated, but something of wisdom and common sense is at work here. Something of true authority is being exercised. It shows that an evil which is everyone’s problem requires a concerted and judicious response. If, either as individual nations or collectively, we do nothing, we shall all be responsible for a growing violent anarchy which is capable of doing immense harm to those its perpetrators hate most. This is true both in its own sphere of influence and in the wider global context.

But we are also implicated when we act. This is why trust is so badly needed in politics today. Exercising authority in a judicious way means doing the right thing for the right reason. But this can only be done with the support and trust of a majority who want the same just and peaceful outcome, including those of us who may not be 100% sure that a particular course of action is the right one tactically or as part of a broader strategy, but do know that we need to act. 

Exercising authority in the way God would like us to exercise it begins with humility. It means that the authority given comes with an awareness that our human and often short term thinking does not always turn out for the best for the greatest number of people. Such authority involves us all, so let’s try to be more deeply attentive to those who are accountable to us for the decisions they make in our name. 

On Dying

Last week I was privileged to be at the bedside of a man who was dying. I say privileged because the experience was akin to what I feel when I approach the altar before celebrating the Eucharist, a sense of being on holy ground, in the immanent presence of God and, like a number of Old Testament prophets who found themselves in a comparable situation, having nothing to say. It’s not that I had nothing to say to the man who was dying. I had nothing to say to the fact of death itself. There is a built-in instinct to talk in the presence of death, knowing that a person’s sense of hearing is the last to go, and in the mistaken belief that our talking will somehow assuage their loneliness, or their fear of oblivion, as well as our own. Being at the bedside of someone who is dying obliges us to think about our own mortality.

As a child, I had a recurring nightmare of being the only person left alive on earth except for one ancient spectral figure who would one day meet me over the brow of a sunny hill. I later recognised different versions of the same nightmare in my everyday unnameable fears. Most of us experience unnameable fear from time to time. It is like waking from sleep, disorientated, having dreamed of being in some unfamiliar and perhaps threatening dimension from which one has not fully returned. These are the disorientating fears which inform all our other fears and return us to the fear of oblivion which is the fear of death itself.

Viewed as part of our fear landscape, the idea of death has something to teach us about the everyday fears which beset our lives. Am I intelligent? Will I be accepted? Will I fail? Am I loved? Will I be remembered? Each of these fears is, in its way, the spectral figure waiting to confront us over the brow of the next hill. They embody the fear of ultimate nothingness, the fear of oblivion. They also return us to ourselves and to our own life span, to who we are in relation to other human beings and in the continuity of time as we know it. They are the fear that we have not done enough, been enough, lived enough.

Who we think we are, or want to be, will often accord with the perceived expectations of someone who we may have feared in earlier life, a parent, a teacher, an admired or envied sibling or friend. All of these fears can be summed up in the fear of failure which is closely linked to that of loss. Loss begins from the moment we are conscious of our own mortality. Failure and loss are both significant because they pertain to the concept of judgment and to what lies beyond judgment, the unknowableness of death.

The fear of judgment is greater than the fear of death itself because judgment determines what will ultimately happen to us. The fear of judgment pertains as much to the present moment as it does to the dimension of eternity or, if we are young enough, to what we will make of our lives in the relatively near future. In terms of existence itself, there is, in the human psyche, a sense of the determining moment, one which has to do with oblivion, or death, versus eternal life. This sense of the ultimate, of something following death (even if that something is oblivion or nothingness) is common to everyone, irrespective of whether or not they have a faith. For those who do have a faith, a deeply embedded fear of judgment therefore governs who we are, and what we do with the present moment.

But for us at the moment, whether or not we are accompanying someone who is dying, or perhaps facing death ourselves, facing the emptiness, the ‘nothing’, can become the beginning of a fullness, a presence which consumes all fears. In it, we are reminded not only of our mortality but of the mystery and joy of our existence. We sense that some greater creative power deliberately, of his own will, desired, and continues to desire, that we not simply exist but that we be fully alive from the moment of our conception into eternity itself. He desires and purposes this eternal life within the re-creative energy of his own love and we are invited to play an active part, to make conscious choices which will accord with this purpose. To this end we are given two great gifts, the ability to think and the capacity for love. We deploy these gifts in the present moment. Both work together, but it is the capacity for love which determines the outcome of judgment and our ultimate destiny.

Love is not something that we can resource from within ourselves, or plan and deploy in a bounded and rational way. It is sourced from within God and therefore unlimited, unbounded. The choice we are given, beginning in the present moment, lies in allowing this God, who is love itself, to claim our lives as they have been, as they are, and as they will ultimately be in death and in the decisive moment of judgment. So judgment is a two-way decision, but one in which God has already chosen us. All that remains is for us to say ‘yes’ to his invitation to be in union with him.

Separate lives

My computer clock allows me to inhabit three different time zones, something which has become necessary since our children went to live in Australia and the US. When I glance at the time it is as though the three families are living in a single coordinated triangular relationship. I can place myself in their situation, according to the time of day, and be with each one of them in the moment. This gives a sense of continuity and context to those other moments when we are all awake at the same time and can touch base verbally, and sometimes visually as well. But the line is often fuzzy, and time short, so that we must ‘find’ one another very quickly when we do manage to connect.

