Good news and grandmothers

Hurrah for Boaty McBoatface! The marvellously named yellow submarine has successfully completed its first mission in the Antarctic, and thereby gives us, at last, a piece of news to make us smile!

As you may remember, the name was overwhelmingly the most popular in a 2016 poll for the name of a new polar research ship. Sadly the name finally chosen by the National Environmental Research Council was the RRS Sir David Attenborough, which had come fifth in the poll. Worthy, but not fun; childish, some might say, and indeed have said. But what's wrong with childish, or, more properly, child-like?

I've just been re-reading a book that was deliberately written not for children, but for "the child-like of any age" - and sometimes I think you have to turn to older people to find that quality! The book is The Princess and the Goblin, by the Scottish author, poet, and Congregational church minister, George McDonald (a fascinating man - look him up on Wiki! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald ). I found it by happenstance the other day on my Kindle. My own paperback copy, and its sequel The Princess and Curdie, were given to me a long time ago, when I was still at Junior School, by my maternal grandmother, but they have long since disappeared from my book shelves. I'm glad to say that the other books she gave me, however, have travelled everywhere with me, although increasingly battered. They are the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis, which compete with Rosamund Pilcher's Winter Solstice as my must-have Desert Island Discs book!

There is a richness in these so-called 'children's' books that endures, and they introduced me to the realm of what is now called High Fantasy, which I still enjoy today.

The grandmother who gave them to me was a painter, weaver, and linguist: she taught herself Mandarin when her son went to China in the 1950s, and learnt Russian, as far as I know just for interest's sake, when she was in her 70s. She had a great collection of rather battered hats. And she also passed on to me a love of the music of Bob Dylan, who I first heard by listening to her collection of EPs, including Blowing in the Wind, Corinna Corinna, and Tambourine Man. I loved them - which my poor parents no doubt regretted when I later took up playing the guitar and singing!

In case you're wondering, I have fond memories of my paternal grandmother too, not least of her long long white hair, rolled into a bun at the nape of her neck, the humbugs she kept in a tin in her sideboard, which I used to suck while sitting underneath her big square table, covered with a green velvet cloth with bobbles round the edges (the table, not me!), on our weekly Sunday afternoon visits, and for the cockle shells she edged her flower beds with. They made me smile too!

Church – what, why, where, when, who?

Once upon a time, in fact when I was sixteen and being prepared, in a somewhat perfunctory fashion, for church membership, I asked a question, quite a big question: What is the church for? 

At the time, this was perhaps somewhat bound up with a corrolarative question: What has the church got to offer me? I think I now know the answer to the second question (which is yet another story!) but the first one remained hanging unanswered in the airy spaces of my mind, despite some perambulations into the realms of religious-politcal thought a few years ago while studying for an MA in Applied Theology – what else does one do in one's mid-50s after all!

Even long ago in my teenage years, the overt power and influence of the church was withering away, leaving behind a very mixed legacy, and churches have struggled to develop a renewed identity (or should that be renewable?!). At such a time as ours, with beleaguered politicians, institutional decline, and disillusioned, often apathetic, sometimes enraged, citizens, should the church return to a philanthropic role of community needs provider? Should it adopt the 'if you can't beat them, join them' approach of entrepreneurial partnership? Should it focus on a public, quasi-civic role as participant in state ceremonial? Should it strive against the odds to be a counter-cultural prophet? Should it focus on the populist appeal of simplistic evangelical rhetoric? Should it withdraw from 'the world'? And when I say 'it' I should of course say 'we'.

There is precedent for all of these, certainly, but for me none of them sit very easily with the image of a man who called people to him and talked to them about shepherds, flowers in the field, travellers along dangerous roads – not an entrepreneur, a social activist, a hermit, an academic theologian, nor, unlike our political leaders, a socio-political strategist, imposing top-down agendas of political cant and paternalism masquerading as bottom-up vision. Jesus, as far as we can tell, was a man who engaged with people wherever and whoever they were, a man who did not give straight answers to questions but told stories, stories which for the last two thousand years have somehow had the power to transform lives, to mobilise people into action, and to weave together very human self-interest with responsible altruism.

