Morning

Source: nedhardy.com

What gets you out of bed in the morning? In a way, I find this question harder to answer as I get older. It has to do with old habits wearing thin. The things that used to get me going are either no longer relevant, or no longer exist. When it comes to relevance, after 43 years of being together I’ve finally had to accept the fact that my husband really does not like hot tea, so to trek back upstairs to bring it to him the minute the pot has brewed is a waste of time and effort. I now pour it and leave it for him downstairs. Then there’s the other reality. The children have long since left home and now lead lives of their own at some considerable distance from ours. The only reason for getting up early for their sakes has to do with fitting in with international time zones. This we manage to do at other times of the day.

But I still get up an hour earlier, and I still have a reason for doing so. For one thing, there is the silence, both external and internal. We live in a silent place. In other words, silence is consistent. It is a given. There is no ambient traffic noise. There are no times of the day when we are even particularly conscious of noise, apart from the change of predominant bird cry. Buzzards are very active at the moment and the swallows have not yet started marshaling the troops for the long flight south. They will get noisier when they do so in a couple of weeks time. Also, we have cut down the old elder in which the crows used to nest, as well as fight with the magpies. Their departure has made the silence almost palpable.

External silence has the effect of quelling internal noise. In the first hour of the day the busy mind is subdued. It has not yet woken up to mundane preoccupations, although it is not asleep either. In fact, I find that it is more awake than at any other time of the day. It is open, in every sense of the word. For me, the first hour of the day is a time of openness to the Real Presence, but it is not a mental vacuum which I expect God to fill. Instead, I find that I am involved in a kind of three-way dialogue between the mind, the senses and God. But rarely is anything said. Instead, the heart is allowed to have its own mind, to speak from its concerns and from its fears.

Today, it spoke of North Korea and the US, and of the threat to our very existence which the leaders of these two nations represent. The mind, and my personal fears, being quelled, I was able to sense the impact of the situation on its most helpless victims, the ordinary people of North Korea. What came to mind was a picture of its baby-faced leader peering through what seemed like an old fashioned pair of binoculars while two of his adjutants stood by. One wore an army uniform. The other was dressed in a thin fleece type jacket. The army character looked thin. His companion was emaciated. Their leader was wearing a warm well cut heavy coat. He looked very well fed.

The memory of this picture, seen either on line or in a newspaper, speaks to me of the deeper evil, and of the most pressing danger, which is at the root of this crisis. It is the total disregard for other human beings which comes when two narcissistic leaders are sated or infatuated with power. No doubt if these two leaders were to disappear, others would replace them, so the solution to the crisis does not lie in praying that they, and the danger they represent, will simply go away. In fact, when we are engaged in the kind of three-way dialogue I have been describing, the idea of a ‘solution’ to the crisis of potential nuclear holocaust recedes a little. We realise that something more than a solution is needed, because a solution would be no more than a political construct designed to get these two leaders out of the impasse they have created and so allow the rest of us to breathe a sigh of relief, at least in the immediate present.

But whatever calming devices are deployed, in respect to the two antagonistic leaders, they will not make a jot of difference to the suffering endured by tens of millions of North Koreans. Their suffering will not be diminished, even for a moment. The silence of the early morning tells me that it is their suffering which matters most when it comes to any kind of meaningful solution to the Korean crisis. There is no particular logic for thinking this, and it will appear naïve to many, but for those who know the value of silence, engaging together in God with the suffering of ordinary North Koreans is vital spiritual work. If you have read this far, please reserve an hour of mentally uncluttered time to join me in this work.

With sighs too deep for words

What are we to do in the face of the suffering we see in Gaza? And not only in Gaza, but in the whole of the Middle East. We are there, virtually, at around 7pm every evening. Are we to ‘switch off’ at the end of the news and try to return to our normal lives, even if they are not always all that normal? How are we to think of other things? Is it even possible, at the stage which these various conflicts have reached, to do so? So much has been written. So much has been said, but there is little in the way of sane prognosis for the future, or of how to alleviate suffering in the present. We are left feeling angry, confused and profoundly disturbed by it all. So what can Christians, Muslims and Jews living away from these conflict zones, but watching the events unfold before their eyes day after day on the news, do that would make the slightest difference?

