CAUTE

A late January spin into the fens on the Dursley-Pederson

2012-01-26T18:10:00.001Z

Eyes shut with the DP on White Fen

For various reasons I haven't been able to get out much on the bike this month and, to be frank, I was going completely shack-simple. Alas, when I got up this morning (my day off) things didn't look great, rain and grey, grey and rain. To ameliorate the situation I made tea and poached eggs on toast, had a long bath and listened to Mike Oldfield's "Hergest Ridge" which, for some reason, has been back in my mind over the past few days - I must have last listened to it twenty-odd years ago. To my mind it is still a strangely splendid record though it's undoubtedly un-hip to admit liking it.

Anyway, after all that pfaffing around, enough time had elapsed for the day to take a turn for the better and I seized the moment. I made a flask of tea, took a pork-pie from the fridge (which Susanna had thoughtfully bought for me yesterday on the off-chance the weather would be fine), a banana and my map, dusted-off the Dursley-Pederson and headed on out to Quy, Bottisham, the Swaffham Bulbeck and Burwell and then back into Cambridge along the Lodes Way. The photos are all from the Lodes Way section on the way home. A splendid spin. At Burwell I met an interesting chap called Mike who told me he was on the steering-committee of the Lodes Way and who was interested in all things bicycling and clearly had a few interesting machines himself and he gamely took up my offer to have a quick go on the Dursley-Pederson. Just a very small thank-you to him and all those who've opened up this lovely route for us all. If you haven't been on it yet (and can get there!) do try it out.

Despite there being rain showers all around I managed to miss them all but, as you will see below, I benefited from them at a pleasant and dry distance.

Rainbow at Burwell looking north 1

Rainbow at Burwell looking north 2

Looking south-west across Burwell Fen 1

Looking south-west across Burwell Fen 2

Looking south-west across Burwell Fen 3

Looking north-west across Tubney Fen

Particularity and universal love, a hard won fruit - A meditation inspired by Virgil and George de Benneville

2012-01-22T17:50:00.000Z

18th Century illustration of the Georgics

Click on the following link to hear the podcast of this post and/or download an mp3 (see bottom left of the page): Particularity and universal love, a hard won fruit - A meditation inspired by Virgil and George de Benneville - 22 January 2012

Reading: John 17:17-26

David R. Slavitt's translation of Virgil's opening poem of his series of 'Georgics' offers up an image that I'd like to use today to help bring out an issue about unity that is always arising in one form or another within liberal religious circles. But firstly, here is C. D. Lewis' fairly straightforward translation of Virgil's Latin lines:

'But plough not an unknown plain: First you must learn the winds and changeable ways of its weather, the land's peculiar cultivation and character' (l.50-52).

Virgil is reminding his readers that, although they may have available (in books or in our memory) general unifying rules about agriculture which tell them how to get the best out of the type of land which lies before them these rules are, alone, never sufficient if they wish the land to be truly productive. Virgil is saying that they must always take the time to come to know intimately the land which they are intending to cultivate and that, before they begin to plough, they must make every effort to learn this landscape's unique particularity, i.e. it's orientation, its geology and all these things and many more in their relationships with the local seasonal patterns of wind, rain, sun and snow.

Slavitt's powerful 1972 translation brings something else out from Virgil's insight by using an image drawn from the structure of language:

All knowledge is hard won;
a farmer must know his field, its soil, its weather,
and from years of trial and error he learns which land
grapes thrive upon, which will produce corn
better or earlier so he can beat the market's
glut. A week, a weekend can make the difference
between comfort and bare survival, survival and loss.
It is all particularity - as in grammar:
to farm is to conjugate irregular verbs.
Beyond the rules, you must learn the brute words themselves
by rote and with stern hunger for schoolmaster. (p.94)

It always forcibly strikes me that the image of farming, of cultivating land, is one which can easily also stand for the cultivation of ourselves and that, therefore, we may also think of the cultivation of our lives as like conjugating irregular verbs.

Here I'd need to emphasis the point (because it seems to me of such great importance) that what it is to be a person is always-already to be within horizons (i.e. within a particular cultural landscape) 'which are made up of a series of echoes, linguistic resources, messages from the past, messages coming from others, and others beside us such as other cultures' (Gianni Vattimo cited in 'The Weak Thought and its Strength' by Dario Antiseri, Avebury Press, Aldershot 1996 p. 9). Connecting this insight to Virgil's line of thought, this would mean that, although we may be able to articulate a few, more or less, universal rules about what it is to live anywhere and anytime if we wish to live in a way that bears appropriate and abundant fruit in *this* landscape, this is only possible in so far as we take true account of local particularities. Such a true - meaning-ful - account can only be taken by someone who has learned these things by rote by living in that same landscape. Learning 'by rote' means, as I have just noted, learning 'by heart' and when we learn something by heart we make it part of our very being - so to say we are coming to 'know' a landscape becomes also to say we are coming better to 'know' ourselves.

Virgil/Slavitt's point about particularity came back into my mind this week because after last week's address a question was posted on my blog which caused me to revisit the work and life-story of one of my great heroes, George de Benneville. (Albert D. Bell's biography, The Life and Times of Dr George de Benneville, can be downloaded here.)

Born in England three hundred and nine years ago to French Huguenot refugees, de Benneville (1703-1793) was one of the earliest Universalists to make it to America and to plant there the seeds of a very particular, extraordinary tolerant and open-hearted form of Christianity. This way of being in the world was open-hearted, not only to an incredible variety of other Christian groups - Pennsylvania was full of groups fleeing religious persecution in Europe - but also to the world-view and ways of the Native American Indians and other religious traditions, including in de Benneville's case Islam which he had encountered in his early life at sea. (An account of this latter encounter can be read in Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of Dr. George de Benneville which you can download here).

Some of de Benneville's inspiring words lie on the opening page of a prayer-book I wrote in 2007 with the American Unitarian Universalist minister John Morgan which, for me, still sum-up (though, of course, very much in contemporary post-modern key) what I try to do in my role as your minister:

'Preach the Universal and Everlasting Gospel of Boundless, Universal Love for the entire human race, without exception, and for each one in particular. . . . Proclaim and publish to the people of the world a Universal Gospel that shall restore, in time, all the human species without exception. . . . The Inner Spirit makes men feel that behind every appearance of diversity there is an interdependent unity of all things.'

But they are not easy to understand in the way I think de Benneville understood them and over the years I have come to realise how often these words are heard as referring to the existence of an actual universalist religion of a decidedly Platonist kind - i.e. that behind the transient accidental accretions of time and culture their lies a single unifying pure religion waiting to be uncovered by us and which might eventually be practiced by an extant, enlightened church community - usually, it is hoped, our own.

This religious idea has been, and continues to be, very influential in the way many have tried to develop a form of inclusive, tolerant liberal religion in our own time and culture. But the trouble has always been that in order to achieve this in ways that won't snag, scratch or cause problems or cause any kind of offense or dislike in *anyone* at all, all the particular, craggy, sharp, difficult (and it is believed, accidental) bits of any extant religious tradition must first be filed-off in order to leave behind them only smooth, regular, safe, universally acceptable and accessible essences. These essences, it is hoped, can be held together, unproblematically, in a new, single, universal religion.

But every attempt to create such an essential universally inclusive liberal religion has failed because, by definition, it cannot recognise the central importance of the particular craggyness of our actual lives and of our actual, existing living religious traditions.

Looking at De Benneville's own life it seems clear that he realised that such a smoothing out and reduction to imagined essences was not the most fruitful and abundant way to achieve, either for himself or others, the desired tolerance and openness in religion and society as a whole. It did not express for de Benneville a proper liberal approach to religion because it failed to take into account the particular and abundant fruits that come about precisely because of local, sometimes very craggy conditions.

In a very real way he was one of the first religious people really to live the modern maxim, 'Think global, act local.' Since we've been looking a lot at the local it's time to turn to de Benneville's global thinking. What is he trying to say through his expression of universalism?

John Morgan reminds us that De Benneville believed that God, whom he called the 'Sovereign Good,' took different forms at different times, but these forms were each a part of the universal truth that all creation would be restored - i.e. in God's totality nothing will be lost or deemed fruitless. De Benneville also wrote that 'Our faith is essentially the combined faith of all Christians' and that 'as no church is pure in all things, so none can be found that does not contain some truth. Glorious truths are found in every church and religion under the sun. And this glorious chain of truths . . . we believe will someday unite all of them into one form of love.' Passages like the one we heard from the Gospel of John (John 17:17-26) some of the key particular echoes, linguistic resources and messages from others that so resonated with Universalists like de Benneville's.

But de Benneville's claim needs to be heard aright. When he says 'Our faith is essentially the combined faith of all Christians' he *does not* mean *his* faith, that his community's faith is actually this thing, but instead it is his faith that *in combination* every church (i.e. all Christian groups including his own) and in all religions under the sun there existed a glorious chain of truth that is capable of uniting everyone. This uniting chain of truth was for de Benneville God and this God was love. De Benneville knew that love is active relational, familial and that, at its best, love unites a family, not by insisting it's members follow only universal rules but by taking account the unique local particularities of it's members and then finding ways to bring these local particulars out in fruitful and abundant ways - for the individual and the whole family.

Therefore, genuine religious liberty and tolerance arises for de Benneville, not through the creation of a universal religion to which everyone can belong, but by finding a way through dialogue by which each local, particular group (whether Christian or not) can begin see and touch in it's own particularity the great chain of love he saw. In short de Benneville's liberalism is rooted in encouraging us to recognise across religious boundaries 'family resemblances'. His point was, I think, something like that which was pointed to by Wittgenstein, namely, that things which may be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, *where no one feature is common to all.* So, although chess, football or children playing freely with a ball in the park can instantly be seen by us as all being games we can never reduce them to something we might call a universal or essential game. As with chess, football and children playing freely in the park so, too, with religion.

De Benneville's universalism is found in his consistent willingness to go out into the world and preach that there existed this family resemblance of divine love and to help every particular community, of whatever kind, to see this themselves, to see itself as a link (or as our final hymn says, a gem) in the glorious chain of truth that is a unity in divine love. The ultimate aim being the possibility that we can all say to each other and mean: 'We need not think alike to love alike.'

This community here in Cambridge, founded in 1904 with it's own liberal Christian particularity displayed in its covenant and in the shape and content of our services, has consistently attempted to live out this same truth and it is because of this that we are still respected and valued in this city by other Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Pagans. It is, for instance, why we were the hosts last summer of the recent city-wide inter-faith service as our city showed its solidarity against the proto-fascist English Defence League. It is why we are able to play a full role in the city's ecumenical bodies.

But this particularity has never been easy to achieve, nor to maintain and to be this kind of community is, as both Virgil and de Benneville reminds us, very 'hard won.' It's hard won because it's all about particularity and to be the unique liberal community and we need the patience to learn to conjugate irregular verbs by learning the brute words of our own tradition by rote and with stern hunger for schoolmaster.

But remember the key message of hope - and what makes the task worthwhile - is that the schoolmaster is understood to be nothing less than God understood as always unfolding relational, divine love. It is why as your minister I continue to encourage us to heed de Benneville's call to preach the Universal and Everlasting Gospel of Boundless, Universal Love for the entire human race, without exception, and for each one in particular.

*****

The Everlasting Gospel by Paul Siegvolck, the pseudonym of George Klein-Nicolai, which was of such huge influence on de Benneville and other's of his generation can be found at Scott Wells' blog here.

Scott Wells also maintains a website with a variety of historical Universalist material online.

Enlisted by birth, environment and choice, under Jesus' banner - a liberal Christian thought from 1923 by J. Cyril Flower, minister of the Cambridge Memorial Church (Unitarian)

2012-01-21T17:50:00.000Z

J. Cyril Flower

This afternoon I took some time to re-read some of the things written by J. Cyril Flower who was minister of the Memorial Church (Unitarian) between 1922 and 1931 - the same church where I am minister.

I was doing this because my ministerial review is due next month and this has been a helpful time for me to reflect on both my own ministry and, of course, the kind of ministry experienced by this particular liberal church.

As I have mentioned a couple of times in recent sermons this activity seems to me important because in our own age, we can see clearly that our understanding of in what consists for us reality, our world, is always 'experienced within horizons which are made up of a series of echoes, linguistic resources, messages from the past, messages coming from others, and others beside us such as other cultures' (Gianni Vattimo cited in 'The Weak Thought and its Strength' by Dario Antiseri, Avebury Press, Aldershot 1996 p. 9).

As I have been before, I was struck and encouraged by his words which conclude a chapter simply entitled "Jesus" in a 1923 book entitled "Aspects of Modern Unitarianism", not least of all because I find that I don't really seem to feel any different from him about the matter. I might not have used the martial metaphor he does at one point and nor do I think that I precisely share his metaphysics, but the echo and spirit of his words are still creatively resonating in my own ministry. Anyway, here are Flower's words (which you'll find on p. 105 at the link above):

I confess that I find the laborious attempt to define what is called the "place" of Jesus, or any other great prophet of God, altogether unedifying. It is enough if we follow the light when and where we see it, in whose hands soever be the torch. When I am in Switzerland, worshipping God in the splendour of the snowy mountains, it is of no interest to me that, in India or America, there may be snow-clad mountains which are a few hundred feet loftier. If I am in Switzerland, let me breathe in the beauty of its mountain grandeur, and expand my soul in contemplation of the present symbols of the Infinite and the Eternal: he who is among the Rocky Mountains or in India can do nothing more, and should do nothing less. We live in an atmosphere and a civilization whose best characteristics are steeped in the influence of Jesus. We are enlisted by birth, environment and choice, under his banner. There are other captains in the one great army of God; but he is ours, and we shall promote the success of the divine campaign for the kingdom of heaven, not by gossiping about the particular features, demeanour, or apparel of the various captains - but by lovingly and faithfully following our own; for all genuine religions are allies, and not enemies. The prophets of God are many, but God is one; and that under whatever banner India, China, England, Palestine may move forward, they may be led by their accepted captain, courageous, faithful, loving their brothers and honouring their leader, to God, should be the aspiration and the prayer of all who are disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

An unexpected post concerning another way of thinking about Universal Salvation . . .

2012-01-16T13:10:00.002Z

A good friend of mine - RyS - posted some good and helpful questions (his always are) in connection with my last post. I tried to put my reply there but Blogger tells me my reply has too many characters in it. Me go on too long? . . . Never . . .

Anyway, as I wrote this reply this morning I realised RyS' words pushed me to talk about Universal Salvation - not something I've done in a long, long time. The photo at the head of this post is of the grave slab of my own great Universalist hero - George de Benneville (1703-1793). A couple of years ago I posted a link to a pdf scan of the only biography that was written about him - you can download that here. My own way of getting there is very different to his but the 'final' hope is the same - that no life is ever lost or wasted.

So, thanks RyS for the post and the comment - thanks to the wonders of Blogger we can open up a wider conversation.

So to your comments in turn (RyS's points are in italics):

The reference to the 'two paths' seems a bit stark - one liberal, one conservative.

Indeed - but then I point out this fact when I say there is here much blurring and grey. One of the things that is difficult about writing short addresses is how to highlight important matters so they can be seen very quickly. I hope that the conversations after the sermon and here, such as yours, can then nuance them appropriately. So thanks for the chance.

(Addendum: Don't forget the two path image appears in the Christian tradition very early - see the opening of the Didache.)

It then transforms into a critique of liberalism as infinitely too many paths, and conservatism as simply right path/wrong path.

An important point to put in at this point is that in this address I was trying to talking about individual approaches/attitudes NOT actual religious traditions/denominations etc. I think one might be able to say something along these lines about them but it's not what I tried to do here - though I did not, I think, make that clear enough and you are right to raise this point. However, I hold fast to my general point really because of my pastoral experience. I regularly come face to face in my study with two general types of people: on the one hand, those who are convinced that there is a right path and many wrong ones and, on the other, those who - even if they believe they have started down one path - are crippled by anxiety about the multitude of possible paths they have encountered and not taken and those they believe they will encounter. In the latter case it really does often mean that the person before me isn't able to live their life in a deep and abundant way they (and I) feel is possible. (I know this latter tendency only too well being as I'm a liberal myself).

You then tell us there's just the one path, and that we cannot change the world, merely how we perceive the world.

I do indeed say this - I think that for an individual there is just the path that is your life - to go back to Beech's parable, when you are dead and gone your life (as with the pot at it's completion) will have been just that life and not another.

But my point is that this life (like every great text) is always capable of being interpreted in ways that can show up new meanings and possibilities. The Christian example par-excellence is how the utter disaster of Jesus ministry - death on a cross with all his followers running away scared beyond measure - is somehow transformed such that it lights up a whole new possible way of being in the world for those who eventually regrouped and began to live in what we call today Christian community. In a very real sense the world hasn't been changed by that - Jesus was still killed - but what that *means* has changed and it is this aspect change which allowed them, and then those of us who live in the light of that event, to live in a world where things now show up differently before us. This is why I think one should never say 'merely' with regard to how we perceive the world. Everything hinges on this - this is what makes all the difference. When you perceive the world differently then you will be in it (and acting) differently.

This goes against the reality of the world pushing back, and us reacting (not reactionary) in it. Surely such 'pushing back' is prompting us to interact with the world, and therefore exercise our gifts in order it to change it? And in the process of meeting the demands of this reaction, altering our path in ways which we would not have known we would have chosen? Thus we find us and the world changed by our response to a need that pushes uniquely against us. This affects other people's choices as well. So - is this not a concept of God?

It seems to me that here I am talking about the world pushing back at us and it is this pushing that causes us to question how we perceive it and then, with this change of perception, we are freed to exercise not simply our gifts (those we have or believe we have) but sometimes actually to have disclosed the possibility for new ways of acting that were never possible for us before hand (we are gifted new gifts).

Here I come back to the thought I've particularly been talking about over the last month which is that God might best be thought of (perceived) as self-giving unfolding event and that we form part of that unfolding (consciously or unconsciously) - there's your interacting aspect. This is, indeed, a concept of God for me but it is one which allows countless narrative lines (i.e. our individual lives and, therefore, our story) to wander through it. The trick is to find ways such that the only one of those paths that we walk (our life and not another's) is walked in such a fashion that we can begin to see how meaning-ful it is - in fact how meaning-ful is every life.

This doesn't mean, of course, that every life is (or can be perceived to be) in it's actual living, lovely, wonderful and without pain and grief (twelve years in the ministry reveal this to me only too well) but it is to keep the door open for, well, let's call it what it is: Universal Salvation - how every life can, somehow, be seen as forming part of a greater, meaning-ful story even as this greater story is always too great to be known by any one of us (this is not to resurrect a old style grand-narrative because what I'm talking about is radically open-ended, open to new interpretations and possibilities and, by definition, is something that cannot be known by us, nor even God). This is one of the reasons I so admire Norman Maclean's story "Young Men and Fire" where he does just this for the twelve Mann Gulch Smokejumpers who died in 1949. It seems to me to be a theological gesture towards the kind of theological narrative of salvation a God who is unfolding, self-giving event might 'write' (be always writing) - if such a thing were possible (which it isn't). It would be an open-ended version of the book (text) of life - itself capable of, as I quote Thompson in my address, continually generating new readings, even revolutionary re-readings which radically reorient the sense of the work (which we might call 'creation' - or God).

But none of these words, of course, makes this sermon right and your comments have helped me clarify something important about what I was trying to say. If what I've said just strikes you as plain nonsense of just missing your points then fire a message back.

It seems appropriate, even required as a necessity requires to conclude with some words of Benneville's that have long inspired me (they appear on the opening page of the prayer book I wrote) and sum up the call that lies behind my words above.

