Hope

Source: The Guardian

Liturgical seasons are seldom in tune with the emotions of the immediate moment. Today is Ascension day, a time, we are told, when the disciples who were left behind after Christ’s ascent into heaven went down the mountain rejoicing. It seems paradoxical, to say the least. They should have been silently weeping, as we are when we think of the children and young people murdered on Monday as they were partying in Manchester. How, then, can we speak of Christian joy and the hope bequeathed in Christ on this Ascension Day?

Perhaps the difficulty lies in part with our tendency to over spiritualise our great festivals. This one is especially hard to ground in something like reality, and yet it has to be grasped in a way which helps us make sense of the now and the ‘not yet’ – when ‘this Jesus shall come’ the angels said, in the way he had just left. Perhaps more importantly, this final parting is axiomatic to the deeper truth of the Resurrection. If Christ had not been finally parted from his friends in this way, who is to say that he did not disappear only to die again (which would nullify the first death, both forensically and theologically) and then what? Is there a long since decayed corpse somewhere, as many would like to think, waiting to ‘de-mythologize’ the Christian story?

These are the kind of theological distractions which make it hard to make sense of the Christian faith and even harder to do so in the context of the times we live in. How might the Ascension of Christ, and the joy and hope of his disciples, help us come to terms with Monday’s atrocity? I think the clue lies in the undifferentiated nature of joy and hope. The two are of a piece. In terms of Monday, and of the intended collective psychological damage it is wreaking, these are made concrete in every look, word and gesture which speaks of compassion, the kind of compassion which comes from ‘being there’.

We are all called to ‘be there’, to ‘wait’ as the disciples did ‘in the city’. But we are called to do this while receiving the blessing which Christ gave to his friends even as he was parted from them. To receive such a blessing, especially in times like these, means owning the need for it – or owning the need for ‘mercy’, which is another way of talking about blessing. It was Christ’s parting blessing which gave rise to the disciples’ otherwise unaccountable joy and ongoing hope.

Hope is not wishful thinking. It has nothing to do with denying reality. Rather the opposite, in fact. Hope is the courage to own the reality of Monday night, with all its complex causes, including the benighted nature of the perpetrators’ own reasons for doing what they did. Christ’s blessing holds all of that darkness. This does not mean that all will be well in the best of all possible worlds. It means that anarchic forces, however they manifest themselves, will not prevail in destroying our humanity, what makes us persons in the fullest sense. This is the truth to which those who have suffered through the centuries have witnessed, and it is the truth to which we are called, irrespective of the religious, or non-religious, path we choose to walk in responding to that call, provided we walk it with integrity, in a desire for the blessing or ‘mercy’.  

Being at Odds

We live in a world of difficult people, or so it is convenient to believe – until the truth dawns on us that we ourselves are among their number. This is especially discomfiting in the context of family life. We don’t choose our families. We are simply landed with them, along with idiosyncrasies (theirs and our own) which seldom mellow with age. Given the assumption that our lives are made problematic by the difficult people around us, it is likely that we are part of the problem, if there is one. Perhaps this is also true of relations between nations and communities. We all suffer from blinkered vision.

Blinkered vision happens when a nation is perceived entirely within the visual/conceptual space of one individual, or in a memory retained of one unhappy experience in the context of a nation or group.  As a result, we can’t ‘see’ the other person, or the other group, completely and might not even want to. Better to let go of the memory then, as far as possible, and widen the field of vision.

A blinkered attitude to people who we dislike, but think we know well, can lead to an involuntary protectiveness which can also be misconstrued as selfishness. Selfishness is really about fear. It is about protecting the unhealed wounds which give rise to a damaging self perception. The wounds may have originated in misunderstandings that could have been resolved long ago, but somehow lingered on until it was too late, and too hard, to heal them. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to let go of such memories. There are just not the means to do so.

To make matters worse, the memories may have been dismissed, or deemed to be unimportant, by one or more of the parties involved. The wound inflicted was denied, so that the pain remained unvalidated. Unvalidated pain devalues all parties to a dispute, and leads to long term toxic relationships. In families, devaluing often takes the form of  ‘put downs’. In these contexts, ‘put downs’ are always about fear and denial and witness to deep and enduring unhappiness. They devalue the person’s pain and deny its validity, while also reinforcing the defences of the one who is doing the putting down, without allowing for the healing of their pain.