Story-telling is believed to be one of our oldest human activities. Stories are ways of making sense of experience and ideas, expressing concepts and beliefs, shaping our identity, binding people together, and enabling conversations and associations which go beyond the political jargon of 'community cohesion' and 'connectedness'. More importantly still, mutually reinforcing stories become story-fields, that is, fields of influence, creating ideas of how life is or could be, and influencing people's behaviour, acting like magnets, with a powerful pull toward seeing and behaving in one certain way rather than another.

I have written elsewhere, and at length, about such meta-narratives, and won't inflict that on you here! Suffice it to say that stories and story-fields matter more than we often give them credit for: they possess the dynamic, contextualised, motivating power which enables the process of paradigm shift, the metamorphosis from one way of thinking to another. To put it simply, to change the future, first change the story. And to change the story, what do we need but narrative leadership – in our churches as much as in our political society.

As a cleric, I am of course concerned both that we tell our story and how we tell it, and of course this evokes Jesus' particular use of parables. These were vivid, brief, powerful, and open-ended, drawing his listeners into real life, familiar, yet timeless and universal situations, and confronting them and us with the demand for a decision or a response. There are some good contemporary examples of this innovative, 'parabolic' approach: the thoughtful, provocative songs and prose writings of Sydney Carter, the often over-used, but on-the-button poems of T.S. Eliot and John Betjeman, the unconventional paintings of Stanley Spencer, the hymns of Brian Wren, and the excellent if controversial Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ. All of these tell the Christian story in ways that, without diminishing the original, nonetheless strip layers away to reveal a core that can resonate today; and they are accessible, comprehensible, without requiring the listener or viewer to sign up for anything, least of all propositional doctrine.

And there is also an example – perhaps one of many, but the only one known to and experienced by me - of an experiment not simply in telling the story but in living it out, namely the Iona Community, founded in the 1930s by a friend of my uncle Boris, the Church of Scotland minister, George McLeod. McLeod recognised that there was a deep and urgent need for clergy to find new ways of communicating and living the gospel, resulting in a scattered community which crosses the boundaries of race, gender, sexual orientation, and denominational affiliation, and which brings together work and worship, prayer and politics, the 'sacred' and the 'secular' in ways that reflect a strongly incarnational theology.

For me, the Iona Community is a model of how the Christian story can be both communicated and lived in the here and now, rather than the various no doubt well-intentioned efforts to create 'church' in new styles, or to dress it in supposedly modern clothes, aiming to reach the un-churched. Perhaps, indeed, the concept of 'church' needs if not to be thrown away, then certainly recast. What is important is not the institution it once was, nor the resources represented by church buildings, nor the documented numbers of church members, but trust in God and in each other, so that we can 'sing the Lord's song', albeit in the strange land of today, and to join in the telling of a story which can help any and all people both to heal and to enable their optimum health – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual – regardless of who they are or what they have been. The community of faith, the household of God, is not for the favoured few, nor for those who attach this label or that to themselves or others, but for everyone who is touched by God's grace, and all those who seek to be.

My question is answered, not just in terms of a 'what' but also a 'who', and a little bit of 'how' and 'why'. To 'where' and 'when' the answer is always the same: here and now. And it only took forty-five years!

Manning the barricades?

The William and I have recently re-watched a couple of films. The first was The Way, an adaptation of Jack Hitt's book about walking the Camino de Santiago, something we would love to do, although nights in dormitories don't much appeal! It's a very good film, with the themes not only of what pilgrimage can mean these days, but also of loss, grief, and resolution. I think I got more from it this second time around, and I do recommend it.

However, I don't recommend the other film we watched, or rather three films telling one story: The Hobbit. Read the book instead!

But it was interesting (to me anyway!) that during the scene of Thorin barricading himself and his small group of followers inside the mountain, after the destruction of Lake Town and with lines of refugees heading his way for aid, what was uppermost in my mind was a post-Brexit Britain, closing its doors to outsiders. Literally outsiders. Ordinary people in need, good and bad, hard workers and slackers, of different nationalities, faiths, colours, cultures... I saw in my mind's eye the lines of people heading for the Mediterranean, piling into tiny overcrowded boats, and as like as not drowning; more lines of more people walking across Europe, to be turned away or caged inside camps within sight of their goal.