Preach the Universal and Everlasting Gospel of Boundless, Universal Love for the entire human race, without exception, and for each one in particular. . . . Proclaim and publish to the people of the world a Universal Gospel that shall restore, in time, all the human species without exception. . . . The Inner Spirit makes men feel that behind every appearance of diversity there is an interdependent unity of all things.

My thanks and warmest wishes to you as always for your gentle and always helpful pushing-back.

A

By another way - living a meaning-ful life

2012-01-15T17:15:00.000Z

Click on the following link to hear the podcast of this post and/or download an mp3 (see bottom left of the page):
By another way - 15 January 2012

Although I deleted them from the final script, in the first draft of last week's address, I originally concluded with a few words about the final verse of our reading for Epiphany Sunday, where the Magi '. . . being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, . . . departed to their own country by another way" (Matthew 2:12). Today I've revisited my concluding words and expanded them into this address.

As I have mentioned a couple of times in the past few weeks, given that in our own age, we can see clearly that our understanding of in what consists for us reality, our world, is always 'experienced within horizons which are made up of a series of echoes, linguistic resources, messages from the past, messages coming from others, and others beside us such as other cultures' (Gianni Vattimo cited in 'The Weak Thought and its Strength' by Dario Antiseri, Avebury Press, Aldershot 1996 p. 9) one of the echoes that, for me, came into play as I continued to think about the Magi's return by another way, was Robert Frost's very famous poem of 1916, "The Road Not Taken":

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It seems important to add to the mix here one message coming from another culture besides our own, namely the Chinese word or concept, of the "Tao" which has become part of our own Western philosophical and religious lexicon (though in a distinctive way not entirely akin to the way it is used and understood in the Chinese context). Although the basic generic, normative meaning of the word Tao is simply "road" or "way", an additional meaning - and the one that I play with today - is "the spirit or quality of mind one is cultivating" (Michael Lafargue, The Tao of the Tao Te Ching, SUNY Press, Albany 1992, p. 245).

So, now, within our own cultural horizons and with these echoes, linguistic resources, messages from the past and messages coming from others in play around us, what useful lesson might be showing up for us in this short verse found in our culture's great, normative Christian text?

Well, to draw out one important lesson that I see showing up, the first thing I need to do is place before you an insight disclosed very much to our own age. It is as the philosopher Iain Thomson puts it, the feeling that:

'. . . what makes the great texts "great" is not that they continually offer the same 'eternal truths' for each generation to discover but, rather, that they remain deep enough — meaning-full enough — to continue to generate new readings, even revolutionary re-readings which radically reorient the sense of the work that previously guided us.' (Figure/Ground Communication interview).

This insight is worth remembering, especially at a time when religion is making a return to our civic space and often in some very conservative and reactionary forms.

These religious traditions and their contemporary mirror images, namely certain kinds of atheism and scientism, love to play the two-paths or two-roads game. Down one, they say, lies darkness, down the other lies light; down one lies heaven, down the other lies hell; down one lies truth, down the other lies superstition. N'er the twain shall meet, or so they say.

The Bible is, as we know, caught in the middle of all this but Thompson's words remind us that if we are smart about how we use this great texts of religion we have inherited we can always turn it to good, liberal use. One of my own great heroes, the Marxist and Atheist, Ernst Bloch, pointed out in his book 'Atheism in Christianity' that the Church and the Bible are not one and the same: 'The Bible has always been the Church's bad conscience.' And, as Bloch reminds us, although the Bible has often been used (and is still used) as a cattle prod by the powerful against the weak, 'the counter-blow against the oppressor is biblical, too, and that is why [the Bible] has always been suppressed or distorted, from the serpent on' (Atheism in Christianity, Verso Press, London 2009, p. 13).

One of the oppressive and powerful ideas in our culture that we need to strike a counter-blow against is precisely this two path model of life and here's where the biblical story of the Magi comes in.

It struck me last week that, although when the text says the Magi returned 'by another way' it is clear that the author is imagining them to be taking a different actual road home, the linguistic resources available to us enable us to consider the possibility that we may also consider the Magi as undertaking their return by embodying a radically changed *way* of being-in-the-world - by another Tao - namely, the one they saw shining in the Christ-child. What it was that I think we may understand them to have seen you can find in my Christmas Day address. In outline it was to see God not as a powerful *being*, like the Gods of old, but as unfolding event, self-giving Being itself, which in turn enables quieter, weaker, less dogmatic voices to be heard and responded to.

If we lay the weight on this second kind of returning, by embodying a different *way* (Tao) of being in the world, a thought springs to my mind.

When we look back on our own life-path - as we may imagine the Magi doing on their return, what we are commonly tempted to call "taking a different path" at a particular point in our lives, is really to speak with hindsight of a moment/period in our life when we were able to identify that a new way of understanding the world was being disclosed to us. With this disclosure there also came new possibilities and new ways of opening ourselves up to the world. This should help us see that our life-path *never really diverges at any point* (I want to stress this very strongly indeed). Perhaps the best parable I know of living life in this kind of way (Tao) is told by the theologian George Kimmich Beach:

'. . . as a potter you form a lump of clay, you make many decisions, exercising your freedom both consciously and instinctively, to one end, a finished ceramic. [. . .] The original decision in pottery making is not unlike the original decision in faith: once a direction is set, soon it will be too late to change your mind. Choosing a bowl excludes a pitcher. Now choices are being made within an ever narrowing range; necessity is closing in on the maker. But this is the miracle of creation: a reversal is also in progress, for the embrace of necessity gives birth to a greater freedom. With each new choice, new, more refined choices arise; creative freedom is growing exponentially. [. . .] The perfect end to the exercise of freedom is perfect necessity. We think: This bowl, or this life, can only be what it must be!' (George Kimmich Beach cited in Walter P. Hertz, 'Redeeming Time', Skinner House Books, Boston, 1999, pp. 99-105).

But, although we may find it relatively easy to see how this is true with regard to a pot, we struggle to see how this is true of our own lives. This is because we have inherited a tradition that really loves two-path thinking. How those of conservative persuasion play this out is different from those of a more liberal persuasion but, make no mistake, both play it out.

In a nutshell (and at the risk of over-simplification - for there is much blurring of boundaries and grey here!) the conservative (religious or secular) person tends to insist on the absolute need to follow the right path. So, if you find, feel or are told you are on the wrong path you must change, you must convert and get on the right track. If you find you have gone by the wrong path then you must retrace your steps and roll back the corruptions - leaving all the old behind in order to arrive at the place where the paths diverged and you can make the necessary change.

The liberal (religious or secular) person tends to be more equivocal. They want to be able to hold open, in principle at least, all possible paths. This is because they know that neither one nor the other is absolutely right nor absolutely wrong but this can mean (often means?) that the choice to follow one path or another diminishes in importance - to echo Frost, the choice *doesn't* make all the difference. In a many liberal's minds most paths are really just as fair as any other and the choice for travelling one rather than another is often based on something as minor and inconsequential as being merely grassy and wanting a little wear.

As a little warning, I've been in the full-time professional ministry for twelve years now and I have seen how for many liberals, especially towards the end of their life, this can result in the feeling that they have never quite lived their life fully, never done what old Thoreau tried to do by going to Walden Pond - 'I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.'

Anyway, on the one hand, conservative positions tend to become narrowly focused, exclusivist and restrictive and, on the other, liberal positions tend to become unfocused, blind to the importance of real difference and, in wanting to keep open the theoretical possibility one could check out the other path at a later date, impossibly vast in reach.

Frost's own relationship with religion was complex and ambivalent - that's one of the reasons I like him. (It's also why I think his poems form a great text of our culture.) But what we can say for sure was that he was well towards the liberal end of the religious and spiritual spectrum. Like us, inherited a two-path tradition of thinking and, in this poem, his genius as a poet is revealed in how subtly and gently he places before us the problem we liberals face and gives us the gentlest hint of a solution appropriate for us in our own age - the solution I've already gestured towards in Beech's parable of the bowl or pitcher.

The body of the poem, the first three verses, explores the flawed liberal dream of being able to hold together in one lived life many *possible* divergent paths. Frost describes them, weighs them evenly and dispassionately, and only then does he say he followed one, but only after he has categorised the first as to be kept "for another day."

Frost's last verse gently reveals that really he knew how silly and wrong this idea was and this is, perhaps, what his sigh reveals:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

What makes all the difference, what makes Frost authentically himself and not someone else, is not that there exists in him (as he looks back and sighs) multiple possible paths which he may or may not have taken but that his life-path, like everyone of our life-paths, was always the only road he travelled. It was always going to be the one "less travelled by" because it was his and only his - it was and is, and always will be, genuinely unique.

Frost is reminding us that human freedom does not consist in keeping open endless diverging possible paths but in learning consciously to embrace and embody one's own, single path. (It seems to me that it is only when our own paths are consciously embraced by us like this that they turns into something we might legitimately call a Tao - when our 'path' and our 'life' become one). Our freedom also consists in being awake to the moments when, as we make more refined choices, our path's meaning changes for us and we enter for a moment a clearing where authentic, new, subtle and refined possibilities show up to us. In other words our freedom is not so much in our ability to change the world (we all know we can really change very little about the world) but in our ability to reinterpret it. It is this recognition that helps us discover that, in truth, a truly lived life, rooted in reality itself, is always greater and more meaningful than any text and is always capable of generating meaning-ful possibilities that can radically and creatively reorientate not just ourselves but whole societies and cultures.

Old Year and Helicon - new Riprap CD in the making

2012-01-12T12:00:00.000Z

Setting-up the room - the engineer, Bill Campbell is on the left

For all you jazz fans out there below there are a couple of links to give you a taster of some of the material which will end up (in some form or another) on the new Riprap CD which we should have out in the next few months. The recording session was on the 2nd and 3rd January 2012 and I've also posted below a few photos from the session.

As Kev tells us Old Year "is a very rough un-mixed version (mainly just off the central ambient mike - that you can see in the photo on the right) of a twisted children's song that got out of hand on the session... comments or threats are welcomed. Excellent solo from Dave halfway through."
Old year - late Miles-like version

The second, Helicon, again as Kev tells us "is another rough un-mixed track destined for the new Cd, inspired by a Seamus Heaney poem."
Helicon

And here's a link to the current Riprap - website

The band, left to right: David Gordon, Kevin Flanagan, me and Russ

Yours truly

David Gordon

Kevin Flanagan

Russ Morgan

Russ reflected in the piano - 1

Russ reflected in the piano - 2

"Hold tight and pretend it's a plan” Epiphany Sunday – In praise of the ad hoc

2012-01-08T16:56:00.000Z

Click on the following link to hear the podcast of this post and/or download an mp3 (see bottom left of the page):
Hold tight and pretend it's a plan - Epiphany Sunday 2012 - In praise of the ad hoc

Today is Epiphany Sunday and the Greek word "epiphany" (epiphaneia) means "manifestation" or "striking appearance." Today I'm going to be speaking about this in terms of how things "show-up" or "shine" for us as having meaning and worth giving our life a sense of purpose and wholeness.

In the Western Christian tradition the feast of Epiphany is on the 6th January - the twelfth night after Christmas - but it is often moved to the nearest Sunday and it's the day upon which we remember the Magi's visit to Jesus' cribside in which this child first "shows-up" or "shines" as "God with us", Emmanuel, to a wider world beyond Jesus' own Jewish circles.

Reading: Matthew 2:1-12

You may wish to say at this point that, since this story is only a fiction, this is all irrelevant by-the-by stuff. But the story need not be taken as being historically "real" - indeed it almost certainly isn't - for us clearly to see that it has an *effective* reality because it has influenced and shaped, and continues to influence and shape, our own culture. As I mentioned last week, given that our understanding of the world is always 'experienced within horizons which are made up of a series of echoes, linguistic resources, messages from the past, messages coming from others (and others beside us such as other cultures' (Gianni Vattimo cited in 'The Weak Thought and its Strength' by Dario Antiseri, Avebury Press, Aldershot 1996 p. 9) whenever we explore the story in a religious setting we are required as a necessity requires to find an interpretation of it that makes it intelligible to us in a way which can help usefully to illuminate what it means to be the kind people we are, here and now in our pluralist, secular world. I offer this Epiphany address to you today because I think the story can still do this.

(Excursus: I need to add here that this address tries to speak about how to find the truth of your life - what it is to be you in the world. Although there are many overlaps and points of intersection with the scientific task of finding truths about the universe (where universe is understood to be the sum of things and entities) I am not talking about this here. When I talk about risk below I also need to be clear that I am not talking about it as mere bravado but the kind of risks we need to take which move us away from mere rule following and towards authentic living.)

This address began whilst watching the recent Dr Who Christmas Special. I was suddenly struck by something the Doctor said when he was forced to act in an improvised way. As the building he and his companions were in suddenly and unexpectedly turns out to be a spaceship and begins to take-off, his companions shout over the noise the question of what they are to do. The Doctor replies, "Hold tight and pretend it's a plan."

Although there are times and situations when pretending there exists a plan when you actually haven't got one is an example of, at best, hubris and, at worst, delusion, consciously stating this openly at the outset, as the Doctor does here, is quite a different matter. In fact openly recognising that you need to be prepared and able to improvise ad hoc responses to the unexpected showing-up of certain things and events can still be to follow a plan but in very special, nuanced and skillful way. The phrase "ad hoc", by the way, means literally "for this" - i.e. for this situation and not another.

My own embodied understanding of what this entails comes, understandably for me, from being a jazz musician. When you begin to learn to play jazz you do so within an always-already given world with all its echoes, aural resources and messages from the past and other cultures. Once jazz began to show up as one possible way of expressing oneself as a musician it developed a self-understanding that includes certain initial rules that are required to be followed just to get a player going in the first place - they include arpeggios, scales, phrases etc. etc.. I explored some elements of this necessary structure with you during Advent. But these rules of jazz get you going only by ignoring details - details such as the complexity or simplicity of the music you are currently trying to play, the weaknesses and strengths of your own playing and knowledge as well as that of the other players around you, the differences in distance between players, the making of mistakes or the inspired creation of a new melody or rhythm, the acoustic of the room, the attentiveness or otherwise of the audience, the temperature in, or even the colour of, the room and countless other factors that go to create this particular, unique playing situation rather than another. As the philosopher Mark Wrathall points out, 'What anyone who's very skilled in a domain knows is that being very skilled means responding not just in general terms to a situation but responding very specifically to what the situation demands' (from the film Being in the World) Sometimes - and more often than good players realise - we intuitively understand that to be authentic, really to live and play, we have to start taking risks and doing something that the rules haven't told us about. On the same topic another philosopher (from the same film), Hubert Dreyfus, notes that:

'Risk is absolutely essential in becoming a master [and] in acquiring any skills at all because you have to leave the rules behind and stop doing what one generally does, doing the standard thing, [so you can] push out into your own experience of the world.'

It is important to see that, although it is true that without leaving behind the rules you will never be able to push out into your own experience of the world, this possibility that we can push out into an authentic experience of the world only comes about because we are always already in a world of practices (which includes rules) and this is always-already a pre-requisite for getting us going in the first place.

For our Western European and North American culture one major horizon in which we always-already are and whose echoes, messages from the past and linguistic resources we are always-already shaped by and which get us going in the world in the first place is the Christian story.

The question has always been is how to use our story (stories) - which gives us so many of our cultural rules - how to use this story (stories) to help us push out healthily and creatively into our own, authentic experience of the world. (In cultures other than our own, of course, the basic story will be different to ours - but we are here and not there.)

Well, one thing that I think can clearly be seen in the Epiphany story is a powerful reminder that our own present secular culture's present-day shape is only possible because it contains within it a strong memory of the foundational importance of just such ad hoc, risk-taking pushings out into the world. Let's now turn directly to the story.

Within the Magi's own pre-scientific worldview the appearance of a new star in the heavens would, we may legitimately imagine, have had some kind of rule-based meaning capable of being attached to it. The story makes it clear that it signified to them that an important king was to be born in 'that' general direction over which the star was presumed to stand.

Following the star in the way one is forced to follow a star when one is on the surface of a world (whether thought to be flat or spherical) they go, quite naturally, to a local seat of power lying in the *general* direction of the star. Not unreasonably we may again imagine that they go there first of all because the Magi's cultural rules would be likely to say to them that the birth of a new king would 'naturally' take place in such a setting of earthly power.

As we know this was far from being the case and when the earthly King they visited, King Herod, heard their news he was much 'troubled'.

Not finding the new born King in this royal court the ad hoc solution which slowly began to attune the Magi to the finer details of the actual situation they found themselves in was in part provided by listening to and taking seriously the local chief priests and scribes opinion that the birth would have taken place 'In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet' (see Micah 5:2). The Magi were now clearly taking risks for these priests and scribes were not their priests and scribes and the prophecy was not one given by their own prophets. We see here the Magi beginning to push out beyond the rules into their own experience of the world. Leaving Herod's palace we may imagine them telling each other to hold tight to their camels' reins and say to themselves that this was still part of their plan.

On arriving and seeing the poverty and meanness of Jesus' birthplace must have made them question very strongly whether they were in fact in the right place - right, that is, according to their prior rules and expectations. I can imagine some serious arguing and ad hoc theorising going on between them about whether they should indeed hand over their valuable gifts to the care of Jesus' poor and considerably less than royal parents. You will remember the Monty Python team in "A Life of Brian" brilliantly imagine the Magi arriving in Bethlehem only to go firstly to the wrong stable in which Brian has just been born. It is only when they leave that they see further down the street a celestial light shining from inside another stable that they realise their mistake and they go back in and wrench their valuable gifts away from Brian's hapless mother. The Python team touch here what seems to me to be a psychological truth which is that, in matters to do with the truth of one's own life, there is always doubt and uncertainty which simply following rules won't help resolve.

However, what the story tells us is that as they actually stand by the cribside and look down at this particular baby (not just a generalised conception of all babies - i.e. a Platonic baby) they saw something that made them take yet another risk and push even further into their own experience of the world in a fashion that went way beyond the generality of their own learned rules. Their gifts originally signified for them the kind of kingship they already knew about but, in that moment then, their understanding underwent a radical reinterpretation and began to shine or show-up for them very differently indeed. You will recall that on Christmas Day I suggested that we might understand what they saw as they gathered around the crib that day was a new vulnerable, self-giving way of being in the world show-up and shine in that child. This opened up for them a wholly new and authentic possibilities of how to be in the world. In the giving up and letting go of their valuable gifts we see the Magi at the moment they choose to respond very specifically to what that situation - and only that situation - seemed to demand of them, namely, to honour and embrace in this risky, ad hoc fashion the new way of being-in-the-world which they felt was now shining before them.

With these thoughts in mind I'll come to rest today with a point made by the poet W. B. Yeats in a letter he wrote just before he died in 1939:

'It seems to me that I have found what I wanted. When I try to put it all in a phrase I say, "Man can embody the truth, but he cannot know it." I must embody it in the completion of my life. The abstract is not life and everywhere draws out its contradictions. You can refute Hegel but not the Saint or the Song of Sixpence' (William Butler Yeats Letter of 4th January 1939 to a woman friend in "The Life of W. B. Yeats" by Terence Brown, Blackwell, Oxford 2001 p.376).

In the actions of the Magi the Epiphany story contains a powerful reminder to our culture that the truth and meaning we seek as human beings can only be found whenever we are prepared to leave behind our abstract theories and rules about how to live and instead learn to take risks in order to push deeper into our own experience of the world. Whenever we do this then, in all kinds of creative ad hoc ways, we begin to learn what it is, not to know truth and meaning, but to embody them. Only then will we have begun to push out into our own experience of the world and finally have the abundant life Jesus promised was possible for all people.

