Gaza - Israel: Embracing Righteousness for the Sake of Peace

 It is hard to understand how the big political players of the West manage to go on ignoring the real elephant in the room in the context of the Gaza-Israel conflict  -  the dehumanising poverty and material oppression inflicted by the stronger on the weaker, sustained on the part of the oppressor through the politics of fear, to which the affluent West seems to be turning a blind eye. For all his talk of moving forward, President Obama is standing still on this one. Important as his visit to Burma may be, it also signals to the rest of the world that it is OK to ignore the all too obvious obstacle to peace in Israel-Palestine, poverty and the oppression of one side by the other. The difference in standard of living on either side of this conflict, if you can call what the people of Gaza have to endure a 'standard of living', is there for all of us to see on a daily basis. The streets of Tel Aviv, glimpsed in the news, are as affluent as any street in any European or American city. The scene on the other side is about as different as hell is from heaven.

If we are serious about resoloving this particular conflict in the Middle East, the issue of social justice, of restoring to Palestinians their basic dignity as fellow human beings must be the foundational basis for peace. This is something on which the whole world needs to focus. For a cease-fire to hold, the rest of the world, and not only Israel, must commit to what the bible calls righteousness. Righteousness is as close as we can get to describing the character of God. The righteousness of God embraces both justice and mercy and yields peace, and it is only in bringing together these two facets of God's character that we shall see real peace in Palestine-Israel.  Our common human task is therefore to embrace this kind of righteousness and apply it in the way we think and subsequently act in regard to the Gaza conflict. What is needed is the will to be reconciled, along with practical action, the former motivating and energising the latter.

For this to be possible, there has to be the beginnings of trust. Trust only comes about when the stronger and wealthier party, Israel and its allies, dare to proffer the hand of unconditional peace to the poorer and weaker nation. That nation will have to be open to the possibility that those who wish to 'begin again', or 'repent', are acting in good faith. The smaller weaker nation will therefore need to reciprocate in kind, first, by being hospitable to the proffering of a righteous peace, as well as undertaking to stop the futile shelling of its neighbour.

I do not think this is wishing or dreaming for utopia, because I believe what I hear when people from both sides of this conflict declare that they have no personal quarrel with the other. All are caught in a hellish trap. All need to begin again. But when it comes to righteousness, understood in biblical terms, it is Israel and the wealthier and more powerful West, along with some of  Israel's more wealthy Arab neighbours, who will have to take the initiative. A ground offensive of righteousness and justice, and not of armies and guns, is what is called for. It will consist in investment in Palestinian businesses, agriculture and industry and the renewal of that land in the rebuilding of homes, hospitals, schools and police stations and lastly, of course, the tearing down of the terrible wall of hostility which condemns Palestinians to dangerous isolation.

Deep down, all people of faith, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, know that this kind of 'beginning again'  is what they really want, and that it is the righteousness which the God of Abraham requires of his people, because it is the outworking of his truth and mercy and the only way to peace and the renewal of that land.

Transition, change and power

I turned out to vote yesterday, for a new Police and Crime Commissioner. There were only two candidates to choose from because only two had bothered to leaflet our house and I don't like voting for people I have never heard of, so these two got my vote, in descending order of preference.

The last couple of weeks have been a time of transition and change. The politics of Church and State are at a crossroads.  In political contexts of varying degrees of significance, from the President of what is still considered to be the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth, to the transition of power in China, to the announcement of a new leader for the Anglican Communion, this is a time of radical change. Choices will need to be made between life and death, choices which will affect us all. The different power contexts of faith and state will overlap significantly in the lives of Christians who live in countries where there is political unrest.  I am not singling out Christians as the only people of faith to be affected by the politics of power. I only mention them because they represent, and try to be faithful to, a particular kind of leadership, a leadership which forgoes the kind of power which keeps politicians in business. Christ chose not to exercise control over individuals or to make his political mark on the history of a particular nation. The irony is that in relinquishing power he had enormous power, and this frightened certain people and ultimately got him killed. His was the power of God's all consuming love for humanity made visible and real in a hospitable form of leadership which was neither dictatorial nor consensual.

In the world, and in every context where power is at issue, people's lives are affected for better or for worse by the way their leaders handle power, especially when power is allowed to get a stranglehold on the individual exercising it, rendering him or her powerless because of the fear which drives them. Syria is a case in point here. Those who are really powerful are also those who do not allow themselves to be driven by fear. They are not owned by the money, institutions or interest groups which keep them in power. They are people who dare to live with integrity, so they are liberators who inspire hope.