In the film, my sympathy is with Bilbo, absailing down the rocks to get to the Men and Elves, who, not entirely surprisingly, are anticipating armed struggles. Bilbo hopes to broker a deal between the various parties with the prized Arkenstone as the lure. The Arkenstone was one of the three Silmarils, in whose hearts burned the light of Valinor; but those who desired to possess them became tainted by arrogance and the lust for power.

Call them High Fantasy or fairy tales, un-Disneyfied ones rarely end happily, and I fear we're living in the reality of one now. Or am I just being pessimistic? (But where's Bilbo when you need him?)

In Limbo

More horrors and lives lost: the fire at the Grenfell Tower, the hate attack on the Finsbury Park mosque, and forest fires in Portugal. And yet here the worst we are experiencing is frustration with the vagaries of the sale/purchase process (can't book the removers until we have a date; won't have a date until the sale is confirmed; can't confirm the sale until the buyers' mortgage is confirmed; can't progress the purchase until the sale is confirmed... ) and the enervating effects of the continuing heatwave.

Yes, I do count my blessings - and hope that Sunday's victory of LREM is one of them! But Limbo – traditionally the edge of hell, a realm for un-damned sinners - is not the most comfortable place to be: we feel powerless, out of control, and therefore vulnerable.

For the pedantic such as myself, please note that Limbo and Purgatory, often muddled up, are not the same: Purgatory is the place of purification (purging) for those destined for heaven, and no-one stays there for ever, while Limbo is where we get stuck... or can we limbo dance out? If so, I shall eschew my 20 minutes of cross-training three times a week for bendy back exercises pronto, although in this heat I shall still need a good cleansing afterwards!

Mortality

June is the month when my mother died, and while I have many happy memories and remember her with love and gratitude, I also regret the missed opportunities, the conversations we didn't have. One of the few certainties in life is that whoever is born will die. Life is what happens in between, and we must make the most of it.

I believe that life begins with conception, although individual existence, in the sense of independence, doesn't happen until later, certainly not until birth, and, it could be argued, not even then. Every moment, from conception onwards, is a step towards death. Some death is what I think of as pre-mature, which we understandably seek to prevent: deaths from ill health and disease, from accidents and murder. Alternatively, death may be actively sought and enabled as a release from suffering when the prospect of continuing life would be unreasonably painful or qualitatively unacceptably poor. For myself, I hope for what I think of as a natural death – death due to age when my time-limited body and mind simply reach their use-by date and quietly stop.

But despite everyone knowing that aging and death are the natural and inevitable consequence of life, we try to stave them off. From such simple 'remedies' of diet and exercise, through commercialised concern with appearance (anti-wrinkle creams, botox, face-lifts, and so on) to the extremes of cryo-preservation, we are generally encouraged to want to live longer and to appear younger. Our youth-centric culture both compounds, and is compounded by, this negative attitude to aging and death, despite (or more likely because of) the evident demographic shift toward a predominantly elderly population, albeit marginalised and undervalued. And when I ask myself why this is, I regret to say that part of the unnatural and simply misguided vilification of age and death lies in the hands of the Christian church.

Christian theology derives very much from the teachings of the apostle Paul, and what Paul proclaimed was 'Christ crucified'. Paul believed that death was the result of human sinfulness, and that Jesus' crucifixion was a salvific event: Christ 'died for our sins' and 'was raised from the dead'. Thus those who are baptised 'into Christ Jesus' are both baptised into his death and raised with him to 'newness of life'. Without getting too tangled up in the intricacies of Pauline theology (easily done!), it is clear that, for Paul, death was something to be overcome, defeated; as the author of Revelation subsequently wrote: 'Death shall be no more'. This is the predominant theology that we have inherited, and the other side of it is the Christian eschatalogical hope: that, beyond death, there is new life of some sort. So much for Jesus' own teachings of the immanence of God's reign!