*****

After the address we heard the second of Valentin Silvestrov's pieces called Stille Musik which can be found on the CD Bagatellen Und Serenaden. I chose it for two reasons, The first is I adore his music and it has been accompanying much of my thinking over the Advent and Christmas season and, secondly, because his own compositional philosophy led him to say: "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists." This seemed to resonate powerfully with the thinking of Gianni Vattimo's which I mention above and in other places on this blog. If you do a search on Youtube for: Silvestrov Stille Musik you'll find it there. For some reason I can't embed a link to it from here. Enjoy.

God as citizen and the kingdom of Heaven made a Republic - A New Year Meditation

2012-01-05T12:56:00.000Z

New Year's Day is a moment when we are enabled by our culture to feel that we are standing on a cusp between what we call the old and the new. It is a potentially helpful cultural practice which can enable us both to review our lives and also to envision and plan what might be for us in the future a better way of being in the world - as Mary Oliver puts it, to find a way to mend our lives. (Her poem The Journey appears below but if you want to read it straight away click here.) The Utopian pull into the not-yet is rarely felt as strongly by our secular culture as it is on this day.

But, as some of you will have noticed I said only that this is a "potentially" helpful cultural practice because it can also be played out an unhelpful way not least of all because there also exists for our culture such a thing as nostalgia for the future.

The Greek word "nóstos" means "returning home" and álgos means "pain" or "ache" and we can experience this apparently paradoxical phenomenon of nostalgia for the future because our culture has developed over many centuries a strong and deeply problematic belief that at the back of everything there must exist some discoverable immutable true metaphysical reality out of which everything has come (Alpha) and to which everything will return (Omega). Given this idea it is not surprising that at stressful and chaotic times in our personal and/or corporate lives there arises an ache for a return to this presumed stable, underlying, eternal and immutable truth. And please be very aware that there exist both theistic and atheistic versions of this nostalgia for the future and both are today strongly at play notably in various religious fundamentalisms, nationalisms and also in so-called the "new atheism" and various other scientisms. In the end it matters not whether a person labels their eternal and immutable metaphysical truth blood, soil, God or 'natural' laws but only that such purveyors of nostalgia for the future believe they already know in what its perfection consists and are all too often prepared to act unilaterally and undemocratically upon it.

Anyway, when at this time of year we come to view our personal and corporate lives and see before us the considerable mending that needs to be done, it is not surprising that there arises within us an overwhelming ache for change. But the trouble is that this intense aching for some better way of being in the world so often causes us to heed our culture's shouted bad advice to seek our mending by accepting that there exists, and can be known before-hand, a perfect state of affairs.

It's worth noting that, at the personal level on January 1st, countless oppressive and totalitarian plans for perfection are hatched involving dieting, fitness, reading lists, this and million thats. At more macro levels countless oppressive and totalitarian religious and non-religious political plans are also hatched with similar aims, namely the creation of the pre-imagined more perfect and stable society.

Given this temptation how might it be possible to articulate, right here and now, a vision for a better, fairer and more just future world but which doesn't fall into this same trap - i.e. that of thinking we who envision it already know what the desired outcome is to be like?

Well, I believe one possibility we should explore in our liberal democracies is directly related to what I said in my address given on Christmas Day. I suggested there that the Nativity - the story of the incarnation of God, of God becoming human and dwelling amongst us - can be understood as an attempt to point, not to a perfect individual Divine being who has come into the world in a particular and definitive way imposing a finished conception of perfection on all - but, instead, to a whole new liberating style of being-in-the-world which disclosed an understanding of God/the divine as ongoing, self-emptying, self-giving *event*. It is a story which discloses a conception of God (and, therefore, of hope), not like that which undergirded the gods of old who were merely expressions of totalitarian power, dominion and violence, but as the lived, vulnerable life of loving service in which are blessed and have a voice the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those persecuted for righteousness' sake. It is to this radically new style of being-in-the-world that I find I am trying to point towards when I say of the Christ-child in the crib - 'Look, that is what I mean by God.'

It is with this hopeful but deliberately weak theology in mind (Il pensiero debole) that I would like to consider our Biblical readings both of which have been culturally influential on the ways we imagine how the new will come.

(Click on the links below to read the short passages.)
Revelation 21:1-6
Isaiah 40:1-5

In the case of Revelation its author, John of Patmos, believes that the new and better life and world can be (in fact has been) articulated beforehand and is capable of appearing from on high (which includes the 'high' realms of theory) already fully formed and utterly independent from the old life and world which will, or so John believes, simply have passed away (in either cultural or material relevance). Although he doesn't say this explicitly I think we can take it that for him the old world (paradigm) feels to him as a wilderness because finds it no longer capable of bringing forth and sustaining in him a sense of deep and fulfilling meaning and worth. It is good for nothing and must, therefore, be done away with. Things are so bad, so unfruitful, that he cannot conceive how what he sees as the corrupt material (which includes ideas and stories) of this world could ever be the same material out of which a city of God could be built and so he hopes for an Omega which is, in truth, nothing less than the Alpha that he believes always was and which, more worryingly, he thinks he already knows all about.

On the other hand the prophet Isaiah feels that a new city of God will come about, not already fully formed from outside our world, but only in and through the material of our present and always unfolding world. It is brought into being whenever we are prepared to take our world's available material and then work hard to reshape, re-order and reinterpret it such a way that a new route towards a city of God appropriate to our own age and understanding shows up for us - making the crooked straight and the rough places plain.

Isaiah seems to have understood something that, thanks to Nietzsche and Heidegger et. al., our own contemporary culture has become increasingly aware about, as Gianni Vattimo puts it, that our understanding of the world is always 'experienced within horizons which are made up of a series of echoes, linguistic resources, messages from the past, messages coming from others (and others beside us such as other cultures' (cited in 'The Weak Thought and its Strength' by Dario Antiseri, Avebury Press, Aldershot 1996 p. 9).

In other words truth for Isaiah consists in working with the stuff of this world to disclose through collective interpretation a radically open highway along which a weak and vulnerable God will walk with his people (his children and, after Jesus, also his brothers and sisters) are to travel together in unfolding relationship. Such a conversational, dialectic journey is always capable of disclosing new and enlightening possibilities for being and so also new clearings and views that tend towards encouraging democracy rather than demagoguery.

It seems to me highly significant that Isaiah's vision stands at the head of the Gospels and not something like that expressed by John of Patmos.

However, the problem has always to be able to hear within the Christian tradition this quieter kind of call (the still small voice - 1 Kings 19:12) with sufficient force to feel confident in replying, as did Isaiah "Here am I! Send me" (Isaiah 6:8). Alas it remains aware that the louder more demagogic Alpha/Omegaery kinds of Christianity keep shouting their bad advice.

(An aside: It seems to me vital to continue to hold out against this last loud voice (and its new atheistic echo) because the hope found when you read Christianity in the weak, non-metaphysical way I do can finally be discharged and lived fully - a discharge that seems impossible when you keep to a strong, metaphysical understanding of Christianity.)

One person in our contemporary culture who it seems to me has consistently heard this quiet call amidst the shouted bad advice and has been capable of being herself a sounding board so it echoes it back to us in the more everyday language of our contemporary secular, pluralist culture is Mary Oliver. Here is her poem, The Journey (New and Selected Poems Vol. 1):

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Her poem recognises the strength of the weak call which is directed at each individual - for, in a true democracy there can be no mass co-coercion. But this individual call to mend your 'own life' is not the separating, individualistic call of neo-liberal consumerism but a call for us all to stride 'deeper and deeper into the world' and, as I said earlier, to know this world in this deeper way is to be called not into a coercive power-relationship with things and people (who stand apart from us as subjects and objects) but into an ongoing conversational relationship made up of echoes, linguistic resources, messages from the past and messages from others - including other cultures.

As we, as individuals and as a community standing in the liberal Christian tradition, contemplate at this time of year what we are to do in the coming year I think we can do nothing better than to heed the quiet and blessed still small, weak voice and enter into conversation with the world and each other and, in so doing say 'Hear am I! Send me!'

This is to begin to walk the holy road of democracy which leads to an open and unfolding city of God, both secular and sacred - a city whose creative ways of unfolding in conversation no one can ever fully know - not even God, for in this city God is a citizen like one of us. As we begin to live this way of being in the world we find we are walking towards, not the Kingdom of Heaven but the Republic of Heaven.

Happy New Year citizens.

'Look, that is what I mean by God' - A Christmas Day meditation

2011-12-26T11:07:00.000Z

In the year I graduated (2000) from theological college and became a minister in Cambridge, the National Gallery in London held an exhibition curated by Neil MacGregor called 'Seeing Salvation' illustrating the ways Jesus has been represented in western art. I saw there many wondrous things but the work to which I have returned again and again in the intervening twelve years is "The Nativity at Night" an Early Netherlandish painting of about 1490 by Geertgen tot Sint Jans. It is believed that it was painted for private devotional use and that the empty space by the crib-side in the central foreground is there so you can yourself join the holy family, assorted angels and ox and donkey in pondering the Christ-child.

(You can view a high-quality photo of this painting and zoom in to see detail at the National Gallery's excellent website. Just click on this hyper-link)

Everytime I have sat in that empty space in front of the actual painting or, of course, more often in front of the reproduction I have of it, I am aware that Geertgen is saying to me, 'Look, that is what I mean by God.'

But for someone like me who has grown to maturity in a secular, religiously skeptical and hyper-rationalist culture I've often recognised that I've never been entirely sure what to do with or make of this claim. Given my Christian upbringing I've always been hugely sympathetic and drawn towards an engagement with this claim but it's always been hard. In fact I would say it's been the hardest project I've ever undertaken. But, just as I intuitively felt it was worth persevering against all the difficulties and odds to learn how to become a jazz musician some similar feeling has continued to allow me to trust Jesus' promise that if I ask well it shall be given to me; that if I continue to seek I will find; that if I continue to knock the door will be opened unto me (Matthew 7:7-8).

However, for all this, a couple of years ago I had to admit that, for the most part, I didn't feel I'd ever really got close to what Geertgen (and, of course, the Christian tradition as a whole) was and is pointing at. Yes, there is always a child to be found in the crib, you can see him there in the picture and hear about him in the gospels just as I can, but somehow I felt that, in the deep way I sense Geertgen painted his picture and thus made his claim, in truth I have always found the crib empty. I remember well the poignant and actually quite painful moment when I understood myself as the protagonist in R. S. Thomas' poem "Lost Christmas":

He is alone, it is Christmas.
Up the hill go three trees, the three kings.
There is a star also
Over the dark manger. But where is the Child?

Pity him. He has come far
Like the trees, matching their patience
With his. But the mind was before
Him on the long road. The manger is empty.

Someone from my cultural background seems, perhaps, doomed to repeat this journey up the long road to an empty crib because I really don't want to let go of my mind, not least of all because I've been taught that through its actions I will find an (perhaps the) assured way by which I will gain knowledge of all that is good, true and beautiful.

I will not, need not, go into the details but over the two years a sustained reflection upon both what it is to be a jazz musician and always already to be experiencing the world as a kind of skeptical Christian have disclosed to me that it is simply not true that the mind alone need ever go before me in my attempts better to encounter the world. (In fact it's rarely the case that one ever does this but one certainly thinks so!)

I realise that it is possible to proceed to the crib with my looking going before me allow my thinking, my mind, to stand a little behind - and a little more relaxed and chilled. (I have in view here something like the activity pointed to in §66 of Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' where he says 'don't think, but look!') The result is that I feel tantalisingly close (in the way one can sense warmth from an, as yet unseen, source of heat) to what it is that old Geertgen was pointing at when he made his painting for me to sit in front of - that source of hope (warmth) that is signified by the shining Christ-child.

I feel I can best help you see what I have seen, or at least glimpsed (sensed), by reminding you of a vital distinction our culture nearly always blurs - that there is a world of difference between being and beings. One very simple way of seeing the difference between them is to consider a genus and we'll start with beings.

A genus is, of course, a class, kind, or group marked by common characteristics or by one common characteristic. So we can explain, with real clarity and definiteness, the genus animal by pointing to, say, that ox and that donkey in the painting. Once I've done this for someone they'll be able to go out into the world and recognise all oxes and donkeys whenever they see them, even when there are quite marked differences in, say, colour and size.

That this is so obviously a helpful way to think in many situations means that it is incredibly tempting to think that when Geertgen points to the Christ-child and says 'Look, that is what I mean by God' he is doing something similar - i.e., he is making some claim that God is like this little being only writ unimaginably large. And here we have before us mapped out a route (the long uphill road) to the pervasive idea that God is a necessary, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, immutable, self-existent, self-sufficient and infinite being, nothing less than the highest genus of which we are but a very dim shadow. It's certainly how we have come to understand the words of the writer of Genesis that we are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).

However, for all kinds of reasons, some of which I have explored with you in other addresses, this philosophical understanding of God which for centuries has underpinned our whole culture (and which includes most forms of Christianity) has become implausible. In short this God of the philosophers - in which our mind most assuredly goes before us - is dead. If Geertgen is pointing to such an ultimate being when he says "Look, that is what I mean by God" then it is no wonder that year after year people like me find the crib empty.

But what if Geertgen were trying to point at something else? What if he were trying to point at *being* rather than beings or, in the case of Jesus, one special ultimate being? As I said earlier there is a world of difference between being and beings.

Think back to my illustration of the ox and the donkey - I point to them and the genus is revealed to you clearly and definitely. Leaving this building - should you have come in not knowing anything about oxes and donkeys - you'll be able to go out and easily recognise individual examples of the genus when and wherever you encounter them.

However, As Magda King notes, to explain the concept of *being* we would in vain point to an ox or donkey and say "Look, that is what I mean by *is*" (in King's illustration she uses the examples of a horse and the sun but it's true, of course, about any being or entity to which we can point). This simple but striking example reveals how very mysterious to us is the most basic thing in our world - that things are, that there is anything at all.

So my question this Christmas Day is what happens if you sit in front of this painting and imagine that Geertgen is trying to get us to notice the extraordinary mystery of being itself? The extraordinary possibility that underlies our whole world and which freely gifts us everything - which allows anything to show up to us in the world and to shine for us with meaning and worth - just as in Geertgen's painting the Christ-child shines and lights up a whole new world of possibilities. The new world of possibilities which Geertgen sees lit up by the Christ-child is, amongst other things, a world in which there is disclosed a new style of being, a new way of being-in-the-world which can now speak and act out of an understanding of God/the divine as something self-emptying, self-giving, prepared to make itself known not as the gods of old obsessed with power, dominion and violence over all but as a creative, unfolding event; the lived, vulnerable life of loving service in which are blessed the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those persecuted for righteousness' sake (Matthew 5:1-12).

There is so much more I would like to say about this, so much more I feel that needs to be said, but it's simply beyond my ability at this moment in time and always will be because it's about living abundantly and authentically the life you are gifted with in the most compassionate and charitable (i.e. caritas - love) way possible. It's about a life in which we never ARE (a being) but are always BECOMING (an ongoing event).

In the end all I think we should do this happy and joyous morn is to see this new style of being continuing to appear in our world and then, like Mary, keep all those things and ponder them in our hearts (Luke 2:19) so we might see what shows up in its light, in the shining light of this child - a light Geertgen so magnificently and movingly depicts.

But what I can say this morning, and with it I'll conclude, is that for me I sense that the crib is longer empty and I am called to point at the Christ-child and say 'Look, that is what I mean by God.'

Happy Christmas.

*****

The piece of music I played immediately after giving this address was by the pianist Nils Frahm called "Less" from his wonderful new album "Felt". It seemed an appropriate piece to ponder the Christ-child in Geertgen's painting. You'll have to play it through decent speakers as there are some wonderful (necessary) low frequencies.

A postscript. My friend and colleague Jochen Dallas (a Lutheran pastor) sent me a card in which he included some words from one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's meditations on Christmas that seem worth adding here:

We are talking about the birth of a child, not the revolutionary act of a strong man, not the breathtaking discovery of a sage, not the pious act of a saint. It really goes above all understanding: What kings and statesmen, philosophers and artists, founders of religions and moral teachers vainly strive for, now comes about through a new born child.

. . . a little red-winged bird, shining like a burning bush, singing like a scripture verse, everything is holy now - Third Sunday in Advent

2011-12-11T16:23:00.001Z

Readings: Luke 1:26-35 and Peter Mayer's song Holy Now (- Youtube video below from the album Million Year Mind)

Since at the end of this address and the whole service Pete Shepherd and I will play some jazz I'll start with an oft-quoted jazz claim which is that, when you reach a certain level of competence, in an improvisation there are no wrong notes to play. Joe Magnarelli, a contemporary hard-bop trumpeter, said this: 'I think a wrong note is when you give up on that note. When you give up on it then it’s wrong but, because there’s no wrong notes, really, there’s no wrong notes.'

He means that, in the hands of a mature, experienced player, if you commit to a note in the right way it can always be made to work, somehow. (None of this means every player achieves absolute success here - even the greatest.)

But, as my own jazz students display only too well, when they begin to learn how to play the world is full of wrong notes. Armed with the hopeful maxim that there are no wrong notes they pick up their instruments, play a phrase over a chord, only for it immediately to resound with handfuls of wince-making wrong notes. But, they puzzle, if it is true that there are no wrong notes how come they produce such a painful cacophony? That there is no instant access to this freedom is a painful discovery to make - more painful even than the playing of wrong notes.

And so, for those who are determined to push on to the promised freedom, the difficult but necessary process now begins as, with them, I start to lay-out certain structures of the language of jazz that, when understood and embodied by a player, begins to indicate to them in what might consist the possibility that there might be such a thing as the rightness of wrong notes.

This 'in what consists the possibility of the rightness of wrong notes' I take to be analogous to the oft made liberal religious claim that it is possible to understand that 'every thing is holy now.' But in order to unfold this thought in a meaningful way I need to ground my comments in our reading from the Gospel of Luke which is known as "the Annunciation".

The trajectory of the whole Christian narrative, when understood as something radically open-ended and unfolding, is one which clearly moves from heaven to earth. It is important to see that our present-day secular, pluralistic, post-denominational and post-Christendom society, and our particular religious and political challenges in it, can be understood to be part of this open-ended and unfolding narrative. As I suggested last week I think we are always being unwound (Verwindung) into our present world - a process which contains (as Gianni Vattimo notes) no sense of loosing a connection with a past that, not only still has much to say to us, but which actually makes it possible in the first place for us to live in and reflect upon a world that shows up to us as intelligible and containing meaning and worth.

This earthward, self-giving trajectory of the Divine is first glimpsed by our culture in the creation stories of the Old Testament but it begins to reach a particular focus in the New Testament stories of Advent when Mary is told by the angel that she will conceive and become the mother of Jesus, the Son of God. In Matthew, of course, this trajectory is explicitly named as earthward when it is proclaimed that one of the titles by which Jesus is to be known is 'Emmanuel' which, in Hebrew, means 'God with us'. As the Gospel narratives unfold through to the crucifixion and resurrection we find a growing sense that the community which arose and flourished afterwards, to use St Paul's wonderful phrase, now understands itself as 'the body of Christ' - i.e. humans were now, themselves, sons and daughters of God (Romans 7:4, I Corinthians 10:16 and 12:27, Ephesians 4:12). In this embodied idea the beach-head into this world was affected and, in the two great commandments so stressed by Jesus, namely to love God and neighbour, the community begins also to understand that we find God in our neighbour - in the other who is different from us. As our secular culture has grown and added to its world-view powerful scientific paradigms, the world has increasingly begun to show up to us in a way which means we can no longer separate anything out of the whole. Everything is our neighbour, our brother and sister.