As a Christian, I am convinced, along with St. Paul writing in his letter to the Romans, that neither hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Rom.8) This does not make me feel especially safe, because engaging with this particular text attentively requires that we also engage with violence. Furthermore, we have to do this from our most vulnerable place, the inner space where we know ourselves most truthfully. This truthful space is that part of our selfhood which  few others know. Only God himself knows us as we really are and loves us as we are. There exists a similar conceptual space for nations and peoples, in which all are both accountable before God and fully ‘justified’ – their cause understood and dealt with justly by him because of his deep love for them. History has shown that in this place of truth he remakes nations.

Here then is a place for Christians, Muslims and Jews who want to see an end to the suffering in the Middle East to begin the work of remaking. All people of genuinely good faith can do this by engaging directly with God and with his redemptive purpose for the whole world, and for every person caught up in violent conflict at this moment. Together, as Christians alongside other people of faith, we need to allow ourselves to feel the pain on all sides by owning it as our own before God.

This is not just a vaguely spiritual exercise. It involves honest thinking, leading to the asking of difficult questions of ourselves as well as of those we either disagree with, fear, or simply hate. So one way to begin, with regard to the conflict in Gaza, might be to consider what Hamas, itself an agent of fear, represents in the minds of ordinary Palestinians, both in Gaza and in other parts of Palestine/Israel, and what it represents to Palestinians living in other parts of the world. Do they believe that Hamas is to be trusted with the well being of a people in the longer term? Has it proved itself, in this respect, so far? To what extent, might it be directly responsible for the carnage which is taking place in that country now? How much does it really value the lives of the people it has been elected to protect and serve? Do its members think of Israelis as in some way less human than they are? Is it conceivable that Hamas might one day think of Israelis as something other than ‘occupiers’, to quote its leader in exile, Khaled Mishal?

Similarly, how does the ordinary Israeli, who genuinely wants peace and justice for all, view the wholesale appropriation of Palestinian lands and the bulldozing of their homes? Are they prepared to accept that they are indeed, to a great extent, ‘occupiers’? If so, might they be willing to dialogue with Hamas, beginning with this crucial point? How do these Israelis come to terms with the hugely disproportionate numbers of Palestinians being killed or wounded (the majority being women and children) compared to the relatively few Israelis (mainly military) in the current conflict? Would these Israelis personally be prepared to go into Gaza to help rebuild what has been devastated? If a climate of trust could be generated, in the way I am about to suggest, could they conceive of a time when the brutal wall which divides families and has wrecked lives, be dismantled with their help? Could they see themselves, as people whose faith centres on a righteous, just, merciful and holy God, rebuilding what has been shattered by decades of conflict? Would they even like to think this possible?

These are questions which need to be addressed from within a place of truth and of deep silence before God. It is a silence shaped by sighing and longing, always in the presence of God. Before there is any more talk of truces and ceasefires, we and all who long for an end to this incessant killing need to keep silence together for an hour before God, the hour to be followed by two hours the following day, three on the third, and so on, until continuing with the slaughter and the hatred is revealed in all its ghastly futility and stops. This would be a time for everyone in that region and elsewhere in the world, to simply stand in the presence of God. Secularists should respect it and try to use it to the highest possible good for all in whatever way they can, but they too should remain silent.

This is just one way of re-directing sighs, so that they acquire a purpose. That purpose will ultimately consist of God’s word speaking wisdom into the silence through the voices of women and men who want the kind of peace which, as we say in the blessing given at the end of the Eucharist, ‘passes all understanding’ but which might just get people together who can speak wisdom into the turmoil which is overtaking the Middle East.