Fracking is the Wrong Way

 Think of going the wrong way up a one way street and multiply the feeling by a hundred for the moment you realise you are approaching a dual carriageway on the wrong slip road. See the ‘wrong way’ sign and feel the fear. Now think fracking.

 Fracking the earth for shale gas is the ‘Wrong Way’. The implications of fracking for the future of the planet are as frightening as approaching a motorway on the wrong slip road, without the time or the means of turning back. 

Fracking involves drilling at great depth, vertically and then horizontally, for long distances (it is not a small local operation) under the earth’s crust, causing it to crumble and disintegrate from within. This is brought about by the use of toxic chemicals and enormous quantities of water which, when combined, release methane and combine with other chemicals to poison the water that comes out of the kitchen tap. Residents of Butler County Pennsylvania, where extensive fracking is already being employed, report not only sudden attacks of projectile vomiting, headaches, strange rashes and the instantaneous death of a dog who had just drunk from a nearby water source. They also report incidents of water emerging from taps as fire.  

We can only begin to guess at the long term possibly irredeemable effect this activity may have on the fresh water we rely on for drinking, agriculture and the ongoing sustainability of the planet as a whole, not to mention our immediate surroundings were fracking to be employed in a place nearby, as it was for the residents of Poulton-le-Fylde near Blackpool. Added to this, is the internal and barely imaginable effect of smashing the very substance of the earth, what holds it together from within and keeps its relatively fragile surface intact.

The earthquakes and tsunamis we have seen in the past couple of decades would bear no resemblance to the kind of whole scale and pretty well permanent devastation which the internal fracturing of the earth could bring about within a very short time scale. A British Geological Survey linked the two minor earthquakes near Blackpool which occurred on April 1^st and May 27^th 2011 to in depth fluid injection linked to the Preese Hall shale gas drilling site. The epicentre of the May quake was within 500 metres of the site.

It is not good enough to vaguely hope that somehow the scientists engaged in researching more viable ways of sustaining human life without damaging what it most depends on, will find a solution and solve the problem in time. Neither can we trust that governments and the leaders of industry will see sense and that right thinking and preventive action will somehow prevail. Christians, the institutional Church and all people of faith need to act on this one before it is too late. Door to door petitions, lobbying MPs, and any kind of peaceful intelligent protest are urgently needed.

On a Wish and a Prayer

In the days when young children were taught rhymes, a prelude to the rote learning process which would come later, the recitation of a rhyme made wishes believable. Belief was helped along by a trope –  “I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight”, or by being pinned to a fetish such as a chicken ‘wish bone’, or the candles on a birthday cake. Later you might learn prayers, usually the Lord’s prayer and, if you were a Catholic, the Hail Mary and how to say the rosary. What is the difference, then, between wishing and praying?

Wishes tend to remain just as they are – wishes, things which we still reach for, left over perhaps from childhood dreams, or from a longing to escape from whatever unpleasant reality might have dominated that phase of our lives, or which darkens the present one. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray he did not respond to their request by saying ‘When you wish to escape from the past, or from the reality of the present, this is how you should go about it’, or ‘when you pray, you should start by blowing out a few candles’. The disciples sensed that what he called prayer was something greater than wishing and that it would endure in a way which dreams and wishes could never endure. 

The kind of prayer that Jesus taught takes us into an altogether different realm of existence. It is not about formulaic ritual, or rote learning, or even of getting into the ‘right frame of mind’. It is about a unique form of friendship initiated in the unflinching faithfulness of a loving God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus taught his disciples to ask the Father for the things they needed, and for their dreams to be realized. The Kingdom for which we are taught to pray in the Lord's prayer is the realisation of our deepest dreams of truth, justice and love. 

Jesus also told his disciples that the more they trusted him, the better they would know the Father. The same is true for us when we allow our wishes to become prayers which are grounded in trust. The more we trust the Son, the better we know the Father and the better we know the Father, the more we realise that our dreams are also his. The disciples were taught to pray in the sure knowledge that they were heard by a father who was quite unlike any earthly father. This is what those of us who have had bad father relationships need to be hearing when it comes to sensing a need for God in our lives.