In consequence, we may say that this Christian trajectory, is the process by which our secular North Atlantic cultures have come both to feel and try to live the possibility that YES!, somehow, everything can be understood as holy - things, animals, plants and people. This liberating insight lies, of course, at the heart of what a church such as this considers to be its Gospel.

But this wonderful Gospel, which expands the conception of the holy to the whole world, is one that we know easily turns into something very different indeed. And we are all familiar with the problematic and destructive dynamic which means that whenever the value and worth of everything becomes simply the same as everything else we discover that it is increasingly difficult to decide what is of particular relevance to us in the world. It is all too easy to find that it no longer matters to us whether we choose this thing or that thing because, well, in terms of worth and meaning, they are simply the same. We can quickly begin to inhabit a world in which nothing in particular (no thing nor any way of life) shines out and shows up to us as particularly worthwhile and worth living for.

So how can we, as a liberal religious community, both keep alive the Gospel that everything is holy without at the same time loosing a sense of what particularly counts for us as life and meaning-givingly holy?

As a minister one thing is clear, namely, that it is wholly insufficient merely to proclaim either to ourselves or to the wider world that "everything is holy now" without, at the same time, living ourselves and offering to others a coherent religious practice that allows such an insight to be shown by us in our words and deeds and, therefore, passed on to those who chose to follow us.

As a jazz musician it seems to me that here we find very little - perhaps no - difference to my need to show my jazz students that there are no wrong notes by insisting they practice arpeggios, scales and phrases in which some notes show up as right and others as wrong. This practice is, of course, the key thing.

By the same token if you truly desire the freedom that the trajectory of the Gospel promises (at least the Gospel as I have outlined it here) namely, that everything is holy, then it seems to me that one has no choice but to commit to practising something specific (analogous to arpeggios, scales and phrases) in which some things will shine as being more holy than others which, in a church standing in the liberal Christian tradition such as this, is to engage in certain practices like an ongoing prayerful meditation upon the Biblical narratives and their relationship to our contemporary world, taking part in church services such as this one, the evening meditation service or our occasional communion services (the next of which is on Christmas Eve) or in our ongoing series of Wednesday evening conversations.

With this point in mind I can conclude by turning directly to Peter Mayer's song 'Holy Now' which we heard earlier.

It seems to me that the particular brilliance of Mayer's lyric is found in that it shows this freeing process at work. Everything is, as he says, holy now, but notice how he shows what this means by keying 'everything' to the fact that certain particular things have shown up for us in the context of our meaning giving Christian narrative as being especially holy, in the case of this song bread, wine and water. The song encapsulates the matter in the lines found in the final verse when he sees

. . . a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head

The little red-winged bird (a symbol of 'everything') is now recognisable and expressible as holy only because it is possible to say that it shines LIKE a burning bush, or that it sings LIKE a scripture verse.

The burning bush and the scripture verse when they are rooted in a lived religious context are precisely the kinds of things that help us see in what consists the holiness of this little bird and, by extension, all the other things in the world. It's the same process that, in jazz, allows an experienced player, to reveal in what consists the rightness of wrong notes.

But when we play jazz, we don't play all the notes all the time and we do not live in a blissed out world of total right-note-ness but in a world which allows first this note, now this one to show up and shine as the right one, here and now. How notes are right in the jazz waltz we'll play in a moment is different from the way the notes will show up as right in the ballad we'll play at the end.

Likewise, when we are living fully a religious life we don't live in a blissed out world of total everything-is-holy-now but in a world which allows first this bird, now this flower to show up and shine as the right one, here and now.

In both cases, in music and religion, this possibility for every note being the right one or everything being holy is keyed to a practice in which certain things show up as especially right and holy.

When we practise our practices like this the miracle is that we find we are no longer living in a world half-there, a world that's merely Heaven's second rate hand me down, but right in the heart of the kingdom of Heaven, right here right now.

Keeping as especially holy, Sundays and other days and times when we celebrate events such as Mary's Annunciation and the birth of her child, Emmanuel, God with us, are precisely the keys which gives our North Atlantic culture access this kingdom and its liberating law of love which enables the possibility that, in its own (right) time and place, everything in this miracle of a world can come to shine for us as holy.

Steep and lofty cliffs and a dumb-struck priest - Second Sunday in Advent

2011-12-04T17:32:00.001Z

MP3
One of the stories that is told at this time of year has always puzzled me, primarily because I never knew what to do with it. It's the story we heard earlier of the priest Zechariah being struck dumb in the temple by the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:5–24; 59–64).

At least as I was taught the story it was primarily to be understood as an example of piqued, divine power - Zechariah doesn't believe God's messenger so, taking umbrage, God uses his power to teach the poor man a lesson for his lack of trust by shutting him up until he realises the error of his ways. It's an unattractive reading and is one that I've long left aside as unhelpful.

I've come to feel that a more fruitful way of entering this story can be found when you take the position that its author had noticed something resonate in their own imagination which, in turn, helped them notice something important about what it is to be a human being in the world. In penning his story Luke was, perhaps then, simply trying to help his readers notice the same thing, i.e. this resonance. We may suggest that Luke attempted this by giving this resonance a semblance of objective reality - in this case the story of Zechariah being struck dumb in the temple. The apparently literal descriptive elements of Luke's story are, though a necessary part of its telling (after all it's what makes it *this* story and not another) these literal descriptive elements are not precisely the *point* of the story.

Some of you will recall that I've tried to illustrate this thought before by using as an example some lines from the beginning of William Wordsworth's poem 'Tintern Abbey'. I'm very indebted to the British philosopher Michael McGhee for this helpful insight.

. . . once again
do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs
that on a wild secluded scene impress
thoughts of a more deep seclusion.

The important thing to see is that Wordsworth is not writing a poem the point of which is a mere description of the so-called real physical facts of 'steep and lofty cliffs' in a 'secluded scene' but, instead, offering us a poem in which these things somehow correspond to, or resonate with, a state of mind he is experiencing - those 'thoughts of a more deep seclusion'. Wordsworth's hope is that, if he is successful, then his readers' minds and imaginations will also experience this resonance and there will be a correspondence between author, reader and, of course, the steep and lofty cliff in a secluded scene. The consequence of this is a possibility that there can arise amongst us a new collective reality which helps us continue to encounter the ever-changing and unfolding world as meaningful and intelligible.

Now it may be the case that Luke's story had some basis in actual historical facts that could be described in fashion similar to steep and lofty cliffs - i.e. once upon a time, a priest somewhere did tarry in a temple and come out dumb and later, on regaining his voice, speak of an angel of the Lord and give his child an unexpected name. You can clearly describe all these things but if this description - this semblance of reality - is all you see then this would be to miss the point which is to feel the resonances that it set up in the author's imagination and which he wanted to share with his readers.

Alas, it is has always been far too easy to lose this sense of semblance and to allow our thinking and pondering about these kinds of stories and all kinds of other aesthetic ideas and images to degenerate into a form of naive theological realism.

When we do succumb to this temptation we can end up with so pretty problematic literalistic readings and I'm sure I do not need to rehearse a list of them here.

Before we move on we must be clear about one important thing. There is, however, no way we can ever know for sure that what might resonate in our imaginations today is the same thing that resonated in the imagination of the author - whether it be Wordsworth or Luke. It wasn't possible in any assured way amongst their contemporaries but to us, two centuries or two millennia later, it should be clear that both of these authors' worlds are radically different from our own. The physical things they describe - steep and lofty cliffs, seclusion, a ruined abbey, a temple, a priest, an angel - were all woven together in quite different, networks of belonging and understanding about the nature of the world than that we have today.

In short I think it is pointless to worry about whether the resonances we may feel today about either the poem or Luke's story are the same as those felt by Wordsworth, Luke and their contemporaries.

At this point we'll leave Wordsworth and concentrate upon this particular Advent story of Luke's and ask is there something to be seen in this story which sets up a resonance in us such that we might be taught a lesson useful to our own age and circumstances?

I think the answer is 'Yes' and that it's related to the fact that we seem to be in an age and culture which feels like it is on the cusp in many many ways.

The present financial and political crisis is one looming example of this - we feel that we are on the cusp of desperately needing new financial and political structures to order our society. Another example is the beginnings of a feeling that we are on the cusp of a needing a new scientific paradigm to order our understanding of the physical world. Lastly, there has been what is for many the surprising return of religion to the sphere of public discourse and it's happened in a way that makes us all feel we are in desperate need for a paradigm shift in our personal and corporate understandings of religious faith and praxis.

Feeling "on the cusp" makes many (perhaps most) of us somewhat anxious. We'd either like the old ways to remain and return to a certain stability or, if we are a little more adventurous, we are impatient to get things over with and rush into the new paradigm, the new world-view, way or style of being now.

I think most of us have a sense that many of the old world-views really aren't cutting it and that in important ways they are broken and need to be revisited and re-imagined. But the perennial truth of the matter is that first glimpses of every new way or style of being in the world always appears in our own present time, within our present world-views. This means that we are forced to try to talk about new political, financial, scientific and religious paradigms using the languages of the old because that's all we have.

From time to time, however, at those moments when we intimate most strongly what the new paradigm might be like we find to our frustration, and perhaps horror, that we run out of all adequate words. We find ourselves reduced either to silence or to its noisy, verbal equivalence which is to begin to talk in strange and incomprehensible tongues as we try to force our old language almost to breaking point.

We have to try to do if we are to help those who have no glimpse of the new paradigm glimpse it themselves so as to gain a sense of why we feel it is so important - we have no choice but to do this with language they, and we, already know. We find that we are only slowly unwound from within our tradition/language into a new understanding. (Jonathan Lear explores a similar thought in his book Radical Hope about the Crow Indian tribe.)

Now, if we turn to look at old Zechariah is not his situation something like our own and does it not resonate with us and our present condition?

There he is, a senior figure in his field and completely embedded in a particular world of ancient and well-tried practices but in a time of great ferment and change. It seems not unreasonable to imagine that the circumstances in his world forced him to spend time thinking through the problems and issues of his day and, like us, was finding things to be a little rickety, a little "on the cusp". Alone in the sanctuary of the Lord he would certainly have the space and quiet to think deeply on these matters and to imagine a different way and style of being in the world. We may imagine, too, that it is likely that in such a place of contemplation - a kind of laboratory - that he could have experienced a powerful vision of a new way or style of belonging - given by Luke in his story the form of the angel Gabriel. That vision suddenly showed up the world to him in a new light. Seeing such a vision so suddenly is it any wonder that he was rendered speechless? His old words and old practices just couldn't do the new vision justice.

All he could do, in his silence or perhaps at other times in some garbled attempts at coherent speech, was bear public witness to the fact that the world could, given the right conditions, begin to show up differently to others too. But, as is appropriate to the theme of Advent, any new collective adoption of a new way or style of being requires some kind of patient waiting.

Nine months later his wife Elizabeth finally bears a child. In the Christian narrative this child is, of course, not himself the new way but just part of the unwinding into it. At the child's circumcision family and friends - living firmly in the old paradigm - want to call the child Zechariah after its father. After all Zechariah and his role represented the old ways at their best so why should his child not be given such a venerable name? But no, Elizabeth, who as the child's mother has been an intimate part of the emergence into the world of this new paradigm, knows the new name, it is to be "John". All present turn to Zechariah, they give him something to write upon and he writes "His name is John." Immediately his lips are freed, somehow, everyone present is given something of the new way of talking about the world that was impossible but a short time before.

It seems to me that today we are so like Zechariah in so many ways. The resonance is, I think, palpable.

We see before us a timely reminder that change into a new style of being, a new language, is always a process of slow unwinding that proceeds one word at a time. Like a child a new language, a new style of being, is never given to us fully formed, it grows and, like all growing things, we have to be patient not only for its birth but also about its growth and development.

It doesn't matter, as I've already said, that we cannot know whether this is the resonance Luke felt and wanted to pass on to us. We only need be thankful that the universe - which includes texts like this - seems to be able to gift us an infinite number of ways of speaking and being. As our opening hymn said in traditional language: "The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his word."

Someone has just asked how can I, reasonably and conscientiously, remain a self-avowed Christian and Unitarian minister when I have basically embraced atheism? - An answer . . .

2011-12-02T14:19:00.001Z

A few days ago and anonymous author posted a question on my last blog entry Why wait - and what on earth for? An Advent meditation on meaning-gifting and the world pushing back:

Anonymous said...
It's probably been said a dozen times before on here, but how can you reasonably and conscientiously remain a self-avowed Christian and Unitarian minister when you have basically embraced atheism? I'm sure you have a very intellectual, flowery answer but if you no longer experience the call of God - and have adopted a kind of humanism - then you should perhaps walk that path rather than try grafting it to the Christian path.

Anon. is right in thinking that this question has been explored before on this blog (not least of all here) but it seems worthwhile, to me at least, to take another pass over the matter. I'm grateful for the opportunity, not least of all because it's helpful to keep revisiting these difficult issues. So, here we go . . .

Dear Anon,

OK. Here's that reply I promised.

You begin by asking how I can "reasonably and conscientiously remain a self-avowed Christian and Unitarian minister" when I have "basically embraced atheism?"

Well, the absolutely essential thing to note is I have embraced the recognition that the *God of the philosophers* is dead. My atheism relates, therefore, to this God and not, as my last address clearly states, the God who is *something like* the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I'll return to this thought later on.

You then move to an intimation that I "no longer experience the call of God". Well, this is not the case and a little bit of autobiography is now required to show this.

My own call to ministry reached the point where I had to respond to it in 1987 (on the 23rd October to be precise in a house, appropriately perhaps, a few hundred yards from the Angel of Islington underground station). I experienced an overwhelming presence of something that I felt was best called God and, given my life-long involvement in the Church (Anglican), this led me to write in my prayer book that "I vow this day to follow our Lord Jesus Christ." My entire life, since that day, has been an attempt, both intellectually and in terms of an embodied, practical religious response, to understand what on earth this meant.

The embodied, practical response was a fairly straightforward return to regular church-going and Christian community. Firstly, in an Anglican context (and I nearly began to train for the priesthood in 1991) and then in the more explicitly liberal Christian context that I found at the Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House under their (alas soon to retire) minister Cliff Reed. I began to train for the Unitarian and Free Christian ministry (though it is fair to say that I am more the latter than the former) at Oxford in 1997. I graduated in 2000 and that same year accepted the call to become the minister at the Memorial Church in Cambridge where I am still.

The intellectual response to my experience was and is, however, somewhat more convoluted. Naturally, I began to study within the prevailing intellectual paradigm of our own culture and so began a philosophical inquiry into the nature of God - unknowingly to me at the time, this inquiry concerned, of course, the God of the philosophers. I delved into all kinds philosophy and philosophical theology and eventually latched on to the British and American Idealists (notably F. H. Bradley and Josiah Royce) whom I studied in great depth whilst I was at Oxford. This interest slowly developed into a passion for Spinoza upon whose philosophy I began increasingly to base my own living, preaching and teaching. The first few years of my ministry (2000-2007/8) show the mark of this clearly. (The prayer-book I wrote at this time probably represents the high-water mark of this approach).

However, continuing my study, thinking and living I found that there were key aspects in this Idealist approach which did not seem to stack up well and I began to hear the creaking of the structure - when I began to see actual cracks I admit to experiencing some considerable concern (distress even). In this distress (I'll call it that) I re-read Tolstoy's "Confession" that I'd come across back in school and was profoundly struck by his situation which wasn't that different from my own. I hunted out his Gospel in Brief and immediately found a message and practical response that helped me. I also quickly discovered that Wittgenstein had found this book profoundly helpful and I determined to go back and look at his thought properly. Whilst at Oxford my logic tutor had introduced me to Wittgenstein's work but I was so wildly metaphysical at the time I hadn't paid much attention to it. Now I did and was amazed and delighted, but also confused, by what I read because it cut away the possibility for all the metaphysical assumptions that had come to be so central to my understanding of in what God consisted and, of course, the God to whose call I was still trying to respond. Matters got significantly "worse" when I started to read James C. Edwards' wonderful book "The Plain Sense of Things: the fate of religion in an age of normal nihilism".

Though working through this book's implications was somewhat traumatic I was also thrilled that Edwards was able to unpick for me the metaphysical mess of our age and culture and simultaneously introduce me, in an accessible and very practical way, to the work of Heidegger - a philosopher whose work had seemed utterly impenetrable when I'd first come across it one very cold winter in 1984 whilst I was a music student snowed into a house just outside Colchester and "Being and Time" was, I kid you not, the only book ready to hand! Anyway, Edwards sent me back to this book and also Heidegger's later work with passionate urgency.

The first thing that all this did for me was definitively kill off the God of the philosophers - or rather help me accept that this God was dead. I do not pretend that this was anything other than a profoundly difficult time for me and it took me to a place and time that your question (perhaps) imagines me as being in. But Mark Wrathall's words that I quoted in last week's address kept coming back to me:

. . . the loss of belief in a metaphysical god that is the ground of all existence and intelligibility, and even the loss of belief in a creator God who produced the heaven and the earth is not a disaster. [In fact the] absence of foundational God [can] open up access to richer and more relevant ways for us to understand creation and for us to encounter the divine and the sacred. Thus, the death of the philosopher's God may have provided us with new and more authentic possibilities for understanding religion that we blocked by traditional metaphysical theology (or onto-theology).'

I began to realise that I experienced this as true. As far as the metaphysical discourse about God was concerned, whenever I used it's language and assumptions, I found I could now be nothing other than an atheist. I felt - and still feel - that it is important to be absolutely clear and explicit about this. However, the phenomenon of my religious experience (that I mention above) - the experience that called me into the world in a radically changed way - remained very real and, not only that but it also began to deepen and feel increasingly authentic. As I say, I don't claim to be back with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but it is to be back with something *like* that God, or that kind of understanding of the divine. Last Sunday's address was but one small attempt to try and explore this in the context of Advent and waiting.

A helpful guide through all this has been Gianni Vattimo who feels - and I strongly resonate with his thought - that his "discovery of the substantial link between the history of Christian revelation and the history of nihilism means nothing more and nothing less than a confirmation of the validity of Heidegger's discourse on the end of metaphysics" ("Credere di Credere", Eng. trans. "Belief", p.40). I find his ideas concerning (so-called) weak thought and ethics very helpful - especially it's tendency towards a non-violent and democratic ethics centred on I Corinthians 13.

Perhaps the best description of where I find myself today is summed up beautifully and succinctly by Vattimo in his brief and touchingly personal book called "Credere di Credere" (Eng. trans. "Belief"):

'I am aware that I have a preference for Nietzsche and Heidegger in part (or perhaps above all) because, over against other philosophical projects that I have come across, their thesis, based on a given interpretation of their work, seems to be above all in harmony with a specifically Christian religious substratum that has remained a living part of me. Moreover, that it has become present again is due at least in part due to the fact that, having distanced myself from the Christian inheritance (or so I believed), it was above all with the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger that I spent my time and in their light that I lived and interpreted my existential condition in late-modernity. In short: I have begun to take Christianity seriously again because I have constructed a philosophy inspired by Nietzsche and Heidegger, and have interpreted my experience in the contemporary world in the light of it; yet in all probability I constructed my philosophy with a preference for these authors precisely because I started with the Christian inheritance, which I have found again, though, in reality, I had never abandoned it' (p.33).

This last point allows me to conclude (for the moment at least) with your feeling that I am somehow attempting to "graft" what you call my "humanism" to the "Christian path." In truth I find that my path remains a Christian one and one that find I have never abandoned. Early in life I had a profound experience of something like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and I responded to it in a wholly Christian fashion by vowing to be a follower of Christ. That path has had moments of profound doubt ("My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me" - Ps 22:1 and Matt. 27:46) and has led me to all kinds of unexpected places, people and ideas. It has led me, too, even to deny my Christianity many more times than Peter ever did (Matt. 26:75). And, in the dark shadow of the death of the God of the philosophers, I even believed at times that I had abandoned (lost) this path. But, as I hope my inadequate words above show (though I am acutely aware that they may be too flowery for your liking) on coming to a place and a time where the cock-crowing (Matt. 26:75) that is the work of Heidegger et. al. can be heard, I am awakened to a realisation that I have never abandoned my Christian inheritance. Far, far from it - I find I am still responding as faithfully as I can to my initial call into the Christian ministry and my discipleship of Christ.

