God of small moments

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You are on a beach, deep in your novel, absorbing the sun, when a bullet hits you. You kneel to pray in a familiar place of worship. A bullet hits you. You open your bible in the company of friends. A bullet hits you.

On the beach, as you slip in and out of consciousness, you are aware of the presence of a particular hotel employee kneeling beside you. He is telling you not to be afraid and that help is coming. He is not one of the people shouting for help or telling others to run. He is not running either. He is simply there. He may get shot. But he does not want you to be afraid and he wants you to stay alive.

Salvation is not a matter of individual religions having the right answers to questions pertaining to God and the human condition, or of belonging to the right religious affiliation group or Church. Salvation begins with recognising and encountering the Saviour through the voice and the face of another person, irrespective of who that other person may be, or of their religion. This is the mystery of faith, something which is inextricably bound to love and which embodies truth.

Truth manifests itself in the most ordinary of encounters, as well as in extraordinary ones. This happened to me on a recent visit to Birmingham. I have minimal orienteering skills in unfamiliar cities and I was having trouble finding the station. I turned to the nearest person in the street, a young veiled Muslim woman with a small child in a push chair. She pointed me in the right direction and we chatted briefly about nothing in particular, but in that brief exchange we understood and trusted one another in the most profound way. I do not think this was a specifically Christian or Muslim glimpse of salvation. It was a moment in which time stands still. Jesus might have called it a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven. I should be interested to know what Muslims would call it.

For Christians, such healing encounters are moments of truth. They take us to a different place when it comes to what we think and say about God, because it is in such moments that we know ourselves to have been touched by him and healed, through the voice or the smile of another person.

Such encounters heal whatever hatred, in its conscious or subconscious manifestations, lurks within us. They heal the fear which causes hatred. These encounters are times in which God sees the truth in us. The truth which God sees in us is the essential goodness, or innocence, which was there when we were ‘made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth’ (Psalm 139:15) and made in his image and likeness. He sees it and literally redeems it. He gives us back to ourselves, or heals us. 

Healing encounters often involve touch. One of the Christian gospels tells the story of a woman who is healed of a menstrual disorder which is not only physically debilitating but also makes her an outcast. Jesus heals her of the haemorrhage in the minute she touches his coat. He then asks to see her, not because he does not know who he has healed, but because he wants to take the encounter a step further, so that it can heal the rest of her pain, all the emotional as well as the physical pain she experiences as a result of this almost life-long illness. He wants her to understand that he knows her in the full truth of her predicament. Truth and healing are complementary. You cannot have the one without the other. Jesus also tells her that her faith has healed her. There is a commonality about faith and healing in whatever context they appear. Faith, or trust, is always part of a healing dialogue.

What then, does this story of Jesus have to say to us in an age when terrorism and acts of atrocity are becoming almost commonplace? I think that it points us back to the hotel employee on the beach and, incidentally, to a museum employee at a similar incident which took place in Tunisia in March. The museum employee hid the terrified visitors in a basement until the killing was over.

Both of these people were Christ-like figures. They embodied the grace of God and, in so doing, confronted the evil in which darkness masquerades as light. This is the evil which comes of twisting a good religion into the shape of hatred. But the message of hope comes with the grace which is at work even in the darkest of moments. Though the circumstances are evil, at the heart of them, and ultimately defeating them, we encounter the redemptive and healing love of God ministered through the humanity of strangers.

Not fade away

We have a person suffering from dementia staying with us at the moment. We have not known her long. In fact, we only met her shortly before her illness began to manifest itself. She is by no means old, especially by today’s standards, and until recently she led a full and successful life. Yesterday, she and I went for a walk in the woods near us and I began to get to know her and empathise a little with what she is going through. By empathise I mean experience a fraction of her suffering with her for a few minutes, rather than simply observing it from a safe distance without knowing what to do or say.

As we walked, communication was patchy. It was a case of being ready to grasp the opportunity for understanding without holding on to it too desperately, as that would have created more anxiety for both of us. So we had to make the most of her sporadic moments of lucidity and my very nominal powers of intuition.

I have no experience of people with dementia, and I sense from being with our friend that it is experience which matters most, rather than simply knowing what to do.  Nowadays, thanks to the internet, we can find out what to do in almost any situation we are likely to be faced with in life, along with a good many others which will probably never happen. Instructions are not difficult to come by. But even the best instructions are no more than generalised pointers to help us deal with various situations or ‘conditions’.

Instructions mean nothing until they are literally fleshed out in an encounter with another person who is in need of that deeper understanding we call empathy. Empathy is not something one can work at or develop. It is not a moral virtue. It is given to suit the need, our own and that of the person who in that particular moment is in need of unfading love.