Finding one another is crucial to understanding. It is about keeping the line clear. We don’t always give enough time or effort to really ‘finding’ those who matter to us when we are with them all the time. Perhaps this is also true of nations. Nations can take proximity and a longstanding relationship for granted, and unexamined longstanding relationships are bound to ‘break up’ sooner or later.

This is what I find difficult about the idea of Scotland breaking up from the rest of the United Kingdom, the sense of impending rupture and dislocation which will entail the loss of that commonality of spirit which makes for friendship and which holds families together.  It is the same as the ‘bond of the spirit’ which holds us together within the Trinitarian life and love of God. A ‘yes’ vote for separation could mean that we are at risk of losing each other in ways which will be irreversible, because separation also makes for the deepening of distrust. Without trust nothing can heal or be made new. Going our separate ways, becoming dislocated, will not heal the harm we have done to one another in our shared history. Neither will the vague concept of affirming Scotland’s national identity.

If you are Scottish and have always lived in England your identity will be layered, but not compromised. It would be pointless to try to affirm it politically because it will have been formed from within more than one culture context. Being a triple national myself, I don’t see my identity as located in any one nationality. My identity has to do with being part of a much bigger picture, being part of its life and of the life of all the elements which make that picture what it is.

 As nations, we are part of each other and of the mystery of creation, whoever we are and wherever our roots are. The real challenge lies in staying focused on the work of painting the bigger picture. This means working together, picking up on the past, learning from it and using what we have learned to make a new creation.  The bigger picture is an ongoing new creation which we make together with the Master artist who alone can heal and work all things to the good for those who love him.

If the debates leading up to this referendum have taught us anything, they ought to have taught us that we need to heal together, whatever the outcome of the vote on Thursday, although it is hard to see this happening if the ‘yes’ vote prevails, given the fissiparous and all pervading nature of the breakup that such a vote would entail. Administrative problems at every level should give pause for thought, at the very least.

Whatever our nationality, many of us will grieve, should the ‘yes’ vote win, not because Scotland wins political, fiscal or monetary independence but because of the separation and loss which such an untimely and shallow victory would bring. Separation always brings loss, whereas autonomy with interdependence makes for vital and creative relationships. Such relationships depend on trust in the political system itself and, most importantly, in those who are accountable to us in that system. The wise and judicious devolution of power and accountability is the first step towards re-building the kind of trust needed for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland to work together for a better future. It might yet be just possible.

Loving and learning - Some thoughts for Freshers' Week

The beginning of the academic year coincides with the season for Harvest thanksgiving. Although I live in the country, where the size and quality of harvest depend on the climatic vagueries of the British Isles, I am also aware that harvest is not just a matter of crops, livestock and garden produce. It is about life itself. Our whole lives are a harvest, at whatever stage they have reached, and in them we are responsible for the lives and harvests of others.

Those who are either returning to university, or going there for the first time, are embarking on a new stage of life’s harvest. Academic work, like the physical work of farming, is concerned with sowing and reaping, to borrow from a well known harvest hymn. It is primarily concerned with being open to receiving the seeds of wisdom, the kind of wisdom which will help today’s students shape their future and with it that of society.

Society is composed of human beings. It is made up of a dense web of interconnected relationships, beginning with those of a person’s immediate family. That primal family relationship connects persons to each other and, over time, integrates them within the system we call a free and democratic society. Integration is not about being subsumed or swallowed up by the greater whole, still less by any one ideology or political system. It is about being a mature human being, ready to assume responsibility for other human beings, beginning with our immediate neighbour. It means knowing that we can make a difference to society.

The purpose of education is therefore to prepare people, from the age of about 5, or perhaps younger, to take their place in a free and democratic society and to work towards enhancing and preserving it. When it comes to higher or further education, enhancing and preserving the things which make for democratic society are not only a matter of acquiring skills and qualifications, important as these are in their particular contexts. They are a matter of learning how to think in a way which is worthy of our humanity. In other words, the purpose of higher education is to learn how to think in order to be able to help others to become fully human. This ultimate end is also God’s purpose for his world, and hence for society, because God is concerned with our humanity to the point that he assumed it himself.

Where learning is undertaken for the sake of the other, in other words for the greater good of society, it acquires the characteristic of love. This changes the way we think about the subject being studied. First, because allowing love to motivate our learning takes us out of our individual selves. Loving what we learn, or learning with the heart, inevitably distances us from our own individual objectives; my career, my earning power, my status and standing vis a vis that of others in my peer group. Secondly, it motivates the learning process. The love of learning makes clear our reasons for choosing any given subject and provides the focus and energy needed to stay the course to the end.

Many people starting their university life are not at all sure why they are studying the subject they have chosen. Perhaps someone has advised them that it is what they are most suited to, or it was a spur of the moment decision. They somehow fell into the subject and, as a result, may never engage with it in any depth or with any degree of real love.