I realise this response will simply irritate the hell out of many kinds of atheists, humanists and Christians in countless ways but, as Luther is reputed to have said: "Hier stehe Ich; Ich kann nicht anders".

I hope this helps somehow.

Why wait - and what on earth for? An Advent meditation on meaning-gifting and the world pushing back

2011-11-29T09:52:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago I was cycling past a chapel in Commercial End, Swaffham Bulbeck and upon its wayside pulpit were some familiar words from the prophet Isaiah: "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near" (55:6). (The reading was from Isaiah 55:6-13)

This verse might trigger many thoughts but, as my mind was beginning to turn towards what on earth I might speak about today I naturally heard it resonate in the context of Advent. Advent means, of course, "coming" and in the Christian calendar it refers to the birth of Christ which in the Gospel narratives is understood as nothing less than the appearance of God among or with us. That's the meaning of the Hebrew word "Emmanuel". Advent is, therefore, a time of waiting for such a shining forth of the divine.

We can begin by observing that you cannot seek out a child who has not yet been born; instead you must patiently wait and this basic, incontestable phenomenon is what I am concerned with today and it's important to hold it in mind throughout in case you think I'm drifting into mere theory.

Before I can move on from this observation I need to make another. Mark Wrathall reminds us of an important story for our North Atlantic culture in this excellent précis:

'Since Plato, philosophers of the West have proposed various conceptions of a supreme being that was the ground of existence and intelligibility of all that is. In the works of St. Augustine (and perhaps before), this metaphysical god became identified with the Judeo-Christian creator God. In modernity, however, the philosopher's foundationalist conception of God has become increasingly implausible. The decline of the metaphysical God was perhaps first noted when Pascal declared that the God of the philosophers was not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In any event, by the time that Nietzsche announced "the death of God," it was clear that something important had changed in the form of life prevailing in the West.
Whether Nietzsche's actual diagnosis of the change is right, most contemporary thinkers agree with him that the metaphysical understanding of God is no longer believable. [. . . However] the loss of belief in a metaphysical god that is the ground of all existence and intelligibility, and even the loss of belief in a creator God who produced the heaven and the earth is not a disaster. [In fact the] absence of foundational God [can] open up access to richer and more relevant ways for us to understand creation and for us to encounter the divine and the sacred. Thus, the death of the philosopher's God may have provided us with new and more authentic possibilities for understanding religion that we blocked by traditional metaphysical theology (or onto-theology)' (Mark W. Wrathall's introduction to "Religion after Metaphysics", Cambridge University Press 2003 p. 1).

With this train of thought in mind we can return to Isaiah's encouragement to 'Seek the Lord while he may be found, [to] call upon him while he is near.' It should be clear that if you have experienced this death of the God of the philosophers - and it is important to admit that I most certainly have - you cannot seek, let alone find, that which is not and so the Lord is not near and cannot be found.

This thought could clearly be interpreted in a profoundly pessimistic way and many people closely involved with religious communities have heard it thus. This is especially true in its liberal Christian forms, such as our own, which for many good and honourable reasons during the seventeenth and eighteenth-century, wholeheartedly adopted the god of the philosophers.

Now, though I do not deny I, too, at times, have heard Nietzsche's words in this very pessimistic way I have for the most part heard them in the positive context that Wrathall offers. Namely, that today, after the death of the God of the philosophers we may well in fact have an opportunity to open up access to richer and more relevant ways for us to understand creation and to encounter the divine and the sacred.

An important thing we must now observe is that the dead god of the philosophers was a god who could be *sought* by us because "he" was in principle a universally available and knowable *object* of human knowledge. Such a god was not a god for whom you must wait but was, instead, one who was, for the most part, to be sought out in a highly active, intellectual ways. That seeking has, for the most part, come to an end.

However, the pre-philosophic God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (and for that matter Zeus and the whole Greek pantheon) were gods whom human kind could not seek out through intellectual inquiry. Instead, they were gods who came to us and in their coming shone. The gods/God shone in the deeds of the heroes, heroines and saviours and also in the presence and movements of everything in what, today, we call the "natural world." (There's a real problem with the idea of the "natural world" which I'll just have to leave aside today - but, in brief it is that such usage tends to separate us out from the world and makes nature an object of knowledge in a problematic way.)

Anyway, to encounter these kinds of gods one had no choice but to wait and in consequence one could only seek them - in the strong active sense we used to seek the god of the philosophers - we could only seek them when, in the gods' shining forth, they were clearly near and able to be found. This meant that for our pre-philosophic forebears *waiting* for an absent God had an important and positive purpose in their understanding of the divine.

But, as we know, merely by an act of the will we cannot revive the world (and world-view) of our pre-philosophic forebears (whether of so-called Pagan or Christian persuasion) because the world shows-up to us in radically different ways than it did for them. It is abundantly clear that *our* glimpse of the truth that there is a distinction to be made between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the god of the philosophers is only possible because we are in a time and place that struggles to untangle and comprehend, let alone live fully, either of these views.

Consequently, the only way *we* can proceed is by moving on from where we are today and for me to be able to gesture towards a possible way forward (towards a plausible and attractive contemporary religious faith) we must return now to the phenomenon which roots the season of Advent, namely, that you cannot seek out a child who has not yet been born; instead, you must patiently wait.

But, firstly, why, after the death of the god of the philosophers, might we be willing to take a risk on waiting for something like (and pay attention to the phrase *something like*) the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Wouldn't this at best be just a deranged folly and, at worst, a complete betrayal of our rationalist philosophical tradition? I don't think so - in fact far from it. The contemporary philosopher Iain Thomson (Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy at the University of New Mexico) helps us see why:

Life is made most meaningful when you respond to things that are independent of you. This is a point that goes back to Kierkegaard who said that if you think all meaning comes from you then you can just take it back, you're a king without a castle, you're a sovereign of a land of nothing. There has to be something in the world that pushes back, that has some force over you or else you'll never experience anything as really mattering to you. (You can see and hear Thomson offer these words in the following very short trailer for the excellent film Being in the World.)

I have to say, though it still pains me to say it (as all genuine confessions do) that it seems to me that in adopting the God of the philosophers our liberal religious and philosophical traditions ended up by making us kings without castles, sovereigns in a land of nothing. Despite the pain of this recognition we should, however, be profoundly grateful that this same philosophical tradition has realised its mistake and affected a necessary if painful coup in heaven and ending the life of the God of the philosophers.

But in the story of the birth of the Christ-child, Emmanuel, God with us, we find a paradigmatic example of what Thomson (and the kind of contemporary philosophy somewhat misnamed as 'Continental ) talks about - namely, that life is made most meaningful when we respond to things that are independent of us.

Having just spent four days with my wife Susanna's grandson, a year-and-a-half old toddler called Harrison, I'm acutely aware of how children remind us that there is *always* something in the world that pushes back, that has some force over us because we do not control it and which is not merely understandable as physical matter but as something living and meaning-giving - world-making.

As we gaze into a child's eyes we cannot but help experience something as really mattering to us. Harrison's life pushes back at me and that helps me see better what really matters to me and those around me and my life is, in a fundamentally important way, ordered by this pushing back. The story given to me by my culture which helps me notice this in the first place and talk about it with you in a general, corporate way is the Christmas story.

It is vitally important to see and feel, really see and feel, that we could not seek out and choose either of *these* experiences of children which order our lives, give it meaning and make things matter to us. The Christ-child of the Christmas story and Harrison's presence in my life is wholly and mysteriously gifted and, in a real sense, in first encounters I experience the truth of God's words "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways" heard by Isaiah.

We can all understand that at the most primordial level these meaning-gifting things simply come to us (as a culture and individuals within a culture) - we had to wait for them - and that they are not merely self-discovered things. They stop us being Kings without castles and sovereigns in a land of nothing, They come, they are present to, and shine for us for a while, and then they withdraw. Sometimes this process is run through in a way that can be seen by a single human being, sometimes it can only be seen by a long lived entire culture. This withdrawal includes, of course, even our once cherished conceptions of the divine.

When meaning-gifting things withdraw - as all things do - we have no choice but to await for that "something" new, that new meaning-gifting creation which shines for us and which by its light shows us clearly what things matter.

In a time, even during a whole epoch of God's death or withdrawal, we continue to need something that reminds us of the purpose of waiting for a shining forth of something meaning-gifting. We need inspiring and colourful examples that help us model good and hopeful waiting practices and the Biblical text is full of these, not least of all in the stories that run up to the birth of Christ.

This is the kind of faithful Advent waiting I would like to encourage among us. It is a faithful waiting for something that is *like* the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, something that is genuinely Christ-like in appearance. Again I draw your attention to "something like".

The key thing is to find ways to wait, intelligent and alert - always looking for a glimmer of a new shining forth of meaning in our own age. The Magi's did just this kind of waiting - the glimmer they caught was the star, the light they found was the Christ-child. Their old paradigm changed to a new one.

What we will eventually see shining is, by definition, not for any of us to say. We must wait and see - and when we do see, find the courage to go.

It's the sound - A Remembrance Sunday meditation on the sound of the Merlin engine

2011-11-15T09:54:00.001Z

It's the sound.

In the case of the song by Chris Wood (see video below - lyric at the bottom of this post) that we've just heard it is, of course, the utterly distinctive sound of the Spitfire and its liquid-cooled, V-12, 27-litre Rolls-Royce Merlin piston engine. This sound is contrasted with one of another kind, 'a land of hope and glory voice an anglo-klaxon over-blown.'

It's the sound.

Chris Wood heard this second kind of sound when in 2009 the far-right British National Party used a Spitfire on its election posters. Woods wrote this song because he felt that in appropriating this symbol they had gone too far and that the Spitfire was one symbol of national identity that he wanted back. (This song is on the excellent album Handmade Life which you can get here.)

It's the sound.

What are we to do with this sound? Is it just a neutral mechanical sound or does it disclose to us something grounding, reliable and hope giving that we should carefully note, especially on this day of Remembrance?

It is possible to raise this question and, in a very limited way answer it, because when we meet together on Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday there is an extraordinary collective centring on a "place" - which I am going to call a "clearing" - in which the absence of sound (in the two minutes silence we observe) is contrasted by the presence of sound in the words of this address, our prayers and in our music. Of course, in our services these two elements are always in play but only on this day do we foreground silence to the point where the absence of sound carries a weight that clearly exceeds our usual privileging of sound.

But is it the really the silence that carries the weight, that is privileged? No, once again . . .

It's the sound.

Why? Well, for there to be what we are tempted to call "real" silence, there would have to be nothing and with nothing there could be no gathering together, no remembrance because all that we have called, all that we do call, and all that we will call "real" would be absent. So, in the first instance, I want us to see that it is not the absence of sound that carries the weight, that is privileged, rather it is our recognition that as we approach "it" somehow we brought to a "clearing" where we can notice not only the appearance of sound but, in truth, the appearance of anything at all.

Within the loose religious movement called Celtic spirituality such "places" or "clearings" have evocatively been called "thin" because there we can sense more than we usually do what we have called the divine. In a moment I'll return to this idea of thinness and, at the end, say something more. But firstly we need, briefly, to consider something called "tone". In respect of sounds this concerns the quality of any sound, its timbre and manner of expression and it is clear that Woods' wants us to hear in his second sound a brash over-blown tone that is not present in the sound of the Spitfire. He wants us to experience something of greater worth and trustworthiness in the sound of the Merlin engine that is absent, or at least far, far removed from what is found in the brash "anglo-klaxon" (this is Woods' coinage) sound. Once again . . .

It's the sound.

Now I happen to agree with Woods on this - and I don't doubt that you who are gathered here do too - but I want to push this a little further and see if there might be something more substantive to his and our claim about the worth and value of the tone of a Merlin engine.

Etymology is, as we know, not present meaning but there is something very interesting and useful to be gleaned from noting the etymology of the word "tone." It is derived from the Greek word "tonos" which means, literally, the act of stretching. It is akin with the Greek word "teinein" which means "to stretch" and which, in turn, gives us our English word "thin". All this is, of course, connected with sound because to make a drum you need to stretch tightly over a sound-box a thin animal skin. Once again . . .

It's the sound.

Now we can hold together "tone" and "thinness" I can tentatively suggest why the sound of the Spitfire's Merlin engine might truly be said to be of greater worth and trustworthiness than the "anglo-klaxon" and can tell us a truth by which we can both remember and live well.

Like Chris Woods I recall the many childhood summer days when the sound of a Spitfire emerged from the background sound of life and I was always taken to the thin "place" or "clearing" where being itself emerges. The sound arose - imperceptibly at first, growled around for a while, then withdrew. In it's emerging, it's growling (shining) forth, I was taken, not precisely to the edge of the world - and I'll come back to this thought in a moment - but to the beginning or the worlding of a world. Again . . .

It's the sound.

And it's a sound that today, as an adult, remains as capable of taking me to this "clearing" as it did when I was a child. Only three years ago in late-July I was lying quietly on my back in a secluded sunny glade on Fulbourn Fen when from the quiet of the day with its continuous background sounds of wind, leaves and birds suddenly, again at first almost imperceptibly, there emerged that sound. As it rose to it's growling peak, across the small patch of blue sky above me the Battle of Britain Memorial flight - six Merlin's in the form of a Spitfire, a Hurricane and a Lancaster - flew over. My glimpse of them lasted, of course, only a few seconds leaving the sound slowly withdrew into the background leaving just the present ambient sounds of the wind, the leaves and the birds.

It's the sound.

I'm not, of course, claiming here that this (or any other) sound can exist alone as pure sound. That is clearly nonsense for the sound we are exploring is that, and only that, produced by certain aircraft powered by Merlin engines and it is intimately tied up with an historical event - a brutal world war and the story of a particular people over whose heads the Merlin engine flew.

But for the Merlin engine sound to be itself most truly as this sound any interpretations associated with it must, I think, also be capable of gesturing towards this same "clearing" that is disclosed in the sound - this place at which being and its possibilities are gifted to us, this "clearing" in which we all arise at birth, where we all live for a time, and in which we will all withdraw at our death.

It's this insight that I think Chris Woods has got tentative hold of in his song 'Spitfires'. When Woods interprets the sound we see him speak of six things. Peace (for the Spitfire is an historical warplane not a present one), of the valuing of creative design (the draughtsman's pen), of equality in work which can bring that design forth (the girl's hand upon the lathe - ordinary men and women), of a community's stories and songs (Workers' Playtime) a pragmatic getting on with things (an oily rag or two) and, lastly, freedom from oppression and violence ('hanging a little fascist out to dry' - a line whose tone is the jaunty 'we're not afraid of you' fashion. It most certainly does not carry with it bellicose overtones). In the song all of these things are gathered together and ordered by the sound.

Peace, in the form of the sound of a warplane that no longer kills stands, then, as a reminder of war and, as such, can speak to us powerfully of a way of living that desires that all beings may arise, flourish and fulfil their possibilities before withdrawing again. In a peaceful community which is alert to this arising sound, this being present for a while sound, and this withdrawing sound, all the other things of which Woods sings are bound together and the sound is, in the words of Richard Polt, 'capable of bringing us home to ourselves' showing us 'how to dwell together amid things, making us perceive our own existence as something fresh and strange' (Heidegger: An Introduction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, p. 136). You see . . .

It's the sound.

But, although this sound can shed a certain light on our being (the way we wish to live together and be able to go on) - and so can be said to reveal something - the revealing power of the Merlin's sound is always bound-up with its mysterious arising, growling around and withdrawal and, in its withdrawing, we are momentarily ushered into a "clearing" where we are aware we have come face to face with something deeply mysterious about our world. A mystery that is bound up with the fact that we are given life at all, that there is something and not nothing. It is in this "clearing" that we can most powerfully remember all lives lived and lives still to be lived because our world begins here.

But the "anglo-klaxon" interpretation of the sound doesn't gift us with such open possibilities of flourishing. It tells us from the start in an attenuated impoverished way what's what and what always should be what - it drowns out the complex sound of life and its manifold flourishing and replaces it with a deafening monotone - it tries to convince us that the sound of the Spitfire is fixed and ever-present. In short, it lies about the sound and it's own talking about the sound and never ushers us to a "clearing" where we confront the mystery of life - it never gifts.

The anglo-klaxon appropriation of the sound of the Merlin engine closes us off from the mystery of life and tries to make us believe that we are self-contained and self-sufficient; Chris Woods' appropriation of the sound in the song instead opens us up to the deep mystery of life (that there is something and not nothing) and discloses to us that we are gifted with life in a wholly mysterious way.

Is this why the sound of the Merlin engine has had such a special place in this country? Is it also a place where we can "root" the phenomenon of the increasing popularity of the two-minutes silence on Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday?

It's the sound.

Before I finish I feel it is very important to say clearly that we need not experience this thin "place" or "clearing" to which the sound of the Merlin takes us as a boundary between two worlds - our own and the divine. It is important because, as I said in the introduction to the Lamentations of Jeremiah (which we sang earlier) our age has lost a sense of the sacred and we need to regain it. However, we cannot re-appropriate or revive Jeremiah's world-view and (theistic) understanding of the divine but must, instead, seek a disclosure of the sacred that can be gifted by our own world. In our own time and place it doesn't feel right to say we are "surrounded" by (or "grounded in") another silent world - what one medieval mystic called the 'cloud of unknowing' in which we discover God as a pure entity. All I can honestly say is that for me the "clearing" is the place and time where in my life I experience God not as another kind of being but simply as the giftedness of being that always discloses to us a world. In the kind of "clearing" opened up by the sound of the Merlin engine the world always and only begins - the arising, growling around (shining) and withdrawing of the Merlin's sound does not lead us to another world but always reintroduces us to the mystery and creative possibilities of *this* one. What better remembrance can there be than one which always brings us to the beginning - to life and to light?

It's the sound . . . (click on this link to hear the sound of a Supermarine Spitfire Mk2a).

(The address concluded by playing this sound and its fading into the ambient sound of singing birds).

*****

Spitfires by Chris Woods
(From A Handmade Life)

Sometimes in our Kentish summer we still see spitfires in the sky - it's the sound.

We run outside to catch a glimpse as they go growling by - it's the sound.

There goes another England, sacrifice and derring do and a victory roll or two.

From the drawing board to the hand of the factory girl upon the lathe - it's the sound.

It's ordinary men and women with an ordinary part to play.

'Cause theirs was a gritty England, 'Workers'Playtime' got them through and an oily rag or two.

But sometimes I hear the story told in a voice that's not my own - it's the sound.

It's a land of hope and glory voice an anglo-klaxon over-blown - it's the sound.

Because theirs is another England, it hides behind the red, white and blue - 'Rule Britannia'? No thank-you.

Because when I hear them merlin engines in the white days of July - it's the sound.

They sing the song of how they hung a little fascist out to dry.

At last - the freedom of the open road!

2011-11-10T14:56:00.001Z

After a cold followed by a chest infection and all while with a fair bit of work to do has meant that I haven't been out on the bicycle for nearly four weeks. That's ridiculous (and not good) so when I woke up today on my day off and saw that there was going to be no rain and perhaps even some sunshine I made a sandwich, a flask of tea, unstabled the Pashley Guv'nor and set out into the fens. A wonderful autumn day it turned out to be. Here are a few photos.