On our walk in the woods my friend who has dementia reached for my hand as she tried to speak of what she was going through, to hold on to feelings, to stop them fading away. I was encouraging her to describe, in whatever way she could, what life is like for her now and what hurts most. I do not know if this was the correct thing to do, but she continued to hold my hand as she articulated ‘with sighs too deep for words’ (Rom. 8:26) her sense of loss and of powerlessness. Until relatively recently she had held a highly successful career. She had travelled all over the world. And now we were walking in the nearby woods which must have seemed to her like an alien universe in which she occasionally glimpsed a fading, but once familiar past through the larch and coppices around us.  

Perhaps because the woods were strange to her, I sensed that it was important that my friend not feel that she was alone or lost. I sensed that she needed to know that she was part of a wider fraternity, the fraternity of all of us who are getting older and having to come to terms with being bereaved of those years in which we have been productive, or in which we wish we had been more productive and hence more valuable.

In today’s world when a person’s value is measured according to their success and productivity, coming to terms with the sudden loss of a successful career means having to resist the inner voice that tells us that we are no longer of value. But given that we only understand the concept of value in material terms, it is almost impossible to re-configure it so that we can understand it for what it really is. Our real value consists in being loved for who we are, not for what we have been, or might yet become.

It might seem at first that ‘religious’ people have a ready made solution, a cure, for this modern malaise of believing that we are without value and, one might suppose, of all the depression which comes with it. But people who are assumed to be ‘religious’ (whatever that is supposed to mean in the minds of those who use the word ‘religious’ as a convenient category to place people they do not understand) also experience this loss of value, this sense of disconnectedness from a God who has until now ‘held them together’. Forgetting the words of the Lord’s Prayer when you are well on in your nineties leaves you momentarily, but completely, disorientated. You are completely lost.

Here, it is worth bearing in mind that depression is a syndrome which must be especially frightening and incomprehensible for people with Alzheimer’s. If you cannot make memory connections, you cannot always know what it is you regret and, in less lucid moments, why these feelings of loss and of powerlessness are so acute. So there is an overlay of depression which, for dementia sufferers, must literally defy description.

God speaks love into the ‘lostness’ and disconnectedness of dementia, and of depression itself. He speaks it through silence more than through words.  He speaks it through the gift, or ‘grace’, of empathy which is sometimes given in surprising ways to unlikely recipients, but always recognisable for what it is. 

What hope for the Church in Wales? (2) Minding the gap

Last week I wrote about alienation as symptomatic of a dysfunctional organisation. Alienation is probably best defined as the fear which generates distrust between individuals and groups, causing them to perceive one another as mutually threatening, even though they may not realise this or admit to it. To feel threatened by others is to feel diminished by them. We feel threatened when we are made to feel exposed and unworthy, or at times less than human, by another person’s attitude, or by another group’s politics.

What happens to the individual is mirrored in the life of the collective. Where one group feels threatened it will instinctively respond to the other in a defensive way. Such a defensive response can translate into aggressive language or behaviour, or into angry withdrawal, thereby creating another layer of fear and distrust. This whole fear syndrome constitutes a cyclic and repetitive pattern found in just about every human social situation, and it is endemic in the life of the Church in Wales, as we saw in last week’s Deanery conference meeting.

The challenge facing the Church lies in interrupting this cycle of fear so that it can be revealed as a deception. We create such a healthy interruption by looking at the unhealthy interruption, or gap, which exists between the way we pray and the way we live our lives. The unhealthy gap, or interruption, exists in both collective and individual contexts. These two sets of human interaction – how we relate to God spiritually and practically and the extent to which we do so as a Church or diocese, as well as in our own personal prayer lives, belong together, of course.  But this is something which we perhaps take for granted without looking at the nuances and overlaps which exist between prayer and getting on with life, including that of managing the life of the Church or diocese. We tend to assume that God is around without actually pausing to connect with him, or maintaining our connection in the difficulties and conflicts which we face as Church in all areas of our common life.

Maintaining the connection, or minding the gap between prayer and life, begins with recognising that we are much in need of love, of being counted as worthy not only by God, but by each other. If we can recognise how much we need each other in this way, we will also find that we are all very much alike, and therefore together.

As someone who has spent much of my life either directly or indirectly in a theatre environment, I have sensed this kind of commonality in the way an audience laughs together. This can happen in the context of preaching too. The preacher and the congregation laugh together at something which emerges in the sermon as absurd or funny, and in a single moment barriers fall. We all hear and understand something new together. Prayer that connects with life often makes itself felt when obstructions to human love are broken down, even if only momentarily, so that we can laugh, or ‘rejoice’ together in this way.

In the life of the Church in Wales, there are a number of fear areas which obstruct the growth of love and which could disappear if we would only let them. There is the fear which comes with years of unquestioning adherence to outdated rules and customs, the latter including the way some clergy dress. These rules and customs alienate us from one another and put many people off coming to church.

There is the fear, especially among clergy (irrespective of gender), of losing power or prestige. This contributes to a fear of change and to a preoccupation with status. There is the visceral fear which many people have of articulate women (and of women in general), and the fear of LGBT people, both of which continue to haunt the Church and compromise its credibility in the world. Both of these can be traced to misguided notions of ritual purity, a partial reading of scripture and, in the case of LGBT people, to lingering but unquestioned social taboos. Taken together, all of these fears have directly contributed to what has come to be known as decline.