Even so, those who have had such negative experiences, can find that praying to a father is at first difficult, if not impossible. It may even remain so for much of their lives, because they find it hard to trust a father figure with the things which matter to them for fear of being ridiculed or ignored. The difficulty lies in being vulnerable, vulnerable enough to receive love and to face our own value and goodness in the eyes of God, a value and goodness which is realised in knowing that we are one with his Son. Herein lies the difference between wishing and praying. Wishes are ephemeral, blown out with the flame of a candle. Prayer is a living reality, a relationship with God which involves the whole person and which endures for eternity. 

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Feeling the Heat

It’s tempting to think that normal summer is back after an absence of about 10 years, on and off. The farmers are getting a proper hay harvest this year. It’s been hot, really hot for several weeks now. The rains of last year are almost forgotten – but not quite. We can still see gully marks in the sloping fields near where we live. All this may beguile us into thinking that the scientists have got climate change wrong. But just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, so a few weeks warm weather doesn’t mean that we won’t be seeing floods or other extreme weather conditions back with us in the near future.

I have just returned from a conference organised by Modern Church. It was chaired by Professor Margaret Barker who is especially known for her development of what is called Temple Theology. Temple theology is about the covenant which exists between God and his creation. The purpose of God’s covenant (and there is more than one) is to form a kind of system for safeguarding the interconnectivity of life in all its variegated forms. Covenant is also partnership. Human beings are responsible before God for the nurturing of all life. Covenant is a web, or 'system', which holds all life together as it proceeds from within the love of God. But because human beings are greedy, cruel and selfish, the web gets broken, chiefly when it presents an obstruction to their perceived need for power and control and for material things. Power and control allow them to acquire material things and the greater the accumulation of material things, or wealth, the greater the power. It is a truly vicious circle.

In breaking God’s covenant we have effected a one way system of non-exchange, a continual taking without giving back that is spiralling out of control and exhausting the planet. It is also exhausting a great many human beings whose lives are geared to, or enslaved by, the process of economic growth and consumption.

There is an urgent need for people of faith to engage positively with the challenges which face us in regard to the breaking of covenant, not only for our own sakes but for that of future generations. If this sounds vague, picture your own children, and grandchildren if you have any, inheriting the immediate effects of what we do or choose not to do in regard to global warming. If they or their descendents are alive at the end of this century, they will have had to get used to the fact that Surrey will be the most southern habitable place in Europe. Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet,’ (Harper Perennial, 2007) The only way to prevent this lies in bringing down our carbon emissions by 85% by the year 2050. This will in turn lower Co2 concentrations to 400ppm, which is below the maximum degree of warmth which can be tolerated if the planet is to survive as we know it. At the rate we are going, we shall have passed the 400ppm benchmark by 2015.

Despair is simply not an option, so what can Christians and other people of faith do about this? Here are some suggestions:  1. Our continual breaking of God’s covenant in regard to the environment makes what we are facing a spiritual problem, so we need to pray for the grace and wisdom needed to help people understand that we are both accountable to, and reliant on, a greater power, not the power of money or wealth acquired at the cost of human and environmental suffering, but the power of a compassionate creator. This compassionate creator, this loving God, desires to be in relationship with us. We call it prayer and prayer takes a number of forms. First, acknowledging and regretting before God what we have done to spoil his world, and the suffering we have brought on people and animals by doing so. Second, to be grateful for what we have and grateful for the present day, whatever is going on in our lives, or might have gone on in the past. Gratitude goes with wonder, the ability to be amazed by the smallest beautiful thing. We need to encourage stillness in others and in our own lives, perhaps beginning with 5 minutes a day and gradually increasing it. We cannot act effectively without first renewing our individual covenant with God through prayer that embodies both lament and wonder.

Then we must take effective action, whoever we are and wherever we happen to live. We might begin by writing to our MP and local council. Our duty is not only to pray for our government but to help them govern justly. So pressure has to be put on our politicians to incorporate immediate action on climate change into their manifestos and current agendas, as a matter of absolute urgency. Our vote for them will depend not only on their promising to do this, but on their revealing clear plans with definable objectives and time deadlines which will enable us to achieve the basic target of 85% reduction of C02 emissions by 2050. ‘They should do this in time for these plans to be vetted and rated by expert bodies, campaigning organisations etc. and, if possible, the Climate Change Committee before the next general election in May 2015’ (Michael Bailey, Modern Church Conference July, 2013)

Lest these remarks be dismissed as naïve, there are ways to set about taking practical action. ‘Pathways to 2050’ is a programme, available online, giving suggestions to organisations regarding the scheduling of targets and objectives geared to achieving the 2050 deadline. These stages can be easily monitored. Pressure can be brought to bear on every political party to achieve them and their progress monitored by potential voters.