Going north out of Cambridge - the Cam on the left, Stourbridge Common on the right

Looking across Stourbridge Common

Crossing the road to Fen Ditton along the A1033

One of the entrances to the park at Bottisham Hall

The same entrance with me (looking well washed-out) and the Pashley Guv'nor

Looking south over White Fen on the Lodes Way

Looking north-west up Swaffham Bulbeck Lode

Pylons crossing White Fen

Sun on an oak tree on White Fen

What else, on earth, is the church for? - A statement of support offered to the OccupyLSX protesters

2011-11-06T17:03:00.000Z

As I mentioned last week five members and attenders of the Memorial Church (Unitarian) in Cambridge went down to show our support for the OccupyLSX protesters at St. Paul's. In the photo, left to right, are Sonja Klinsky, Irish Sirmons, Ryan Sirmons (United Church of Christ [USA] ministry student on placement this year at the Memorial Church), Claire Henderson Davis and myself.

Claire Henderson Davis prepared a personal statement which she gave to both the BBC and to the protesters themselves. Claire and I also had a very brief interview with the BBC about her statement and the general situation as it then was. The footage was not used but we hardly expected it would! Still we are glad to have been able to show our support to the protesters and we were very kindly welcomed by them. The situation has, of course, considerably improved since last Sunday as the Cathedral and the City of London Corporation have now withdrawn their immediate threat of eviction but I think Claire's words remain powerful and I recommend them to you. If you are minded to come we'll meet, as usual, for our conversation in the church hall behind the church on Emmanuel Road Cambridge at 7.30 for 8pm to talk about the issues Claire raised.

Click on this link to read Claire's statement in pdf form.

One procession - countless lines of becoming

2011-11-05T12:41:00.000Z

Readings: Joshua 24:1-13 and from Life is a Miracle by Wendell Berry

(Counterpoint Press, Washington DC 2000, pp. 151-152)

My grandson, who is four years old, is now following his father and me over some of the same countryside that I followed my father and grandfather over. When his time comes, my grandson will choose as he must, but so far all of us have been farmers. I know from my grandfather that when he was a child he too followed his father in this way, hearing and seeing, not knowing yet that the most essential part of his education had begun. And so in this familiar spectacle of a small boy tagging along behind his father across the fields, we are part of a long procession, five generations of which I have seen, issuing out of generations lost to memory, going back, for all I now, across previous landscapes and the whole history of farming. Who knows the meaning, the cultural significance, and the practical value of this rural family’s generational procession across its native landscape? The answer is not so simple as the question: No one person ever will know all the answer. My grandson certainly does not know it. And my son does not, though he has positioned himself to learn some of it, should he be so blessed. I am the one who (to some extent) knows, though I know also that I cannot tell it to anyone living. I am in the middle now between my grandfather and my father, who are alive in my memory, and my son and my grandson, who are alive in my sight. If my son, after thirty more years have passed, has the good pleasure of seeing his own child and grandchild in that procession, then he will know something like what I now know. This living procession through time and place is the record by which such knowledge survives and is conveyed. When the procession ends, so does the knowledge.

*****

Back in June I introduced you to an idea from the British anthropologist Tim Ingold who said that:

'To be sentient . . . is to open up to a world, to yield to its embrace, and to resonate in one's inner being to its illuminations and reverberations. Bathed in light, submerged in sound and rapt in feeling, the sentient body, at once both perceiver [of the universe] and producer [of the world], traces paths of the world's becoming in the very course of contributing to it's ongoing renewal' ("Being Alive - Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description" p. 12).

This morning I want to bring Ingold's idea together with Wendell Berry's words about procession that we heard in our reading. Berry's words have long seemed to be important and I’ve explored them a little with you before.

They are important because they speak to the key insight that the very possibility of us knowing anything about our world and our place in it is grounded or rooted in always-already being in a procession of some sort or another. It is this procession, of family, church and wider culture and cultures that gifts us a world of intelligibility - a world in which things make sense, have use, worth and value. As Berry realises this 'living procession through time and place *is* the record by which such knowledge survives and is conveyed' and 'when the procession ends, so does the knowledge.'

This is why I think that having a clear sense not only of knowing (which is a kind of abstract knowledge about the matter) what it is to belong to a tradition but also an actual confident living or embodiment of a tradition (an embodied knowledge) - in our case a contemporary expression of liberal Christianity, is essential. Of course, I know only too well that tradition is often used simply as an anchor to hold us still when we could, and perhaps should, be moving but we must remember that it is also the only thing that gifts us with references (language) that help us orientate within and creatively deal with the world and bring about changes that we can experience as meaningful and healthy.

But one problem with the word "tradition" is that it seems to imply a wholly static unity and/or shape - something way too fixed. But this is not actually the case because any tradition is in truth an incredibly complex living process which weaves together all our own lines of becoming in a way that is always capable of creating and foregrounding radically new patterns.

In a moment I'm going to use a well known Biblical story to unfold this thought a little further but before we get there we need to be alert to a potential problem with Berry’s image. It is so easy to place in our imaginations Berry's characters one behind the other in a neat line – Berry’s son and grandson walking behind and, before him, once in fact and now in memory, his own father and grandfather. Here we have a version of tradition understood as overly ordered and simple.

But, as any of you who have gone on such family-esque walks will know, for the most part, it is formed of a wildly chaotic gaggle of interweaving lines. Now bunched up, now spread out, now broken up, now regrouped and all stages in-between. Someone notices this and not that, another stops to look at that but passes this by, all before regrouping later in the day in the kitchen for a cup of tea and some cake to recount the day's procession.

I’m quite convinced that Berry is aware of this complexity and his writing as a whole clearly suggest this is the case. The point we need to be clear about is that consciously to be part of a genuine living procession is to be able to notice (from time to time) the ebb and flow, the different speeds and different things noticed by the procession's members, the pushes and the pulls and to see how, despite this, you are still able meaningfully to say your family, your church, your culture *has* traced a certain "single" procession across the landscape.

And this is why I am such a big fan of the Bible, our tradition's central, normative text that tells our religious culture's foundational story of its journey across the landscape during a certain period of its history. But it does this by preserving an incredibly complex weave of traces. When you read it as a whole, as a single book, it preserves the complexity of a chaotic but creative family walk across a landscape. From time to time there have been - and still are attempts to - produce books with titles like "The Unity of . . ." - now fill in the gaps, the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses), the Old Testament, the New Testament - whatever. But as anyone who has read all the books that make up the whole text will know this is, thankfully, not possible. The most obvious illustration of this that you will be familiar with is to remind you that we have four gospels, not one, and that the four of them, though they cohere in many places and senses, trace very different lines of becoming to each other. As I have occasionally reminded you - there is even a clear line of becoming that one can trace through the texts which leads in a clearly atheist direction (cf. my address on Christianity in Atheism and the work of Ernst Bloch). But neither this line, nor any other single trace or line of becoming, can speak meaningfully about the whole procession.

Today I'd like to bring before you the story that helped me see this. It is a story which attempts to recount the most famous procession in the Bible, namely the Israelite people's journey which begins in the land beyond the Euphrates, continues for a time in slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh and then, after further wanderings in the wilderness, brings them to a time of temporary freedom in the Promised Land across the River Jordan.

In the Book of Joshua, just before his death Joshua delivers a farewell address to the Israelites (23–24) to sum up his people's story so far and to make it as grand and impressive as possible. Make no mistake - this is a greatest hits moment and, like all greatest hits albums you'd be mad to leave off it one of your most famous Number Ones. Now I don't think the author of Joshua was mad so I'm excluding that possibility but, my question to you (and to him were I able to question him), is why on earth did you leave out . . .

Well, did you spot the missing "Number One"?

Well, it is only what has become central to our understanding of in what consists basic human morality - namely the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the ten commandments! It would be harder to imagine a more important event to omit. It's like releasing a Queen Greatest Hits album without having Bohemian Rhapsody on it only on a globally important cultural scale.

My point is not flippant because, as I said a moment ago, you'd be mad to leave off a Greatest Hits album your biggest Number One and I said that I didn't think the writer was mad. No, the rather more striking and helpful conclusion - one that fits the evidence - is that here is a trace, a line of becoming, that simply never had a grand moment of law giving upon a mountain.

I'm too much a product of Christian Humanist and Enlightenment culture not to be interested in what may or may not have been the actual historical events that underlie the complex religious story we inherit and this story hints at the possibility that the giving of the law on Mount Sinai is a creative and wonderful fiction.

But for me, on this occasion at least, this isn't really the most important thing I want to bring before you. What is more interesting today is the glimpse we catch here of the moment when the redactors or editors of the Biblical text as we have it today were - to return to an earlier image - at the end of a day's walk around the kitchen table with tea and cake and trying to tell a story from out of their own records of a single procession. They thankfully let through their hands - and its by far from being the only place on the OT and in the NT remember the Gospels - a reminder that there always were contested versions of what happened on the most famous part of their family's procession across the landscape.

By accident more than by design we have a veritable gaggle of a book. Design would, we know, have liked to tell of a single procession, a single line, a single story and to have imposed upon later history a rigid conception of 'tradition'. It has certainly been tried and there always remains the danger of further attempts.

In our own liberal tradition we have also been tempted to do something similar with the text/s by producing many edited shorter versions only containing the bits we thought were good/right/true - Thomas Jefferson's Bible is one good example as is the early twentieth century publication by the Lindsey Press of the "Golden Treasury of the Bible." We did this because we, too, wanted a simple, single true story - a clear single procession from the "creation" to us.

But this is to fail to see how life (tradition) always actually unfolds and it is to fail to see that by accident we have been gifted with a text that, when we keep it together in its gaggly contradictory completeness and take time to notice this it can remind us, again and again of the countless paths of becoming that make up our (and any) procession. We should keep it close to hand and in our minds precisely because it does *not* cohere and is contradictory. The roots of our liberal approach to life are grounded in this kind of understanding of the Biblical text and when we recognise this it remains a powerful tool for us in our task of promoting understanding between different traditions and beliefs.

OccupyLSX - an update from last night's visit

2011-10-31T14:48:00.000Z

As I mentioned yesterday a few of us (five to be precise) from Cambridge were moved to show our support to the protesters occupying the space to the side of St Paul's Cathedral and holding it's meetings and General Assemblies on the steps of the main west doors.

OccupyLSX

We attended their General Assembly last night and were very impressed at the process they were employing - especially since they were discussion a document that had been released to the press in a fashion that made it appear as if it were one of their official collective statements - which it was not. There was some real heat generated about this but the process of genuinely open discussion meant that this tension was worked through in a very impressive fashion. Truly we saw a genuine grass roots democracy at work.

Also impressive was their recognition that they had to take their time - they know (and so do we) that sound-bite length gestures are not sufficient because we all need to be beginning a lengthy and genuinely deep and global-wide conversation on how we should be distributing the wealth and resources of our planet for the use of all.

My friend and colleague, Dr Claire Henderson Davis prepared a personal statement (which I wholeheartedly endorsed) which she gave to both the BBC and to the protesters themselves. Claire and I also had a very brief interview with the BBC about her statement and the general situation. I doubt the footage will be used by them but this Sunday (6th November) at 10.30am Claire will offer the statement up to the Memorial Church to encourage us to further thought and reflection. On Sunday afternoon I'll publish her statement on this blog so we can talk about it further at the Wednesday evening conversations in the church hall (7.30pm for 8pm). As of this moment it also looks like there'll be other initiatives developing here in Cambridge - I'll keep you informed of them as they happen.

As Claire says 'this is a prophetic moment and we will be poorer for not seizing it.'

So I invite you to come on Sunday morning to hear Claire speak and/or to join in the conversation on this blog and, of course, on the many other forums available to begin and continue the much needed conversations about alternative ways of organising ourselves.

But in general I urge you all to support the protesters in focussing our attention on the pressing need to sit down and work through this mess which our present financial and political systems have created for everyone. It's time to talk change.

OccupyLSX

2011-10-30T13:59:00.000Z

After the service today a few of us decided that we needed to go down to London this afternoon to show our solidarity with those camping outside St Paul's as part of the OccupyLSX. I'll let you know what transpires from our point of view sometime later this week. I'll get this Sunday's address up as soon as I can.

The 'right word' but not 'the word'

2011-10-23T15:39:00.000+01:00

Reading: John 1:1-14

Along with the philosopher James C. Edwards I think a key important fact of life for many of us as late twentieth and early twenty-first century Western European and North American intellectuals is that ‘full Pathos, full belief, comes only with intellectual or artistic inevitability’ (James C. Edwards, The Plain Sense of Things, Penn State Press 1996 p. 231)

Consequently, it seems to me that one of the chief tasks we have as a modern church community is to try to articulate in what might consist this intellectual and artistic inevitability and then to explore ways by which we may fruitfully and healthily hold them together so as to embody the full belief that flows from them in a way appropriate to our own time and place. We need to do this so we can move away from merely holding theories about what might be an appropriate religious life – which we are very good at – and back into living an appropriately committed religious life – which we are not so good at. We’ll begin with a consideration of what might be meant by ‘intellectual inevitability’ because it can be dealt with amongst ourselves reasonably briefly. (We’ll have to spend a little more time with artistic inevitability for reasons that will become clear).

For us intellectually inevitable full belief comes most powerfully to us through to the disciplines of the natural sciences and their many wondrous, visible and often obviously practical results. Our full belief comes, not because all of the results of the natural sciences are always and forever true, but because we know that scientists are always checking their findings against what is ‘over there’ (i.e. what we call the physical universe). Because the universe itself calls them to account the genuine scientist always feels herself to be firmly under the discipline of truth and she knows that ‘whatever she is doing she must get it right, must do it right. She is not, in the first instance, in the business of satisfying herself, and she can’t change the rules in order to make her attempts at whatever she is doing more successful’ (ibid. p. 224).

Thanks to the clear trustworthiness of this process and the many practical successes of scientific endeavour the universe now appears, shows up, or shines for us in countless scientific ways and, with full belief and a clean heart, we live in the light of science (see note 1 below).

However, we not only encounter the ‘universe’ as scientists but also commingle imaginatively with a ‘world’ (see note 2 below). Along with the intellectual inevitability of the natural sciences, there is also what we can call artistic inevitability. But here we’re not as clear as we are in the natural sciences about what we mean by this ‘inevitability’ and, consequently, it becomes hard for us to know what it might be to live out of it with full belief and a clean heart.

To help reveal this we firstly need to consider the artistic process as it is actually experienced by us. In this address I’ll simply stick with writing because at some time or other we’ve all probably tried to write a piece of fiction or a poem. (As I do this it is important to remember that what I say applies equally to the other arts.)

Whenever you sit down to write a story or a poem you quickly discover, as one does in the sciences, that this activity is not merely about satisfying yourself or being able to change the rules in order to make your attempts at whatever you are trying to do more successful. To be sure some of the difficulties you will face in writing have to do with the (real or perceived) need to conform to certain rules of grammar or style, but here I’m not referring to these straightforward technical and stylistic matters. Instead I’m concerned with those moments when, even when the grammar and style of what you have produced is correct and appropriate, you simply know that what you have written is just not right. You realise that you have no choice but to continue to seek just the right word and, in this often difficult seeking, you come face to face with the recognition that you ‘must get it right, must do it right’ and this feels very much like what a scientist is doing when they are checking their results against what is ‘over there’. If and when the right word comes, it comes with the power of artistic inevitability – you know in a very particular way that this is the right word. You have said what you felt you and the ‘over there’ (the world) called you to say.

However, thanks to the intellectual inevitability and full belief we get from the natural sciences very few of us really think that the ‘over there’ of the artist is the same ‘over there’ of the scientist. Unlike the ‘over there’ of science which can continually be referred back to check the accuracy of one’s results and theories, the ‘over there’ of the artist cannot. Consequently, despite my earlier words, there easily creeps back into our minds the thought that, in the end, an artist really is only in the business of satisfying herself and that she can, and sometimes does, change the rules in order to make her attempts at whatever she is doing more successful. To claim that the ‘right’ word she finds as coming with ‘artistic inevitability’ and also to claim that we can act out of it with full belief and a clean heart seems, well, at best a nice idea and, at worst, mere flabby nonsense. But I don’t think so.

Though in a moment I’m going to bring the scientist and the artist back together, at the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious, an artist is doing something very different from the scientist – we are not relying on her to reveal to us the structure of the physical universe or ensure that buildings or aeroplanes stay up where they belong. But in another way the artist and a scientist are doing something similar which, as I have said, is the need constantly to be revising and checking their results against an ‘over there’. However, the ‘over there’ of the artist is the world as it is marvellously appearing, showing up, or shining for us now it is not the discoverable, repeatedly testable ‘over there’ of the physical world. To illustrate what I mean I return to a wonderfully concise everyday example offered us by the poet Lucretius that I have used before:

A puddle of water no deeper than a single finger-breadth, which lies between the stones on a paved street, offers us a view beneath the earth to a depth as vast as the high gaping mouth (hiatus) of heaven stretches above the earth, so that you seem to look down on the clouds and the heaven, and you discern bodies hidden in the sky beneath the earth, marvellously (mirande) (De Rerum Natura Book 4:414-419 trans. W. H. D. Rouse, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press).

[T]hink of a situation which you know for certain that the little puddle there in the street at which you look down is no more than a finger’s depth and yet you can, if the light is right, stare down into the water and see on the surface an image as deep and high as the clouds far, far above you as if that puddle were some small ocean (De Rerum Natura trans. David R. Slavitt, University of California Press, 2008 p. 154 - I am a huge fan of David Slavitt's modern translation and, indeed, all of his translations are worth exploring).

Lucretius’ genius is his ability always to be both a scientist and an artist and in a way few others have been as such he is capable of experiencing (and expressing to an audience) the reflection of the sky in the puddle as ‘an appearance of nature and as an index to the wondrous truths of physics’ (John I. Porter, ‘Lucretius and the Sublime’ in ‘The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius’, ed Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie, Cambridge University Press 2007, p. 173. Emphasis mine).

Lucretius knows that the weather will change, blue skies will turn to grey and, in consequence, the puddle’s appearance will also change. He knows, too, that our circumstances and moods change and that a blue or grey sky reflected marvellously in a puddle has the ability to alter our moods and thoughts in all kinds of ways and bring forth from our imagination all kinds of poetic images that are available to our own culture – whether of the gods, the bright Olympian heights or the dark and gloomy reaches of Acheron. Lucretius knows, with artistic inevitability, that these kinds of images arise in the human imagination and that the discipline of the poet is to answer these ‘over theres’ by finding and using just the right word to acknowledge and explore them in appropriate and helpful ways. But as a scientist he also always knows, with intellectual inevitability, that these images, these appearances and shinings of the world are possible only because of the ‘over there’ of the constant and testable natural laws governing the puddle’s physical form.

Lucretius’ great genius is always to be indexing together intellectual and artistic inevitability (and a certain understanding of reality and appearance) in an extraordinarily powerful and healthy way – encouraging us to pursue both the poetic arts and what we call today the natural sciences. It is this skill at indexing them together that increasingly makes me think that Lucretius provides the basic model, the basic way of being-in-the-world that we, who value both the arts and the sciences, are desperately seeking.