One small exception to this attitude toward death is found in the later teaching of Francis of Assisi (d.1226). Judging from his early writings, Francis had inherited Pauline negativity, but as he grew older his attitude seems to have begun to alter. In verse twelve of his Canticle of the Creatures (composed around 1224, and said by some to be adapted from Psalm 148) he wrote: 'Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whom no one living can escape.' While this is hardly unequivocally positive, it is at least a change, and, in the context of the whole canticle, which is rooted in humanity's fellowship with all creation, frames death as simply the liminal experience of a new beginning. In 1910, William Henry Draper, rector of a parish church at Adel, near Leeds, paraphrased Francis' Canticle for his church's Whitsuntide fesival, and verse 12 became verse 6: And thou most kind and gentle Death, Waiting to hush our latest breath (O praise Him! Alleluia!) Thou leadest home the child of God, And Christ our Lord the way hath trod. (O praise Him! Alleluia!)

Search the hymn books – and I have! - and I think you'll be hard put to find another such positive framing of death – which is why I chose it for mother's funeral eight years ago. And why, other than for the purposes of a compassionate funeral, would one want to? Simply because I think that there may be links between people's increasing preoccupation with physicality, longevity, and the staving off of death, and the decline in formal, corporate religion, notwithstanding the rise of individualistic spiritual quests.

Now, that may seem quite a jump! But look at it this way: The church, by and large, preaches a theology of the Cross, which is fundamentally futuristic: in order to secure a future 'life after death' it is necessary to accept 'salvation' through Jesus' death on the cross. All a bit 'jam tomorrow' and, to be honest, not very satisfying, not to mention the fact that we have no idea whether Jesus himself believed his death to be a salvific imperative, only that he was willing to accept what he understood to be God's will. However, there is an alternative, namely the theologies of Incarnation and Immanence – that in Jesus, God didn't die for the life of the world, but was born and lived for the life of the world – God with us. From the very little that we know of his teaching, we can confidently conclude that Jesus brought the good news that God and God's reign are not tucked away for some post-apocalypse, post-death future time, but are here and now. And so it is the here and now that the church needs to deal with.

Traditionally, the church's theology and liturgy have represented a corporate liminal space, where the divine and the human meet. But if we truly believe in Incarnation and Immanence then we must also accept that this is a false dichotemy, and should no longer promulgate the concept of any separation between these supposed two realms. What I suggest therefore is that two inter-related actions are necessary: firstly, we need to reform our theology, to plough a furrow back through centuries of Pauline and post-Pauline accretions, to return as closely as we can to Jesus' own precepts; and secondly, we need to create new liturgies, to act as experiential gateways leading us away from the Pauline drama of salvation and towards a benign framing of our mortality and a truer understanding of our creatureliness.

Hot heads and heatwaves

So, Theresa May is hanging on by her fingertips and grasping at the DUP as a prop in the hung parliament: the DUP – right wing Eurosceptic unionists, formerly led by Ian Paisley, and associated with paramilitarism, among other things: do see Matthew d'Ancona's article in this morning's Guardian: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/12/may-tories-amber-rudd-prime-minister-leadership

Meanwhile here in France, with temperatures up into the 90s (F), the young Big Mac's En Marche! trans-partisan party seems to be trouncing both socialists and conservatives as they head toward a huge majority. Good! And about time centrists and liberals counter-balance the extremism, of all sorts, that has become so dangerously dominant throughout the world. Fingers crossed for the final round of voting on Sunday.

Manchester & London – signs of the times?

One of our most regular, and very welcome, visitors while we've been living here has been Brigit, a Dutch woman, in her early 70s, who lives near Esperaza, a little market town about an hour away. Brigit and her German husband, whom we have also met, are Jehovah's Witnesses. And I do so admire, and somewhat envy, the strength of their convictions! 

We have had some great discussions with her, sometimes I think rather shocking her with some of our views, such as being evolutionists while, on a good day, believing in a Creator God, and questioning whether the Bible can accurately be described as The Word of God. My take is that the word of God may be in the Bible, in terms of the inspiration of its human writers, but not in an exclusive way: I find it hard to accept the concept of a God who doesn't interact with creation in many ways, with many 'voices', manifest in many cultures, faiths, and philosophies. 

That said, I would love to possess that absolute faith in the infallible truth of the Bible. If I could do that then yes, I might well agree with Brigit and the JWs that, since 1914, the destruction of the present world system has been imminent, and that afterwards God's peaceful kingdom will be established on earth. If only! But my sceptical and academically trained mind does not allow me that comfort. 