Persuading parties to do this can be done by letter – write to your MP or the party you are thinking of voting for in 2015 and persuade them that your vote for them hangs on this issue. If enough people do this, the politicians will listen. Organise a silent witness, perhaps on an agreed day. 5 minutes of complete silence and shut down (apart from emergency services and related institutions) would speak more loudly than words. Combine the silence with visible prayer in whatever way is appropriate for your own faith.

Comments appreciated.

Guantanamo - The Twisted Logic of Torture

Of the 166 inmates of Guantanamo Bay, 86 are being detained without trial and in some cases without charge. Some of these men have been detained for as long as 11 years. They are desperate. They are also men who take their religion seriously and, this being the holy month of Ramadan, they expect to be allowed to fast during daylight hours. They are also on hunger strike. So they are force fed at night.

By force feeding their Muslim prisoners at night the captors are presumably making some sort of perverse point about respecting the freedom of religion which is enshrined in the first amendment to their own constitution. Under that constitution, The United States of America also purports to be one nation under God. When the constitution was originally drawn up, this meant that the United States understood itself to be a Christian nation. Assuming this still holds true, as a Christian nation it is bound in a familial sense to all other Christian nations. This means that if it is to be faithful to the Gospel of Christ as a Christian nation, it is responsible to the Christians of those other nations, in other words to the Church. 

We understand the Church to mean the body of Christ and we understand from Christ, and from the letters of St. Paul, that the body needs all of its members in order to function in a healthy way. Where members behave in ways which are completely at odds with the spirit of Christ’s gospel, such as detaining people for inordinate lengths of time without charge and torturing them, the body acquires the symptoms of a human body which is in the very last stages of decay. The practice of torture is the equivalent of gangrene. It is ugly and lethal.

Torture employed as part of a nation’s routine practice for dealing with the suspected threat of terrorism, also infects the very people it is trying to punish or keep at bay because torture breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. Both are fuelled by fear. So both torture and terrorism are practices which justify themselves to each other. They have a twisted logic of their own because each in their different way justifies the person who believes that violence is the only option left to them. 

Terrorism is born of despair and despair comes when all efforts to protect the dignity and rights of other members of the body have been exhausted or ignored. It is also worth mentioning that these rights include the rights of women and girls to freedom and education, but women and girls are often themselves the victims of both terrorism and torture. They are seldom the perpetrators of either. The murder of innocent civilians by terrorists is the other face of torture. It is born of the idea that violence done to one group of people automatically exonerates them of the violence they do in retaliation. Such is the stuff of conflict situations today and of torture done in the name of ‘security’.

Religion and faith matter today more than they have ever done. What we are seeing in Guantanamo Bay is the effect of the inability of men and women of good faith to be a strong and unified voice in calling for an end to all the torture and violence that is perpetrated, whether overtly or covertly, in their name. It is time Christians and Muslims who wish to be true to their core faith, to Christ’s gospel of peace and to a merciful God, to work together effectively to put an end to the violence which is being done in their names.

Thrill of the Game

Along with several million other non sporty types, I watched yesterday’s Wimbledon finals at home on the sofa. And what a game it was, an extended moment of competitive grace, in which the best which human beings have to give of themselves was given not only by the players, but by the spectators. It was a graced event. The energy and speed of play, what Gerard Manly Hopkins would have called ‘the mastery of the thing’, had something of the transcendent about it, as did the razor sharp intelligence reflected in the stillness of Novak Djokovic’s face during those brief intervals of respite afforded to the players between games. 