Difficult people, ourselves included, are ‘difficult’ because, on the whole, they are in pain, though they may not admit this even to themselves. And since, in the context of family, as well as in national life, all perceive the other as difficult, it follows that all are dealing with pain. Or perhaps they are not dealing with it because they cannot even acknowledge it.

There is a paradox here. When irritation bubbles to the surface as a result of an oft repeated action, word, or enduring habit, it might just be possible to experience, in the moment of irritation, or of being at odds with someone, the deepest compassion for the other party. A fleeting revelation occurs, even as the annoying words are spoken, and this revelation can be painful. It is seldom sought, but if the deadlock between two people is to be broken, such a revelation has to be desired. It might even re-trigger our own pain, but in being a trigger, it can elicit empathy which is a more demanding and a more subtle version of what otherwise might simply be called ‘understanding’.

Those who practice Buddhist meditation might describe empathy as mindfulness. For Christians, this means being mindful of our need for the grace which makes empathy possible, by validating our pain as it does the same for the other person. Grace is God’s free gift. It is given in love because God desires not just peace, but the full validation of persons which real peace both gives and requires. We cannot effect healing, or improve our relations with difficult people, without it. 

Whom Do You Seek?

The revered Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh has written a book about fear.[1] In it he speaks of a universal transition trauma – the moment of birth. He describes how the nine months preceding birth are a time of simple existence, of equilibrium and, above all, of acceptance. All that is needed for basic survival is supplied through the body of another. Whether or not that ‘other’ wills it, the unborn infant simply receives. Then, the teacher argues, comes birth, and with it fear.

Most of us have not experienced the kind of therapy which takes you back to the birth moment, but we have all experienced fear, to a greater or lesser extent, at certain times in our lives. The moment of birth is a moment of primal fear. It is primal because it is the first moment in our lives when we are forced to come to terms with need. This need is massive and, for the newborn child, wholly incomprehensible. In the moment of birth it makes itself felt as an urgent need for immediate survival – air, nourishment and the closeness of another human body, the latter two being of a piece.

The need for tactile relationship endures. Long after we are able to breathe independently, and feed and clothe ourselves, there remains a deep need for the ‘other’. As emotionally healthy adults this need is fully met when we can recognise, and perhaps meet, another person’s need as well. Those who have experienced emotional abuse in childhood (and all abuse is emotional), will go on through life trying to have their emotional needs met, either by repeating the pattern learned through their parents or, perhaps, by trying to prevent or make up for the neglect they experienced by making themselves indispensible to others, both of these coping strategies leading to further toxic relationships and thwarted lives.

This is why I find the story of the risen Christ meeting a grieving friend in the garden so significant. It is a moment of healing in which the friend is not only restored to herself  but ‘given permission’ to use her giftedness. She is tasked with announcing the good news of the Resurrection to others. But first, Jesus asks her why she is weeping and who she is seeking.

I think her tears and his questions speak of the human condition itself. We are all, at times, weeping for what has been lost or never fully realised in our lives. Even so, there is a paradox in the conversation between Christ and Mary, as it is recorded in St. John’s gospel. Mary, on realising who is speaking to her, reaches out to grasp him. She needs him. But he tells her not to touch him because he is not yet risen to the Father. Later, though, he will invite Thomas, the one who needs empirical proof before he can believe in the ‘hallucinations’ of someone as distraught as Mary (we are always a bit hard on Thomas) will be invited to touch him.

This seems a little unfair. It should have been the other way round, Mary being allowed to hold him, rather than Thomas the sceptic. Unless, of course, we think more deeply about the need being expressed by Mary. It is a quite different need from Thomas’s. Mary’s need represents what we are all seeking in that deep hidden part of ourselves. It takes us back to our first breath, our first cry of need for someone. Mary’s need is more than a need for reassurance that what she is seeing and longing for is in fact happening, as was promised. It implies hope fulfilled in a moment of deep need.

She recognises Christ as ‘Rabboni’, the beloved Teacher, as he says her name. Part of the reason for our chronic loneliness as a society, or as members of a particular church, is that we seldom hear our name being called – our name being the person we really are. It may even  be necessary to hide who we are, or to deny our giftedness, because there are some who fear us. Their fear will translate as envy and could destroy us.