In the Anglican Communion we have seen this kind of leadership in Rowan Williams whose wisdom and goodness has been the 'judgment', in a theological sense, the moment of truth, for the Church to which he has given himself over the past decade. The way in which he has refused to play power politics has disturbed many of his critics. They do not know what to make of this wise and sacrificial model of leadership, so they revile it. Archbishop Rowan Williams has patterned his leadership on the model bequeathed to him by Jesus Christ. At the heart of it lies God's purpose for the freeing of his people. The Church, and the world, is being challenged to use power to liberate and enliven, or to suppress and dehumanise. This is also the 'judgment' on our politicians, on bank and industry bosses, on the police and on highly placed individuals in positions of trust relating to security and the machinations of conflict.

The Christian model of leadership draws on ideas of service and priesthood. The one who would be first must be the servant of all. The leader must be the servant of freedom. Freedom entails taking responsibility for others, (a priestly responsibility) because if leaders do not have the wellbeing of those they are there to serve as their primary concern, everyone will be consumed by the deadening effect of concentrated power. When I voted yesterday, I did so for two reasons. First, because my parents fought a war which, for all its horrors, made it possible for me to do so and second, which follows from the first, because our government, and its police, are still accountable to us. This is not so for much of the world today. 

On Dealing With Darkness

I was only able to work in my vegetable garden until about 4pm yesterday. The light, and what little warmth there was, faded suddenly and simultaneously. I think depression is like this for most of us. Now you feel it, now you don't. I have often wondered what this kind of 'everyday' depression is really about. Circumstances seem to have little to do with it. Deep calm and happiness come when life is difficult and the lows are all the lower for appearing to be without any kind of basis, as on a rare sunny summer's day. I've found it's better not to try to talk myself out of either, not to try to pull myself together and move on without first questioning the feelings which accompany these sudden moments of intense joy, or of intractable depression. Guilt invariably figures somewhere.

When it comes to moments of inexplicable joy, guilt is the spoil sport, reminding me that others are having a miserable time of it. People are still recovering from a hurricane, or fleeing from war zones, or watching someone they love die slowly and painfully in a hospital bed. But if I resist the temptation to indulge in feeling guilty, I find that joy can also lead to greater awareness and compassion, The same is true of low moments. They can make one fully present to the suffering of others and more able to respond to it. Yesterday, as I read of the burning of the homes of the Rohingy people of Burma, I also found myself slipping into that default position of accepting, being vulnerable to God's embrace in my own inner self. Once again, it gave way to a sense of both guilt and outrage, but perhaps more positively directed. How could I be experiencing this renewed and familiar closeness in the face of such suffering? Does God not cherish the Rohingy as much as he cherishes me? I asked for some word in the affirmative, and got nothing, except for a sense of his presence in the darkness.

I felt something similar at Paddington station on Friday morning, that sense of something 'other', yet solid and good in the way only God can be completely good. Paddington station is a very dark place for some. Of all the thousands of people thronging the platforms, how many carry a private sadness about their lives, memories connected with that station, a brokenness which they may not even dare to own for themselves? I wanted God's embrace for them. But I also knew that it was already there in some mysterious way, that they and their memories were held, as I was held. I can't remember if I was feeling particularly low at the time. But I do remember the familiar deep calm which comes when one encounters God's unconditional love in unlikely places, or at improbable moments. I wondered if there was anything I should 'do' with it, if I was failing to appreciate this extraordinary love by not speaking with a particularly unhappy looking person, even if it was only to pass the time of day, or comment on the pigeons.

Doing, and justifying our very existence, are the most besetting Christian neuroses. One could say that they are the most besetting neuroses of our times. Of course, one cannot 'do' anything with God's love on a station platform, or anywhere else for that matter. Rather, we must remain vulnerable to it, 'doing' very little, if anything. 'Don't just do something, sit there' is a timely maxim for those who swing between highs and lows for most of their waking day. But 'just sitting there' takes single-mindedness and a conviction that God has a purpose for us, both in the highs and in the lows, and that his embrace in dark places, as well as light ones, has to do with that purpose. At Paddington station, there is no telling what pain or what tragic secrets might lie behind the way one stranger sips his coffee, or another is waiting for a train's platform number to appear on the notice board.

The interesting thing about all this is that God's embrace, as it is sensed in the midst of a hard and busy world, and the intuited knowledge that it brings, is given in order that his love may be allowed to pass through us into whatever situation we happen to be engaging with, at any moment. Darkness is not dark to him. The night is as bright as the day.