During the tournament, different levels of tension braced not only the players against each other, but all of us watching, into a kind of graced silence in which each moment was held in its own completeness. The competition belonged to us all, as we willed victory for our man, whosever side we were on. For me, looking back on it, this willing and longing for ultimate victory was not simply a matter of wanting one player to be defeated and the other to win. It was a far wider, all encompassing and profound desire than hoping that Andy Murray would be this year’s Wimbledon champion. It had something of the transcendent about it. I wondered if it was alright to pray for him to win. Where did God stand in my own excitement at Andy’s every advantage point, every game won and at his final winning of the championship? 

St. Paul writes that ‘God shows no partiality’. Rather, he joins in the yearning which is in each one of us. In the abiding Spirit of Christ, God yearns with us in our competing for excellence. He graces all that we strive to become, or yearn for someone else to become, with an all encompassing love. It is a love that contains all yearnings. God in Christ is intimately bound up in them, drawing out of us, whether or not we think of ourselves as ‘religious’, something resembling praise, supplication and gratitude. What was Andy Murray doing and thinking as he fell to his knees in the moment of victory? Expressing incredible relief and overwhelming joy, giving thanks, responding in some way to the reality of God’s presence. That is prayer, however you look at it. It is a response to a greater love at work in the magnitude of the moment.

Those few agonisingly wonderful hours of tennis were about hope sustained and the faithfulness of God being played out in a seemingly ‘secular’ context. It was being played out as resurrection. Resurrection is not about raising corpses. It is about returning us to ourselves as a new creation. So Andy Murray’s home town, Dunblane, will no longer be remembered for the tragedy of the past, for death, but for the grace and beauty of Andy’s playing, for his ‘mastery of the thing’, for the healing grace of God working through him into victory and life. He will go down in tennis history, for sure, but more importantly, he will be remembered for giving Dunblane back to itself.

Who Is My Neighbour?

According to a recent UNHCR survey, the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon now exceeds 568,000 and is likely to reach one million by the end of the year. Lebanon’s own internal affairs just about hold together and it is only comparatively recently that its people have begun to experience something like what we would think of as normal life. The Lebanese are by nature hospitable, hospitality being integral to Arab culture in the widest sense, so it is very much part of their own day to day life. For this reason, Syrian refugees are seen to be brothers and sisters in need. They are to be treated as guests. But this prevailing spirit of kindness comes at great cost. It could lead to a massive demographic and sectarian imbalance sufficiently volatile to ignite yet another war in Lebanon, a war in which all would ultimately be losers.

Interdependence and risk are built in to neighbourliness, so what goes on next door sooner or later becomes our problem. We will be drawn into it through the ordinary day to day encounters and exchanges which make us part of that neighbourhood.  Through these exchanges, we are involved in each other’s lives. Neighbourhoods are therefore mini societies composed of people who take responsibility for each other and for the overall good of that particular community.

Lebanon is a neighbourhood whose members are doing all they can for the people next door. Lebanon is therefore our responsibility because, as a nation, it is our neighbour and what happens there concerns us every bit as much as whatever is being experienced, for better or worse, by those who live on our street or down our lane. In the wider neighbourhood of the world, the people down are lane are the Lebanese, Syrian, Sunni, Shiite, Druze, Hezbollah and Palestinian, with whom, if we met them in our shop or supermarket, we might exchange a few words or share a joke or confidence.  I do not think it is possible for any person of faith to pray for peace in a vacuum. So if we are to pray for Lebanon, we need to see in our heart’s mind, the faces of the people caught up in the tragedy of Syria and in what could easily become a tragedy for its neighbour. We need to see their faces and hear their voices. 

We could practise this, as a kind of preliminary exercise, by first holding our immediate neighbours here at home in this ‘heart-mind’ place, seeing their faces and hearing their voices, remembering their kindness, the funny moments we have had in passing – the teasing and joking that is safe because of the trust which underpins the friendship. Then we might imagine how, together with them, we would deal with the kind of situation which many Lebanese people of good will are facing at the moment, the overcrowding, the strain on infrastructure and resources, especially with regard to the needs of the most vulnerable. Fifty per cent of Syrian refugees, including those in camps hosted by Syria’s other neighbour, Jordan, are children.

The basic love and trust that exists between neighbours makes the mercy of God, and his righteousness, visible in the world. All people of faith are called to be channels of that mercy, directing it to the people of Lebanon and to the Syrian refugees within their borders, willing them to experience it and to know his peace.