A Threefold Cord

Icon of the Holy Trinity
Andrei Rublev (1370-1430)

‘A threefold cord is not easily broken’ writes the sage, Qoheleth, author of the book of Ecclesiastes, a book full of impenetrable conundrums, tensions and contradictions. Much of what he writes resonates with despair and a general sense of the futility of human existence. Qoheleth is a prophet of doom. Or perhaps he is only that kind of prophet insofar as he is a teller of fables.

 Fables must strike fear if they are to convince. Hence, the nightmarish depictions of Heinrich Hoffman, the 19^th century psychiatrist and author of Struwwelpeter, and the fate of Conrad, the ‘little suck-a-thumb’ who falls prey to the ‘great long-legged scissorman’. Also, the morality tales of La Fontaine; Qoheleth would have approved of La Fontaine’s tale of the vain fox who lost his luscious piece of cheese by succumbing to flattery.

Qoheleth is concerned, for the most part, with the falling apart of social and moral infrastructure and with a society’s falling away from God. But he also writes as an individual, for other individuals. So he is a prophet for our times. We live in an individualistic age, where the right of the individual has, for a couple of decades at least, ruled over the considerations of the needs and interests of the ‘other’. These days, individuals who sense that other individuals are claiming the same rights as themselves have also sensed a certain safety in numbers. What we are seeing as the relentless ascendance of the far right in Europe and America is the product of this solidarity of self interest.

We also love brinkmanship and being taken to the threshold in both fiction and television drama, and, more worryingly, in politics and international affairs. News is now documentary drama, preceded, more often than not, by health warnings. Perhaps we are still a little in thrall to Struwwelpeter and, for all our declared freedom of the individual, also slightly in thrall to the vicarious thrill of stern religion. Religious fundamentalisms are invariably coloured with a vermilion streak of violence which can be disturbingly seductive.

This ostensibly religious violence, and the fascination which it holds for a growing number of people (even, one suspects, if they are not themselves overtly religious) also translates into the dangerous ideologies of certain political strongholds, both here and abroad. Religion and politics, when corrupted, make for a dangerously potent mixture. In some cases, there is an almost erotic appeal to the more extreme collective manifestations which it releases. Think only of the recent displays of military and nuclear egocentricity in North Korea, the modern equivalent of Emperor worship.

To state that both religion and politics are prey to corruption is to state the obvious. What is perhaps less obvious is the fact that a serious battle for the ultimate good to prevail in all religions, and in politics, is being fought from the centre ground, both theologically and spiritually. While these two disciplines should, and often do, work together, it is the spiritual which concerns most people, even if they do not consider themselves to be particularly religious. There is a sense that something else is going on ‘out there’ at a more ‘abstract’ level, whatever you happen to believe about God.

Trinity Sunday invites Christians to consider what they really believe about God and, by implication, what they believe their religion should be for the world. But what Christians often fail to pick up on, as they say the Creed on Trinity Sunday, is that belief alone is fairly ineffectual when it comes to facing down religious and political extremism. In fact it can cause religion itself to become toxic. Like any organism deprived of light or oxygen, belief needs the nutrients which come with head-heart thinking if it is to mature into what we call faith. It needs to be informed by intelligent love.

Perhaps this is where the doctrine of the Trinity is helpful, both for Christians and for anyone trying to make sense of religion and of its place in the world of today. The Trinity is a depiction of intelligent love. It is the love of three ‘persons’ constantly renewed and energised within the one ‘substance’. It is not about three divine individuals with a shared common interest.

Christians, and those of other faiths, might say that human beings need to think of themselves and others as made in the image and likeness of God. The Trinity invites us, as persons, to see ourselves as caught up in the dynamic energy of that love. We are caught up in God himself. This is the  love which brings life in its fullest sense to all human beings and which renews the face of the earth. Standing against religious and political fundamentalisms begins with being prepared to ‘stand’ in that love, bound up in the three-fold cord of the Trinity, whatever the cost to the individual.

Where Shall Wisdom Come From?

I missed an old friend’s funeral last week. I got the day wrong. Someone kindly sent me a copy of the service, but it was not the same. It is hard to share in something that has already happened, especially when the deceased person has had a hand in shaping it. My friend had composed his own funeral service so, in a sense, he would have been very much present to it. I miss not having shared in the first few hours of his greater life, and of our collective loss. Loss needs to be shared, and liturgy, any liturgy, needs to be spoken or sung in company if it is to realise its purpose. Funerals are a time for realising a shared loss and, in doing so, bear some of the grief which those who are closest to the person are experiencing. This helps everyone to bear their particular private loss. We are only fully human when we own our grief and joy together.

Perhaps this is also true of a nation’s sense of loss, the kind of loss which is felt as a political vacuum, and which comes with a growing anxiety about absence of vision and leadership in government. The outcome of recent elections suggests that we are a nation floundering in a sea of uncertainty, grasping at the delusory straws of what seems better and safer but which, in regard to Europe, history has shown will surely lead to more division and uncertainty. A Europe divided against itself runs the risk of self destruction, or of being destroyed by others.

As a nation, we are going through a period of collective anxiety about who we are in relation to others. In the UK, this applies as much to our own internal politics as it does to where we stand in regard to our European neighbours. We are full of divisive self doubt. It is this uncertainty and self doubt which is particularly hard to bear in the weeks approaching the referendum vote. Nobody knows what our nation will feel like on the morning of June 24^th , but whatever the outcome, all of us will be anxious. If the Brexit vote wins, its supporters will quickly realise that we will not be returning to an idealised past shaped by national sovereignty and a vague sense of a return to greatness. We will be facing an uncertain future.

If we stay in Europe there is bridge-building to be done, but do we have the political will to do it? And, given that in a democracy nations get the leaders they deserve, have we elected leaders who represent the best in us, and who are thereby capable and confident enough to do the rebuilding and to take that work forward into the European Union itself?

We also share in another nation’s anxiety, as it waits for its presidential election in which we sincerely hope that wisdom will ultimately prevail. In all of these situations, we need to hold together, wanting the best while facing the very real possibility of the worst outcome. This was the spirit which prevailed during the last world war, when Europe and America held together in the best way and for the best reasons. We are facing something comparable today.

Nations are made up of human beings, not of political parties or corporate vested interests, which is something politicians and war-makers seem to forget. Wanting the best for nations is not the same thing as wanting the quickest short term corporate profit, or opting for short term solutions to long-term historical problems (the root cause of mass migration, for example) whatever the human cost. Solidarity between nations does not automatically spell profit, especially if that profit comes at the expense of those not able to pay for health care and for the care and compassion to which they have a right in their declining years. On the whole, short-termism, profit and commercial solidarity do not make for  human compassion or for social justice. They make for anxiety and ultimate social disintegration. So ‘Why should fools have a price in hand to buy wisdom, when they have no mind to learn?’ (Prov. 17:16) TTIP is not a good idea.

So ‘Where shall wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? It cannot be gotten for gold, and silver cannot be weighed out as its price’ writes the prophet, Job. This is the kind of wisdom and understanding which comes with the gentleness and vision needed to hold a nation together in its anxiety, as we hold together in our separate losses. We do this formerly, through liturgies and acts of collective worship, but we also do it privately, through prayer, in which we sense our personal anxiety and fear for the future as part of a nation’s need for stability and peace, holding it all in the embrace of God. This is the wisdom which is needed in government. It will also be needed by all who vote on the 23^rd of June and in the American presidential elections.