America - Dreaming the Possible Dream

Barak Obama's victory speech to the American people was marked by humility. He told them that they had not only returned him to office but made him a better President, thereby making his victory theirs, transferring it to them as a gift.  On the basis of his handling of power until now, I believe he meant what he said when he spoke of what makes the United States of America truly united. It is also what may cause him to be remembered as a great leader. Great leaders never lose sight of the fact that they are there to serve their people. Great leadership reflects the character of the God of the three Abrahamic  faiths who is a God of justice, mercy and truthfulness, and Obama is a man of faith. America's constitution rests on the idea of a people who are 'one nation under God', an idea which is all too often abused and misrepresented, usually to the political advantage of a party or interest group. When God is appropriated by a single party or interest group, in any political context, he becomes what has traditionally been thought of as an idol. He is rendered lifeless, but at the same time powerfully destructive.

Leadership in even the smallest context brings power. Some would argue that those who put themselves forward as leaders want only power and that few have thought about the personal and spiritual costs which wanting power for oneself entails for others and, ultimately, for that person. But being the leader of one people under God means that the American President must not only be directly answerable to God for how he exercises power, but that he must do so in a way which is consistent with what a loving God wants for all the American people.  For Christians, the nature of God is fully revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, the one in and through whom all things were made, who chose to be powerless in order to win the love of his people. He lived an impossible dream, a dream which took him to the cross. The strangeness of it all is that his impossible dream, the seeming failure of his dying, made our dreams possible. In serving and dying, and rising again, he set humanity free from the need for toxic power in all its manifestations.

The American dream is a dream for freedom from all that is life denying. It is the freedom to become fully human, a freedom willed for all people by a loving God. But for freedom to be possible, to become anything like a reality in people's lives, those who voted for President Obama will need to reach across to the defeated. They will need to be in solidarity with them, as Christ was in solidarity with all of us in his dying. If they do not, the victory which they have tasted will quickly become bitter, as happens when mercy, justice and truth are overwhelmed by the intoxicating effect of pure power, and by its demands. If America is to be truly great it must dream the possible dream and work to realise it from day one of this new administration, by loving the vanquished and serving one another unconditionally. If the American people, as still the most powerful nation on earth, can see its vocation as one of life-enabling service, then peace for our times is perhaps closer than it has ever been.

Grieve Passionately for Haiti

The sting of the storm was in the tail and the tail hit Haiti, in a seemingly random way, as the tail of a cat might do in passing a table crowded with objects. While we ache with the pain which Americans are enduring, just as their thoughts were beginning to turn from Halloween to the two big festive highlights of the year, Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are stung by the seeming injustice of a second environmental catastrophe to hit Haiti within three years. We feel the sting of this storm as it devastates, once again, the lives of some of the world's poorest. According to Saturday's Guardian newspaper, 350,000 people are still living in tents, flimsy structures at best and, in the face of such a storm, little better than paper. We too feel powerless , outraged by the seeming injustice of it all and frustrated in our giving.

Giving money does not necessarily connect with hearts. It does not bind us to those human beings in the way of ordinary human contact, of the things we take for granted, like a smile or a touch. We need to find a way of grieving which binds us to the people of Haiti. We need to grieve with them, feel with them and not just for them, touch them from within our hearts. Then our outrage becomes a response to their suffering in the wider economy of the human need for love, as we direct our anger back to love's source. Then whatever we feel, and subsequently give or do, towards alleviating their suffering becomes an act of solidarity, a real and necessary resistance to the fury and injustice of this storm, to which our unthinking use of carbon-generating fuels has in part contributed. Now perhaps we shall begin, before it is too late, to sense our shared humanity, in what the people of Haiti are enduring.

I am writing from a place which is no more than very wet but, for once, I am glad of this unrelenting rain because in a small way, it keeps my inner fire alive. The weather here is only a very faint echo of what climate change is doing to the people of Haiti, but it is enough to make me love them more as my own kin and, in doing so, to protest mightily to the One who holds all human beings in his embrace.

 Our grieving finds its source in his love, in his righteousness. God's righteousness embodies mercy and justice. It is a furious love, like the fury of the hurricane, only life-giving. So it is good to be angry because our outrage is a passionate grieving, answering his passionate love for all people caught up in such disasters. It is good to own the outrage, as well as a little of the fear, like the fear experienced by a first time mother who, as she gave birth, had the tent she was lying in ripped away from her, along with her few possessions. We must yearn and grieve and love with her, and with all the dispossessed of Haiti, and let our grief be passionate because grieving passionately for the suffering of others, for righteousness sake, is the beginning of a new future for all of us.