All of this suggests that bridging the gap between prayer and life requires that we create new openings for the love of God to flow into our life together. This work begins with every person being prepared to be vulnerable before God with regard to their own particular fears. Only then will it be possible for us to encounter him together as his Church. 

What hope for the Church in Wales?

When meetings do not address the problem of alienation there is something wrong with the organisation they exist to serve. I attended one such meeting yesterday. It was a deanery conference. Its purpose, it seems, was to ‘up sell’ the idea of ministry areas but like all strategic decisions reached in the wrong way, those selling it failed to enthuse their audience. In fact many of those present went away feeling angry, betrayed and disillusioned. Most of them were over 50 and at a rough estimate, probably around 65% of them were women. The meeting was orchestrated and driven by four men, all of whom needed basic coaching in communication skills and, for one or two of them, time spent in the managerial equivalent of charm school.

The meeting was helpful only insofar as the tenor of the debate and some of the issues touched upon by an articulate audience showed us not only what is wrong with the Church in Wales, but what needs to happen to change it for the better. Changing the Church in Wales for the better, which must surely be the underlying purpose of ministry areas, is a matter of something happening to its people, rather than devising strategies which it is hoped will keep the organisation going.

Good strategy and planning exist to promote the life and happiness of an organisation, thereby making its work effective. But it is the Church’s life in God, and its happiness in being God’s people, which make it attractive in the way Jesus was attractive. The Church will not be effective if it does not first attract people to Jesus. Jesus was attractive because he gave people something which no organisation could take away from them, the knowledge that they mattered to God and permission to be happy in that knowledge. So life, which is knowing that we matter to God, and happiness, preclude strategy. In terms of the life of the Church in Wales, life and happiness issue forth in what Jesus describes as the bearing of fruit.

This deanery meeting was life suppressing. It also, in the way it was devised and driven, suppressed happiness. It was a dictatorial and thinly veiled underpinning of the same old order presented in the form of something new. But people are not so easily fooled. The new system, as one person commented from the floor, would in fact ensure the continuing subsidisation of middle management and top ranking clergy, even though much lip service was paid to those training for lay ministry. There was little acknowledgment of the faithfulness of unpaid priests whose services, I couldn’t help feeling, are deemed by some to be less desirable than those of a stipendiary. Some people felt that too much was spent on buildings and that part of these expenses should be borne by other bodies. Many of these concerns were glossed over in a patronising way which only made for more anger.

People felt both bullied and undervalued. There was much talk of being the body of Christ, but a singular lack of love and trust between those in the audience and those driving the proceedings. The tenor of the debate revealed how little we honour one another as Christians and as members of a single family. It also revealed how little we value those who faithfully support their church Sunday by Sunday.  This is especially true with regard to older people who are possibly the Church’s most important potential mission workers. Their life experience, wisdom, professional acumen and natural intelligence is seldom used to attract younger people. The church is full of under used ‘godparents’, ‘grandparents’ and life mentors. Younger people, and people of all ages, need to know where they can find wisdom and non-judgmental compassion when they need it. They should be looking to the Church and especially to its older members.

What then, is the hope for the Church in Wales of the future? Tinkering with the existing structure is not the answer. This is not to deny the need for structure itself. Structures are necessary as movements grow in size and influence, so structures need to be both strong and malleable, allowing for movement, change and growth. They are the context in which gift and talent are nurtured so that the organisation, or the Church, can bear fruit.

In the case of the Church in Wales, the structure needs to be leaner in a number of respects. There needs to be less in the way of petty legalism, individual professional advancement and cronyism. There needs to be a complete and unequivocal end to discrimination against women. In this and other contexts there also needs to be a genuine change of heart when it comes to empowering those who call for reconciliation, or who speak the truth about the Church’s life and who, in doing so, threaten the privileged power holding enclave. There needs to be more in the way of repentance for the waste of gift and talent sent to the Church by God in all those he calls to minister to his people. The Church needs to start looking around for imaginative, creative, risky people.

All of this suggests that the Church in Wales needs to re-think its priorities when it comes to how it roots its life in God, because its life in God is the only life which brings happiness and which will enable it to bear fruit. It is this life which also attracts those who tentatively come through its doors seeking to know Jesus Christ. Closing buildings which we cannot afford to maintain may or may not be part of this re-thinking process. We are neurotic about buildings, but whatever we feel about them, perhaps we all need to remember that it is not the buildings which put people off the Church. It is the remoteness of a clerical and increasingly management-driven ruling class who are stifling the joy promised to it in its Lord.

Despite all this, the love of God wins out in the end. When the visitor comes to one of our village churches he or she will find a small congregation of mostly older people, a genuinely loving and probably unpaid priest, all conveying in the warmth of their smiles how much the visitor matters to God and to them. It is in such moments that the Church becomes something greater than an organisation.