The same thing can happen in families. Abusive parents fear, and want to suppress or control, the real person in their child, because that person challenges them. In being who and what they are, they show their parents the truth about themselves. Truth spoken through another person’s integrity can remind others that they are not who they imagine themselves to be, or would like others to believe they are. Truth spoken through another’s integrity, or giftedness, can make another person feel undermined or threatened. No wonder, then, that the women who brought the news of the resurrection to Christ’s closest friends were dismissed as ‘foolish’.

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[1] Thich Nhat Hanh, Fear – Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm, Rider, London (2012)

The Tactical Vote

According to St. John’s account of Christ’s Passion, it was 'expedient' that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation not perish. Whether in the Church or in society,

expediency, strategy, power games in which ‘the people’ are either duped with impossible promises or blatantly used for political leverage and then discarded, point to the fact that the message is the same: ‘It is expedient’. This, along with whatever slant or ‘spin’ is afforded by the media and powerful interest groups, seems to be the order of the day when it comes to election campaigns. It is a far cry from the freedom and democracy for which two generations fought world wars in the last century and for which many risk their freedom and their lives today.

It is also why some of us are unhappy about tactical voting. There is something ‘expedient’ about it. But it somehow goes against the grain in regard to democracy itself.  How we do, or don’t, exercise our hard won political freedom is a matter of conscience. It may be expedient not to vote, but in doing so, we risk turning our back on the true meaning and purpose of an election. A tactical vote stops just short of not bothering to vote at all and not voting at all is an abrogation of our individual responsibility for what is still a free nation.

Part of the reason for my own unease about tactical voting lies in the fact that this country does not yet have a truly representative electoral system. It is also, paradoxically, why some people justify the practice in the first place. Although untidy and possibly less efficient, because the government it would deliver might be more difficult to administer, proportional representation would at least make the voter feel more directly connected to the political process and perhaps better motivated to engage with it. But that is not the only reason why some of us draw back from strategically ‘working’ the existing system, which is what tactical voting entails.

When it comes to tactical voting, you are also working from a negative position. Tactical voting is like driving in reverse when you have missed a turning, and then finding yourself mired down off the edge of the road, unable to move in any direction. You back up to something like the worst compromise and so can end up voting for a party whose policies and values you profoundly disagree with. This leaves you feeling more disenfranchised, or unrepresented, than you would have been had you voted with your conscience in the first place.

But you tell yourself that it is expedient to vote tactically, in order to be sure you keep the party you really don’t want out of the picture. This is not to say that you are wrong to want to keep them out, but that in ‘working’ the electoral system you deprive yourself and the best political parties of a voice. Tactical voting is negative thinking and negative thinking is not about vision. If tactical voters were to vote with their conscience, the ones who have less political presence but far more wisdom, and with it far more vision, might just win a few more seats in government. The nation badly needs wisdom and vision.

This brings me back to the trial of Jesus of Nazareth, and to why I shall vote Liberal Democrat in June, even though on paper the Lib Dems may not win a seat in our constituency and Ukip could, in theory, gain a little ground, chiefly from erstwhile Tory voters. I am not voting tactically because to do so would be to vote against my political conscience.

I do not think that political conscience is shaped solely by the policies of any one party, although conscience will, if it is alive and healthy, afford a reliable guide as to the moral validity of specific party policies. Political conscience is also shaped by a desire not to betray those who in previous generations sacrificed so much for the democratic freedom we now have, even if that freedom is severely compromised by the system itself, as well as by those who ‘work’ it still further, to their own ends, once they are handed power through the ballot box.

It was ‘expedient’ that Jesus should die for the people because, in having him executed, the state and the religious authorities were able to avert a direct confrontation in which all would be losers – politically. Handing him over to the secular authorities was a tactical manoeuvre and, of course, an act of betrayal. We all participate in this act from time to time in our failure to live up to the demands of conscience, to do and say the truth and to stay focused on righteousness when it comes to the moment of testing, including the testing of our own integrity in the ballot box.

The main challenge is fear, fear of our littleness and lack of political grip, given the quantity and complexity of the data which is constantly being thrown at us, and fear of the weight of the system itself. But the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s way of sweeping aside all that makes for fear, all the doubt and confusion which too often leads us to settle for second best, including the way we exercise our political freedom in the coming election.