We know that the disciplines of the natural sciences require that the scientist checks and revises their results in the light of changed knowledge and circumstances. But the true artist (who can be, has been and should more and more be a scientist – or genuinely knowledgeable of science’s methods) always knows they must do something similar because no matter how ‘good and true a poem may be, there is always call for more such poems’. They understand appearances always change and there is a constant need for each generation to speak of the world as it is showing up, shining, for them and this is why we continue to write stories and poems even though before us have gone countless writers of unsurpassable greatness. (We only keep and continue to use the old poems and texts because and insofar as they still, now and then, in certain circumstances, speak to us the right word for this moment now.) The crucial point to see here is that although there is ‘the right word to speak, the one properly required for this sentence (if only [we] can hear it)’, in the end ‘it is the word properly required only for this sentence, not for the next or the next.’ And, as the philosopher James C. Edwards powerfully put it, ‘It is the right word, the only right word; but it is not the Word of the Lord, nor of any of the Philosophical Fathers’ (James C. Edwards, The Plain Sense of Things, Penn State Press 1996 p. 234)

This address was framed by a reading of the Prologue to the Gospel of John. Once we took it most surely to refer to the Word of the Lord or later, perhaps. the Word of some philosophical Absolute whether it was that espoused by Plato, Spinoza or Hegel. But today I offer it back to you as a reminder that although, yes, in the beginning was the ‘word’ – for without it neither you nor I could begin to speak with each other of the wondrous or dark ways the world is appearing or shining for us as scientists and artists – we know that no word is the last word, not in science nor in the arts. However, whenever the word comes to us through processes we can trust it strikes us in a fashion strong enough to live out of it, although always provisionally, with full (i.e. appropriate) belief and a clean heart.

*****

Note 1. It is a light which reveals to us many things like that the earth is about four-and-half billion years old, that the physical universe is between thirteen and fourteen billion years old, that the biodiversity of life evolves by means of mutations, genetic drift and natural selection or that the earth revolves around the sun and our solar-system is not the centre of the universe. Science has lit up, too, many materials and protocols which, for example, help us build bridges and buildings in ways such that they don’t fall down willy-nilly. None of this means things won’t break down, theories won’t change, new things won’t be discovered but it does mean we have an intellectually inevitable full belief in the scientific process as a whole.

Note 2. Cf. Heidegger’s discussion (Being and Time (trans. John Maquarrie and Edward Robinson, Oxford, Basil Blackwell 1973) of the four kinds of 'world' on p. 93 (p. 64-65 of the German) where Hubert Dreyfus helpfully points out the first two are really talking about the ‘universe’ of entities whilst the second two are talking about ‘worlds’ – i.e. the worlds of physics, the business world, the artistic world etc..

Friendship, self-reliance (freedom), an analysed life - living well in the financial crisis

2011-10-09T17:30:00.000+01:00

When last week Mervyn King the Governor of the Bank of England, a man as embedded in the world of free-market capitalism as it is possible to be said, "This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever" then we know we should be taking serious note and begin to think about what might be the ramifications of the nasty unravelling of the system we have been observing since 2008. King also said that, although "we’re having to deal with very unusual circumstances" it is important "to act calmly to this and to do the right thing".

But this is quite hard thing for regular folks to do because in any technical sense at least we feel - are - utterly powerless and unable to act and, as we watch, on the one hand, precipitous drops in our wages, savings and pensions and, on the other, alarming rises in the cost of our food and fuel we can hardly go about feeling calm can we?

It should be obvious to everyone that this mixture of powerlessness and worry is very toxic and can - and I would say is, especially in countries like Greece - lead to a desperate state of affairs where people begin to think that, since the present system is no longer capable of delivering up what has be called (thought of as) financial well-being the only thing to do, other than merely carrying on with increasing desperation, is to lay an axe at the roots of the whole "tree", the whole system, and to bring it crashing down so that the task of planting elsewhere a new "tree" with new roots and fruits can be got on with.

Now, sometimes, this radical cutting down of a tree (or a system) is required. The tree is truly sick, it must be felled and a new one planted if we are to have a hope of a crop in the coming years. I have no doubt that each of us will have a different view on whether this is or is not the case with regards to the present financial system and I know that today it is unlikely that we would find here consensus on this matter. But what is clear, however, is that an important conversation is now beginning across Europe on this subject. As some of you will know over the last two weeks even the BBC broadcast a two-part documentary called "Capitalism on Trial" presented by the former Conservative MP Michael Portillo.

But, as Mervyn King noted, in any crisis situation where the circumstances are unusual it is vitally important "to act calmly . . . and to do the right thing".

Maybe cutting down the tree, i.e. the present system, is what will ultimately need to be done. But taking the opportunity we still have at this moment to be calm about things it is vital to recognise that if we only have in our heads an image of cutting down a tree and replacing it with another this can easily stop us from seeing an important additional matter that must be explored during any time of crisis - namely our own behaviour.

Because it is an image that locates the problem wholly in the tree, in the system, it can stop us from examining ourselves. The problem is perceived as being external to us, "out there" - a problem for which there is or might be an easy external technical solution. In this case to replace one tree or system with another. But Jesus' "Parable of the unfruitful fig tree" found in Luke opens up for us a space in moments of crisis during which we have the opportunity to reflect upon our own behaviour:

"A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down'" (Luke 13:6-9 NRSV).

Jesus' parable reminds us that the current poor state and unfruitfulness of any given tree may not wholly be the fault of the tree itself but in the way *we* are behaving towards it. Notice that in the parable the wise gardener does not rule out the possibility that in the end the tree may still need to be cut down, but what he is primarily concerned to get us to see is that during the interim there must be some kind of change of attitude, a change of behaviour - a change in the way we are being-in-the-world.

The parable is a reminder that there is always a relationship between the gardener and the tree whether that tree is to be axed or saved. By extension, I want to make it clear that there is *always* a connection between us and the kind of society (with its associated financial systems) we live in whether it is to be swept away of saved.

The point I want to bring right to the fore is that Jesus' parable suggests that if the tree is to be saved we have to change our behaviour, and if the tree is to be cut down we still have to change our behaviour. By extension if our financial system is to be saved we have to change our behaviour, and if the financial system is to be cut down we still have to change our behaviour.

It seems to me this parable is for us vital to heed because it rempowers us in a key, fundamental area of life during a very disempowering time. Although we cannot ourselves, right now, get inside and control the utter craziness of the markets, or alter the mad "logic" of the financial system we can in this moment of our history begin explore how we might go about changing our basic way of being-in-the-world. We can be undertaking some good ground-work as all good gardeners do.

There are many things I think we must look at but, for me the most pressing, is how as a society we have come to think that we can find happiness in having lots of money to spend on lots of stuff. But I'm with Epicurus (341BC - 270BC) in thinking that this is wholly wrong-headed.

He thought we found real happiness in three goods - friendship, self-sufficiency (i.e. freedom) and an analysed life.

Of course, it is an obvious point that friendships help happiness but to this basic insight Epicurus added the need for the constant presence of one's friends and, to achieve this he set up his Garden Academy where his friends lived together in close proximity though in their own private quarters. Precisely this solution is not possible for us but in this community, with its regular gatherings for worship, eating and conversation we can create something similar which cuts against the modern trend towards social isolation and excessive individualism.

With regards to self-sufficiency or freedom, in founding his Academy Epicurus desired that its members should be financially independent, economically self-sufficient and not answerable to dreadful bosses for one's income. This third-century BC approach in what was still, broadly speaking, a rural environment is clearly not going to be possible for us in the same way in a twenty-first century urban environment, but we can affect something relevant to our own place and age which is to free ourselves from our present mental and psychological slavery to the belief that our happiness depends on endlessly buying stuff we simply don't need. Together, as genuine friends, we know we don't need to buy the fanciest clothes, the newest TVs and computers or whatever to value ourselves and others, to see the deep value and worth that is found in friendship and good company.

One of the key things we do with our friends in this place of meeting - in addition to expressing our gratitude for our friends and freedom - is to take time to analyse our lives and it is the analysed life which is Epicurus' third good. Alain de Botton sums this up as:

"A life in which we take time off to reflect on our worries, to analyse what is troubling us. Our anxieties quickly diminish if we give ourselves time to think things through and to do that we need to take a step back from the noisy distractions of the commercial world and find time and space for quiet thinking about our lives."

Again this kind of reflective life is what a church such as this can provide.

With these three goods in mind we can move to a basic Epicurean insight that is absolutely relevant to the present pressing and debilitating, disempowering fear that all our wages, savings and pensions might soon be going down the pan. Here's how Alain de Botton presents it (in his short documentary on Epicurus which you can watch by clicking on this link).

"Of course, having loads of money never made anyone unhappy. But I think the lovely idea in Epicurus is that if you are denied money for whatever reason and yet you have his three goods . . . then you'll never be denied happiness. And, conversely, if you've got loads of money but you're lacking [the three goods] then, according to Epicurus, you'll never be happy. So if you try and draw this relationship between happiness and money on a graph - imagine that on the left hand-side of the graph you've got levels of happiness and then on the bottom you've got levels of income. Now for Epicurus as long as you've got levels of money to provide you with the essentials of life you can be happy fairly early on if you have his three goods and you won't get any happier the more money you accumulate. The level of happiness stays pretty steady. However, if you've got loads of money but you haven't got any friends, you're not self-sufficient, and you've got loads of anxieties then your level of happiness is going to stay very flat. And I think that is a lovely, consoling idea for anyone who is worried that they might actually lose their money or is denied the chance to make any."

I realise that none of this changes the fact that we are in the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. It doesn't make clear whether the axe *is* laid at the roots of our free-market capitalist society or whether even significant manuring is going to keep it alive. Time will tell. But whether or not it is for the chop or for rescue we can do something here and now that will help in either case - we can gather in friendship, we can insist upon our freedom to value things other than mere products, and together we can find time and space for quiet thinking about our lives. In short happiness is not denied us and the possibility of having an abundant life promised by both Jesus (John 10:10) and Epicurus remains, here at least, alive.

*****

(NB. Of course it is vital to realise that whenever the situation arises where people no longer have levels of money which can provide them with the essentials of life then we're into a very different situation than the one I outline above. Let's hope we do not see that day arise . . .)

And who's to say where the harvest shall stop?

2011-10-02T16:53:00.001+01:00

The 1934 Disney short cartoon illustrating Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper embedded below was one of the "readings" in the service so it will help to watch this at the outset. However, aside from it's immediate relevance to this address, it is remains a delight in and of itself. Go on, treat yourself!

Luke 12:13-21 (NRSV)

Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus], "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

*****

Marcus Tullius Cicero - "The Sword of Damocles" from the Tuscan Dialogues trans. C. D. Yonge

[Dionysius] showed himself how happy he really was; for once, when Damocles, one of his flatterers, was dilating in conversation on his forces, his wealth, the greatness of his power, the plenty he enjoyed, the grandeur of his royal palaces, and maintaining that no one was ever happier, "Have you an inclination," said he, "Damocles, as this kind of life pleases you, to have a taste of it yourself, and to make a trial of the good fortune that attends me?” And when he said that he should like it extremely, Dionysius ordered him to be laid on a bed of gold with the most beautiful covering, embroidered and wrought with the most exquisite work, and he dressed out a great many sideboards with silver and embossed gold. He then ordered some youths, distinguished for their handsome persons, to wait at his table, and to observe his nod, in order to serve him with what he wanted. There were ointments and garlands; perfumes were burned; tables provided with the most exquisite meats. Damocles thought himself very happy. In the midst of this apparatus, Dionysius ordered a bright sword to be let down from the ceiling, suspended by a single horse-hair, so as to hang over the head of that happy man. After which he neither cast his eye on those handsome waiters, nor on the well-wrought plate; nor touched any of the provisions: presently the garlands fell to pieces. At last he entreated the tyrant to give him leave to go, for that now he had no desire to be happy. Does not Dionysius, then, seem to have declared there can be no happiness for one who is under constant apprehensions? But it was not now in his power to return to justice, and restore his citizens their rights and privileges; for, by the indiscretion of youth, he had engaged in so many wrong steps and committed such extravagances, that, had he attempted to have returned to a right way of thinking, he must have endangered his life.

*****

"Gathering Leaves"
by Robert Frost

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight;
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

*****

It seems to be an unalloyed good whenever a harvest provides us with a crop whose abundance is such that we are able to gather a little extra into our barns for later use. Experience of countless generations teaches us that the harvest next year may not be so good and, if so, we may need this extra bounty. Or possibly a neighbour's crop will fail and then our own stores can be used to tide them over - a goodwill gesture which, over the centuries, developed into the remarkable, practical and wonderful idea of insurance. But, in addition to these common-sense practices, we have inherited a sense that there is something important to be said for offering up with thanksgiving the "first fruits" of our harvests (cf. Leviticus 23:10). Connected with this, even as one gives up the "first fruits" freely to God this same God insists that: "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien" (Leviticus 23:22).

Yet, for all this, the obvious goods of the harvest also provide opportunities for the development of selfish and lazy lifestyles and of hubris resulting in a wildly distorted overestimation of both human power and human purpose. Jesus points us to both in his parable. As a culture, we have not heeded this warning and have slowly delivered up to ourselves a global system that cannot work without a belief in infinite growth and profit. To believe that this is either realistic or sustainable is clearly to have descend into an hubristic madness, a madness which now threatens, not only the health and well-being of the single greedy rich man in Jesus' parable, but our whole planet.

I realise that this is not a happy thought to have at harvest time but if, today, we are going to have a genuinely joyous harvest celebration that is not merely a sentimental whistling in the wind, we have to begin by acknowledging this.

Indeed, as I reread Jesus' parable this year I was strongly minded of the story about Damocles. A story which eloquently reminds us that whenever we inhabit the world in such a hubristic way a sword will always be hanging over our heads by the thinnest of threads. As Cicero put it in his "Tusculan Disputations": "Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms?" Does not this looming fear nag us all as whenever we see the misuse of our culture's many abundant harvests?

But Harvest should *not* be a time of looming fear and anxiety but, instead, one of joy and thanksgiving and, even though we should rightly remain concerned about whether the harvest will be abundant, this day needs to become again for us a time when we experience not a fearful sword hung above us born of human-kind's desire to rule and lord it *over* the world, but a day of gratitude for our intimate comminglement *in* this extraordinary world.

It is this gratitude for the harvest and an associated sense of joyful and trusting comminglement in the world that I want to make visible in the hope that today we may experience just a tiny taste of the grace of God's giving.

It is clear that for there to be a harvest of the kind Jesus thought was desirable it must have a certain kind of depth to it. I take it that he means even as we gather an obvious harvest and "store up treasures for ourselves" we must simultaneously be gathering another by "being rich toward God". It is this second harvest that has the power to pull us away from the ends chosen by either the rich man or our present culture.

One way to reconnect with this other necessary harvest is by deliberately gathering something obvious that is of far less importance for our immediate survival than, say, wheat, rice or potatoes. By collecting such a "secondary" crop we can more easily see whether we are, in fact, "being rich toward God."

I know of no better such "secondary" crop than autumn leaves, a crop which leads me as a necessity requires to Robert Frost's 1923 poem "Gathering Leaves":

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight;
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

Frost presents us with an activity that under normal harvest circumstances would be deeply frustrating. One's tools aren't really up to the harvest task and the bags one eventually fills remain worryingly light. All that seems to happen is one makes of a lot of noise and a proper grasping hold of the crop (that is to say the gathering of the crop) remains utterly illusive. Even when the crop is gathered it's lack of weight remains disturbing and the one obvious fruit of the harvest - the wonderful colours of the leaves - is disappearing even as one is gathering them. It is a crop, as he says, "next to nothing for use". If all these things were the case with our gathering of wheat, rice or potatoes we would be left distraught and, of course, rightly so. But remember, that this is a poem written to help us see that "secondary" crop.

We begin to see this because the images Frost uses to present this frustrating harvest are, by contrast, beautiful, joyous, fun and even comic. Our spades are big spoons and our bags balloons. The noise we make is like that made by the beautiful rabbit and deer and our failure to grasp is transfigured into the delightful experience of leaves tumbling over us - a delight we can all remember experiencing as children. Indeed I cannot but think that this poem is an illustration of Jesus' teaching that only those who become as little children will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19, Mark 10, Luke 18). But we are children no longer and so Frost moves us seamlessly from the childish joy of the opening stanzas to some of the worries that adulthood brings, about weight, colour and use. However, Frost does not allow us to stop there but, with the momentum of the childish joy he has just evoked in us behind him he pushes us on to see that "a crop *is* a crop" and that what counts as a harvest does not merely stop at weight, colour and use.

It's the kind of harvest which helps us see, like the grasshopper in the Disney short, not that "the world owes us a living" but that we owe "the world our living"; a harvest whose fruit becomes the kind love and compassion which lets the ants and the Ant Queen forgive and draw the foolish grasshopper into their fold and which, in turn, frees the grasshopper to repent and mend his ways. They discover they need each other - the ants learn the joy of singing and dancing and the grasshopper learns to live more appropriately in the world - both their lives together produce yet another fruit. It's the kind of harvest that shows we are indeed 'being rich toward God' which, as Jesus taught, is also to be rich toward our neighbour.

It is only through the shared fruits of both harvests that we can hope to remove from above our head (in our imaginations and in reality) the sword of fear and to approach the common table, appropriately and with joyous thanksgiving together, with God and our neighbour, to eat, drink and be merry.

Wherever I am, the world comes after me - some thoughts on strategic retreat

2011-09-25T16:00:00.001+01:00

I was at my desk last week on a day and at a time when I was not expecting to be. Not only that but as I sat there my phone kept ringing and showing me the numbers of people I really felt I had to answer. It was an unfolding set of circumstances which caused a feeling suddenly to well up within me that I am sure you will all have felt at one time or another - the overwhelming desire to turn off the phone, the computer, to shut the door, lock it and walk away saying "stop, stop, stop." It so happened that as this flurry of activity reached its peak a member of the congregation was sitting in my study - she was not there to see me but had simply come in to the church on another matter and, given I was about to make a cup of tea for myself, I had made her one too and also offered her the comfy chair in my study. I got on with what I needed to do but no sooner had we sat down than the phone rang again from someone who had called earlier. Shortly after that it rang once more and, as I was answering it, I was vaguely aware that my guest had idly pulled a book of Mary Oliver's poems from my shelf and proceeded to open a page at random. When I put the phone she handed me the book, without comment, open at the following poem, The Old Poets of China:

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

(From New and Selected Poems, Volume Two)

Startlingly apt, n'est-ce pas? Anyway, with her tea finished my guest went on her way and I also managed to go, not quite as far as the mountains and their pale mist, but at least as far as the manse kitchen and back-yard.

Oliver's poem, gifted so strikingly to me by that member of the congregation, stayed with me during the rest of that day and it brought to mind a subject that has continually come up in conversations within this church - namely, the question of whether we should aspire to be a radical, activist church or a quietist one? (I'm thinking here both of the word quietism's religious and philosophical uses)

I've never been particularly keen on either/or paradigms and, on this subject at least, it seems to me that if you want to do your activism well you have to have internalised the benefits of a more quietist practice at some time and, of course, vice versa.

On the one hand there clearly always exist in our world innumerable issues that cry out for an obvious activist response. We look at what is going on and feel, as the Psalmist imagines God feels, that "Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up . . . I will place them in the safety for which they long. [. . .] On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the sons of men." (Psalm 12:5 & 8 RSV). As a religious community our commitment to, if no longer precisely Christian *belief*, then certainly a kind of embodied Christian practice, requires us to play our part in challenging this situation wherever it is found.

At certain times the on-the-ground situation and our own internal strength and ability are aligned in such a fashion that an obvious activist rising-up not only can occur but also has real traction which can bring about substantive changes of one kind or another. One must always be ready to move and take advantage of those moments, those alignments, when they occur. Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish maidens (Matthew 25:1-13) we heard earlier shows this admirably and also helps us see that a readiness to move - which all ten maidens have - does not necessarily coincide with the kind of care and preparation required to turn that readiness into a genuine, long-term practical response. You can be as ready to respond to the bridegroom's arrival as the next maiden but if he arrives in the dark and you don't have any oil to keep your lamps alight you are stuffed. By the time you sort yourself out the change in conditions has often been so quick that you find you are now "locked" out of the new situation simply because it developed without your input whilst you were pfaffing around looking for a supply of oil.