Learning has to be undertaken for its own sake, in other words in love, before its harvest can be deployed for the good of others. The love of learning for its own sake imparts a deeper meaning to the subject chosen, because love involves self giving. Every minute devoted to the study of any one subject, every lecture to which full attention is paid (including the less interesting ones), every seminar or tutorial, every essay or presentation, is a visible enactment of the love which powers the work and will continue to power whatever it becomes in the coming years.  

Self giving love expresses itself in learning as disciplined argument coherently expressed. Disciplined thought and clarity of expression give us permission to feel passionate about the subject we are studying. Passion follows discipline, and not the other way round. Passion without discipline simply degenerates into opinion. A university degree is therefore not a piece of paper certifying that we have a right to an opinion. It certifies to the fact that we have learned to think rationally and that we are considered ready to put our intellect, or whatever professional skills we have acquired, to the service of others. It also signifies that our learning is ongoing, that we are always learning in order to understand more deeply the purposes of God for the world of today. 

Reaching for the edge

Some years ago, we went to Taizé, a place where Christians and many others who are seeking God go to find him. They find him in many different contexts, different ‘mansions’, to quote the word used by Jesus as a figurative way of talking about heaven and the hereafter. At Taizé, these ‘mansions’ are really different kinds of spaces in which surprising encounters take place. They are the moments which together make up a new friendship, perhaps a first experience of what it really means to live in community, but at Taizé the most significant moment happens in the context, the space, in which collective worship takes place.

The summer I visited Taizé, was extremely hot. We sat, several hundred or more, in a huge tent with all the entrances opened to allow a cross breeze.  The altar, or focal point for worship, was very close to where we were seated, but at about a third of the way through the singing the whole gathered community turned to face a different focal point, at the other end of the tent. Suddenly we were out on the edge. Others were now at the centre.

There are many people today who feel out on the edge of things when it comes to questions of faith and ultimate meaning. Perhaps the Church they have known in the past has failed them in some way. It has either left them behind by failing to address crucial life issues in a way which is both credible and hope giving, or it has become introspective, concerned with its own career prospects and with a very partial understanding of the real meaning of tradition.  These concerns have caused it to become stuck in a place which makes it impossible for it to ‘turn’ in the way the worship focus at Taizé allows people to turn, so that those on the edge can also be near its centre. As with the Taizé community, the ‘turning’ is what gives life to the wider Church as well as to its worship. It is also, coincidentally, the root meaning of the greek word for repentance, greek being the language of the New Testament.

For the Church, repentance is about turning outwards towards God and towards all those who are on the outer edges of its life, but who are still rather wistfully seeking God within its walls. It does not really matter how this turning is done, as long as it is done because the Church, in all its denominations and groupings, wants to connect more deeply, more compassionately, and more truthfully, with God and because it wants to make it possible for those on its peripheries to do the same. These are the only ends which matter when it comes to ‘turning’.

 One of the signs that the Church, in its different denominations and sub-divisions, is failing to ‘turn’ is that it is becoming increasingly introspective. It is looking inwards, but without allowing the deeper questions to surface. Something has happened to its heart with the result that it is unclear of what it is really about. It is anxious about numerical growth and relevance. At the same time, it does not want to be seen to capitulate to secularism. So pragmatism rules the day, with the result that the Church is perceived by many as becoming increasingly secular and, ironically, increasingly irrelevant.  

With its heart growing cold, its anxiety feeds on itself, so the Church has little choice but to resort to managerialism on the one hand, or crowd-pleasing tribal religion, as well as the manoeuvring of party interest groups within its own walls, on the other.  Both are forms of retreat inwards, rather than a forward movement of turning outwards.

Nevertheless, management does have its uses. Creative outward-looking management liberates and empowers. It enables movement. It can also provide a little mental space in which to allow the things which really matter to emerge and focus in the collective mind while the Church, as an organisation, gets on with reorganising itself. It is a little like dreaming of the next blog post while sorting out the cutlery draw. This kind of mental break, or ‘space’, allows important questions to surface. When the Church is not allowing important questions to surface while it sorts out its cutlery drawer it is simply managing a static situation. It is no longer reaching out through leaders with vision and contemplative zeal to those outside who need the fruits of such vision and zeal – and who the Church also needs without always realising it. So perhaps the Church needs to forget itself for a while and allow the old walls to crumble without being in too much of a hurry to put up new ones.

The Church endures wherever there are enough rooms without walls, or ‘mansions’, to allow everyone to meet Jesus Christ and live in them in his love. In other words, where it focuses outwards in such a way as to allow those on the edge to also be at its centre. It seems, to those on the edge, that the Church is often afraid to let go of the familiar in order to grasp at what is unfamiliar, but which resonates with the truth they need to hear spoken from the pulpit, conveyed in the sacraments and lived out in the care of the least of the Church’s members. People on the edge have already heard this truth in their own hearts.  Perhaps it is they who are called to convey it into the heart of the Church.