Sorry, Brigit.

On leaving The Hearth

Today is a Saturday and I am in the south of France; to be precise, at our home, The Hearth, between the hamlet of l'Escale and the Forêt de Picaussel – living on the edge, you might say! We came here in 2014, a month after our wedding. We spoke of the adventure of living outside the UK, and promised ourselves “three years in the sun”.

Once we were here we dreamed dreams of making this old stone house and attached barn into a place of generous hospitality. We planned a large eating-kitchen, several bedrooms and bathrooms, level access, possible programmes of activity, reflection, and relaxation, film nights, tours of the Cathar region, visits to vineyards and markets, excursions to Andorra...

Working largely on our own, we got as far as clearing the barn, renovating the attic, re-creating the garden, and excavating 'Brambly Hollow' – our bit of wilderness, much loved by deer and sanglier (wild boar), owls, jays, and woodpeckers. In breaks from labouring, we checked out the markets, vineyards, Cathar castles, local spa towns and ski centres; we walked, sat, explored, welcomed many guests to stay, and entertained even more around our garden table (up-cycled by The William from a huge wooden trunk left abandoned in the attic); we sang, talked, wrote, took photos, star-gazed, watched eagles soaring above us, and dreamed more dreams. We believed we had found our for-ever home, and there was much to make us happy, in addition to being together again after 37 years of separation - but that's a different story! (And yes, we are that old!)

But, sadly for them as much as for us, some of our neighbours did not welcome the changes we were making, however positive; some even claimed rights over our land, despite assurances to the contrary from our Notaire and visible proof from the bornage (boundary markers). Our plans were vehemently opposed; we became the target of verbal abuse, and under threat of court action.

As we saw it, this was a lose-lose situation. If we went to court and lost, we wouldn't be able to achieve our dreams; if we went to court and won, we'd have to face the antipathy of the local bullies on a daily basis – not the ethos of the dream. Sadly, angrily, frustratingly, and eventually, we came to the conclusion that the dream is not achievable here. As one of the former villagers has recently said (having moved away herself): “L'ambiance ici, c'est merde!” And it was well said. So, where to go? what to do?

I often, perhaps boringly, say that whatever decisions one makes, they're the best decisions possible at the time. And I do believe that. But I also believe in learning from experience. After much soul-searching, we're trying as far as is reasonably possible to take these latter, unhappy experiences as a lesson: a lesson which confirms that neither of us are confrontational people, that we are inclined to live and let live, that sunshine and beautiful scenery do not of themselves make us happy, and that, instead of aiming to provide comfort and re-creation for others, we need more than ever actually to achieve it for ourselves.

So, despite post-Brexit uncertainties, we are going to give France, and ourselves, another chance – but a long way from here: in fact, in Brittany. We have accepted an offer on our house, made an acceptable offer on a house in the Côtes d'Armor, and are halfway through packing up. Six weeks from now, we''ll be gone - and probably forgotten soon after. Dust will be shaken from our sandals as we go onward and upward... and we did get those three years in the sun!

But this time, using that precious and hard-won hindsight to guide us, we've made different choices. Climate, landscape, and, in our experience, people, are extreme here, and we're not fans of extremism of any sort. In Brittany we know that the climate and the landscape are gentler: we hope to find the people so too! Also, instead of what very soon became recognisable as a renovation project in a small enclave, we've chosen a detached house, with a clearly defined plot, still on the edge of a village but with a road that goes both ways – no more cul de sacs for us, thank you. And no more long trips to the shops, doctor, vet, what have you: we'll be less than 15 minutes drive away from two sizeable towns, one of which hosts an English-speaking congregation on two Sundays a month. We've missed the opportunity to worship and to socialise in the safe environment that we have previously, if not always, found churches to be, and, feeling somewhat bruised, we want a bit of a haven, as well as the spiritual and intellectual stimulation that the best churches provoke!

So, change of place, change of life-style (do I get to throw away all those worn out work clothes now?), and a change of name: no longer The Hearth, but Karningul. As I'm sure you know, or at least if you know some Westron as well as Elvish, Karningul was the Last Homely House, west of the mountains, east of the sea: "a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all". Sounds good to me.