But, as life often reveals, there are also times when it is simply not the hour or the day, times when it is not possible to be an effective, obvious activist. Of course the range of historical moments when, for what ever reason, we find we cannot act range from those that are relatively benign to those which are exceptionally malign.

The moments lying at the malign end of the spectrum which stop us acting are the "dark times" to which Robert Pogue Harrison draws our attention. These are the times "when the world that 'comes between men' no longer gives them a meaningful stage for their speech and their actions, when reasoned discourse loses its suasion, when powerlessness rather than empowerment defines the citizen's role in the public sphere" (Robert Pogue Harrison - In "The Garden School of Epicurus" found in his book "Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition", Chicago University Press, 2008, p. 71).

In such situations it is often the case that a retreat of some kind has to be affected if there is to be any hope of later, effective, direct action - a later moment when you can bring out into the street and the workplace the light you have carefully nurtured and cultivated during your wait. But here, as we talk about this retreat and waiting it is vitally important to notice a crucial difference between a "strategic flight from reality" and an "escape from reality". As Hannah Arendt said, "Flight from the world in dark times of impotence can always be justified as long as reality is not ignored, but is acknowledged as the thing that must be escaped" (ibid., p. 71).

As Pogue Harrison notes, when Epicurus set up his Garden Academy in Athens he:

". . . sought out the asylum of his garden without ever ceasing to acknowledge the reality from which he was taking flight. Indeed, the garden for Epicurus was a place from which and in which reality itself could be reconceived, its possibilities reimagined. Or better, it was a place where the human and social virtues that were trampled on by the so-called real world could reflourish under carefully husbanded circumstances" (ibid., p. 81).

Is this the kind of retreat the old Chinese poets mentioned by Oliver thought they were undertaking? I don't know the work of these poets so cannot comment but I do know that Oliver's retreat into the quiet places away from the reality of the human world always comes across as strategic. Many of you will remember her striking poem 'What I Have Learned So Far' in which this is made abundantly clear:

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

(From New and Selected Poems, Volume Two)

Nor, too, must we fail to remember that our own tradition's primary exemplar, Jesus of Nazareth, even though he also often retreated into solitude to pray he never failed to come back down the mountain into the towns and villages with a gospel of light which encouraged people to be ignited in the active work of bringing about the kingdom of God on earth (cf. Mark 1:35-38).

These are all vitally important reminders that a proper quietism always leads back to action and that action only finds its proper power and control after a disciplined period of reflection in which an individual and a community in strategic retreat reconceive and reimagine realities and possibilities.

I assemble these thoughts and bring them before you at this time because it seems to me that, although there yet remain many present opportunities for us openly to fight the good fight on our streets and in our workplaces - and I strongly encourage us to continue engage in activist ways - it also has to be said that neoliberalism's stranglehold on our public institutions and figures and its breath-taking ability to continue to brainwash citizens of western democracies into thinking that economic government based solely on the market and its ability to self-regulate is a good thing, makes this for us a dark and dangerous time. (If you are concerned about this see this recent article on neoliberalism by Stuart Hall in the Guardian).

The difficult truth which many of you tell me about - and which I see myself - is that we are finding that in our work and in the wider public sphere we are living in a time in which reasoned discourse *has* often lost its suasion and that our roles as citizens are defined more and more by powerlessness rather than empowerment.

In the light of this last truth it seems to me to be increasingly important to talk seriously about whether, for a time, we should consciously shift our community's emphasis more towards exploring a quietist way of being-in-the-world? To take time together, in a community setting, creatively to think through and better embody the gospel of light we know we have the possibility of cultivating here. During this time, as long as we take care to ensure our thought and practice buds toward radiance and not indolence, then such a consciously quietist move could prove to be very fruitful even though it is a move being forced upon us by some very dark circumstances. We may yet be able to turn the dangers and difficulties of our time into genuine opportunities for a better world.

If we succeed in the above when the time comes to be ignited or be gone we will not only be ready to step out into the world with our light held up once more but we will also have done all we can to ensure that we have gathered in our hearts the deep resources (the spare oil) to sustain it's brightness over the long term.

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris

2011-09-21T15:57:00.000+01:00

Matthew 6:25-34

. . . I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

*****

Praying
from Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

*****

An enduring human desire is to look behind the scenes. One of the most beautiful expressions of this can be found in the famous ballet paintings of the 1870s by Degas (1834–1917) currently on show in London at the Royal Academy.

They were popular with his customers because, apart from their obvious, simple, visual beauty, they spoke eloquently to this desire and they made available to their owners a new perspective from which they could gain an enlarged understanding about the world of ballet that was not available to them as mere paying members of the audience. A modern expression of this desire is found in the plethora of extra-features to be found on DVDs concerned to show the "making of" such and such film.

As it does in these examples, when our desire to look behind the scenes remains this worldly - by which I mean there really is a "scene" behind which you can look - then this desire, when acted upon, can be said genuinely to increase our knowledge of a subject, be it ballet or film-making.

We begin with the limited, if still wonderful and in it's own terms, fulfilling, perspective of someone sitting in the audience. After this experience, should we choose or if we are given the opportunity, we can look behind the scenes and, in so doing, we have access another perspective upon the world in which we see revealed some of the hard work and technical know-how required to produce an apparently easy and seamless production of a ballet or a film. Perhaps, at a later date, we may choose to learn how to dance or operate a camera and these activities will add a further "behind the scenes" perspective.

It seems reasonable to say that this kind of activity "deepens" our understanding of ballet or film-making and allows us meaningfully to say that we have moved towards a "truer" estimation of our subject than we had whilst we were sitting in the audience blithely unaware of what was required to make this ballet or this film possible.

However, whenever we let the phrase "behind the scenes" to go on holiday and try to use it in situations radically different from the ones in which it was doing some real work as it was in the case of Degas and in the making of a "behind the scenes" documentary we get into all kinds of difficulties. It was first packed off on holiday in the religious sphere some two-thousand-four-hundred years ago by Plato in his famous allegory of the cave found in Book Seven of "The Republic" - a story which is framed in a theatrical fashion where there is a scene to get behind.

In this dialogue Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived their entire lives chained to the wall of a cave facing a blank wall. All they can see are the shadows projected onto this wall by people and things passing in front of a fire which lies behind them. Plato suggested that these shadows were as close as the prisoners got to viewing reality and he saw the philosopher as someone who had been freed from the cave and who was now able to see "behind the scenes". This imagined view he thought revealed the true Forms of reality rather than merely the shadows he had formally seen whilst a prisoner. In short, Plato believed that only knowledge of the Forms constituted real knowledge and, from that day to this, this world has been thought of as mere appearance needing the support of a more real, behind the scenes world.

What we need to notice about the "behind the scenes" idea in Degas' hands or those of a documentary film-maker is that they are not trying to show us another world. What they are concerned to do, as I noted earlier, is *really* show us behind the scenes and, in so doing, show us the *same* world we see whilst sitting in the audience but to help us see it *differently*. They desire to show us other perspectives which, when they are added up, we may meaningfully say that we have moved towards a "truer" estimation of the world. We don't thereby have access to an absolute picture, an only picture, but we do have access to an increasingly enlarged understanding that we can meaningfully call fuller and more complete set of pictures closer to something we may meaningfully call true.

But much religion in the West after Plato developed a belief that it was showing another world behind the scenes that was/is somehow more complete and true than our own and it's stories and practices have become been understood to be about this other world and designed to help a person see it and to enter into it.

Here we can return to our reading from Matthew connected with prayer in which Jesus asks us to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, a consideration of which he tells us should encourage us to see that, if we first "strive . . . for the kingdom of God and his righteousness" then the things we really need will be given to us. It won't put an end to all our troubles but it will help us live better today.

Now when we read this, not least of all because of the mention of "your heavenly father" and the "kingdom of God" we are predisposed to follow Plato and imagine that in this story Jesus' real focus is not upon this world but that other, behind-the-scenes heavenly world. This predisposition is so strong we are apt forget to take him at his word and to think that the birds of the air and the lilies of the field are merely metaphors for something else, to think that his words are merely on holiday. But in this story the words are *not* on holiday for they are tightly tied to a particular way of being-in-the-world which trusts in, and is thankful for, what this world naturally offers us all regardless of human wealth and rank. You might disagree with the desirability or efficacy of such a way of being-in-the-world but that is besides the point for Jesus is clearly talking about living in this world not another and he uses the illustration of the birds and the lilies to ground it in this world.

It is this grounded, embodied prayerful trust and thankfulness that is being spoken of when Jesus speaks about "the kingdom of God and his righteousness". Jesus prayerful attitude to life - which was summed up for us in the Lord's Prayer - is the practice by which he feels this kingdom and righteousness is to be made tangible here and now in *this* world.

Now think of this story - in fact the whole of the Gospels as the performance of Jesus' life - a performance that we can see as paying members of an audience, just as we can see a performance of a ballet or a film. Is there a genuine "behind the scenes" view available to us of this performance that isn't like Plato's cave but is like Degas' paintings or a "making-of" documentary? Yes, I think there is and Mary Oliver offers it.

Like Jesus she, too, looks at a flower of the field - in this case a beautiful iris rather than a lily - and then offers us the following:

Praying
from Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

We look at a ballet performance and it looks to us as if the dancers can defy gravity with ease. Degas really shows us behind the scenes and makes visible the discipline and hard work that is required to pull off this performance. Degas also does not shy away from hinting at the darker elements both of backstage life and in the objectification of the dancers - most notably in the sculpture "La Petite Danseuse".

We look at a film, let's say Hitchcock's "Psycho", and especially its shower scene - one of the best known in movie history. But behind the scene documentaries by Bouzereau and Galluzzo reveal that although this scene only lasts 3 minutes and is a presentation which, despite its horror, seems instantaneous and done with ease actually took seven days, seventy-seven camera angles and fifty cuts to create. Like Degas they show us the discipline and hard work that is required to pull off this performance.

Mary Oliver does something similar for the act of prayer. She shows that behind acts of prayer that seem to be calling on another world and are dependent on a specific focus, words and beliefs there is to be seen - and experienced - a different perspective. Her poem is, therefore, literally a miniature behind the scenes "making-of" documentary about prayer. She shows us the discipline and hard work required to pray. As she does this she reveals that focus needn't be a beautiful iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, a few small stones or, by extension the birds of the air, the lilies of the field or an image of a heavenly Father - the point, she shows, is simply to cultivate "attention". The consequent patching together of a few words, whatever they are, is simply a response to what is seen when we attend. Then she reveals what is, I think, her key, behind-the scenes insight saying that so done this prayer *is* a doorway but one through which we are not ushered into another world but one through which we experience a different perspective on *this* world - a world of thanks and space in which we are called to be attentive to a voice other than our own. Not a voice from another world, of course, but a voice from this world that, because of the noise of our personal existence, hitherto we had failed to hear. It is in this space that we become aware of the voice of an "other" and it is only when we become aware of this other that genuine love and compassion becomes possible - can be called forth from us.

And the point of my observations today? Well, in an age and culture such as our own which has lost, rightly in my opinion, a belief in another world, we could also loose the healing practice of prayer because it is too easy to think it is tied to another world. Oliver concisely and beautifully shows us otherwise - its the practice of cultivating attention.

Thanks to Degas we see the ballet from another perspective and we understand this world better. Thanks to "making-of" documentaries we understand film from another perspective and we understand this world better. Thanks to Mary Oliver we can understand the practice of prayer from another perspective and we understand this world better.

The promise of a better life we seek in religion and in its practice of prayer is available, not elsewhere and not in belief in another world but here and now, in this world - indeed it is clear religion does not need another world. Today we have studied Mary Oliver's "making-of" documentary about prayer. When you leave here should you choose as you watch the performance of life, and better attend to its unfolding, you can listen for the voice of the "other" and enter through the doorway with prayerful thanks into this world experienced differently, more broadly, more deeply, more truly.

"…how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster…" - On the need not to talk about 9/11

2011-09-12T16:57:00.001+01:00

Before I begin I want you to be aware that throughout I use the terms "9/11" and the "11th September 2001" to refer to different things. At no point do I use them synonymously.

I tried very hard to resist the pressure to speak today about "9/11" but as you all know there was no escape from it this week thanks to the many hours and countless column inches devoted to it in the media. To this one must add the plain and simple truth that for many reasons the events of that day influenced me profoundly and contributed to a major change of emphasis in my own personal political, religious and emotional way of being-in-the-world. Given these factors not to say something today about "9/11" seemed, in the end, to be odd and counter-productive.

On the other hand I still felt a very strong desire not to talk about the matter. By this I do not mean I wished merely to ignore "9/11" but I did want to find a way to make it clear that I was actively *not* talking about it and to freight this act with useful meaning.

To help me explain why I feel the need to do this I want to introduce a distinction between "9/11" and the "11th September 2001". Thanks to an ongoing post-hoc analysis "9/11" is now the name, a proper noun, which refers to the increasingly complex story or stories that have grown up in the shadow of the events of the "11th September 2001". This is not to say that this process is a bad thing and, at its best and when it is not merely trying to create politically expedient myths (expedient either for the USA, its allies or its enemies - real or invented), the process of turning the catastrophe into a story can help all of us find understanding, healing and acceptance.

In a book called "Young Men and Fire" the author Norman Maclean (best known for his story "A River Runs Through It") tried to do this about the death of thirteen Forest Service Smoke-jumpers in Mann Gulch, Montana, on 5 August 1949. The book was a product of his strong belief that "in this cockeyed world there are shapes and designs" and he felt that "if only we have some curiosity, training, and compassion and take care [also] not to lie or to be sentimental" (Maclean p. 37) then we could reveal these same shapes and designs which allowed the living to remember creatively and unsentimentally and, thereby, learn how to continue to live better and more hopefully in the days to come.

Maclean felt that:

"If a storyteller thinks enough of storytelling to regard it as a calling, unlike a historian, he must follow compassion wherever it leads him. He must be able to accompany his characters, even into the smoke and fire, and bear witness to what they thought and felt even when they themselves no longer knew. This story of the Mann Gulch fire will not end until it feels able to walk the final distance to the crosses with those who for the time being are blotted out by smoke. They were young and did not leave much behind them and need someone to remember them" (Maclean p. 102).

It strikes me that what is true of the young men who died in Mann Gulch remains true of the nearly 3,000 men and women who died on the 11th September 2001. However, I fear that the story of the whole - that is to say the story called "9/11" - has largely been co-opted by our culture for less than honourable and healing ends.

Anyway, if you want to hear about "9/11" then I simply refer you to the many politicians and cultural commentators whose words you have heard this week and will be hearing more of during the coming days, weeks and years.

But today I want to draw your attention to the day the "11th September 2001" which in a key, even fundamental respect was a day like any other. I want to do this because I think it is important to make visible a general background without which we can all too easily develop a dangerous sense of human power and control - the same sense of power and control that made possible both the events of "9/11" and which continue to cause conflict around the world. Perhaps more importantly I want to do it so that when I conclude we can simply rest silently together in non-partisan human solidarity with those who died.

But how to show you this background, this "11th September 2001", when every memory, every picture, every piece of footage, every witness' story of the day is by now so coloured by "9/11"? I admit that it is hard and I'm not sure I can do it but even if I succeed in giving you the briefest and most fleeting glimpse of it today then this will be sufficient.

I can only hope to do this via the picture and article that helped me catch a glimpse of it. The picture, by the senior Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker, shows a group of New Yorkers sitting chatting in the sun in a park in Brooklyn whilst behind them, across the East River, is rising the cloud of smoke and dust that marks the place where the Twin Towers stood only a short time before. The article is about the picture and was written last week by the Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones.

Probably wisely, Hoepker did not feel it was appropriate to publish his photo in 2001 and it was only in 2006 that it appeared in a book and not surprisingly it quickly became a cause of controversy. As Jones tells us:

'The critic and columnist Frank Rich wrote about it in the New York Times. He saw in this undeniably troubling picture an allegory of America's failure to learn any deep lessons from that tragic day, to change or reform as a nation: "The young people in Mr Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American."'

However, as Jones notes,

'Rich's view of the picture was instantly disputed. Walter Sipser, identifying himself as the guy in shades at the right of the picture, said he and his girlfriend, apparently sunbathing on a wall, were in fact "in a profound state of shock and disbelief". Hoepker, they both complained, had photographed them without permission in a way that misrepresented their feelings and behaviour.'

If nothing else this reveals the important truth that one cannot photograph a feeling. But another important thing of which Jones reminds us is that this was the only photograph taken that day which seems 'to assert the art of the photographer'.

Jones notes that

' . . . among hundreds of devastating pictures, by amateurs as well as professionals, that horrify and transfix us because they record the details of a crime that outstripped imagination – even Osama bin Laden dared not expect such a result – this one stands out as a more ironic, distanced, and therefore artful, image. Perhaps the real reason Hoepker sat on it at the time was because it would be egotistical to assert his own cunning as an artist in the midst of mass slaughter.'

But ten years on it is precisely this artistic distance that counts and which helps us glimpse something that is most certainly not the egotistical cunning of an artist. This "something" is, paradoxically, the strange closeness to the "11th September 2011" the picture affords us.

Jones begins to help us to see/feel this by reminding us of the famous Renaissance painting by Pieter Bruegel, "The Fall of Icarus", in which he depicts a peasant ploughing also seemingly untroubled on as Icarus falls into the sea to his death. This painting along with W. H. Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" which references it 'captures something that is true of all historical moments: life does not stop dead because a battle or an act of terror is happening nearby'.

"Musee des Beaux Arts"

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Hoepker's picture shows us this same truth in the visual imagery of our own age, an age in which most of us are not ploughmen but men and women whose daily work includes the possibility of taking a break in the sun by a river with friends. Like the Breughel's ploughman, as Jones says, 'The people in this photograph cannot help being alive, and showing it.'

Hoepker's and Breughel's picture and Auden's and Jones' words shockingly (if artfully) remind us that we live in a world that in its immediate and constant unfolding is beyond simple static human knowing and to be living is to be beyond the possibility of stopping before any event, fact or thing with our minds filled with a complete knowledge of what is going on and to pose in a way our future selves/generations might deem appropriate. To be sure after the even we can always analyse, interpret, create healing stories or dangerous myths about these events, facts and things (and these will say something meaningful to us) but we must never forget that all these activities are always undertaken against a general background of radical not-knowing and against a knowledge that despite this we cannot help but being alive and showing it. Is this not what was shown by all of us on the "11th September 2001" in some way or another?

"9/11" tries, understandably, to explain, to regain some power and control over the events. This, inevitably, distances us from the 3,000 people who died for they most certainly did not understand, they did not have any power or control.

However, the "11th September 2001" - made accessible by the Hoepker's photo and its artistic distance - brings us, paradoxically, closer to those 3,000 people and the utter incomprehension, powerlessness and horror they felt. An incomprehension, powerlessness and horror that we, too, felt.

Anyway, with these thoughts in mind it now behoves us to consider what we are to do as we stop now to remember and pay respect to the dead.

Are we to remember "9/11" or the "11th September 2001"?

Are we to remember what our culture tells us the day meant or are we here to remember and stand in solidarity with the ordinary men and women who were doing ordinary things and in which we also acknowledge a basic aspect of the human condition that we cannot help being alive and showing it - even in the face of death?

SILENCE

As we break our silence let our memorial of that day be a healthy and healing knowledge that whatever befalls us we cannot help being alive and showing it and may we always ensure that this showing is one which encourages us, not to acts of violence and hate but those of compassion and forgiveness.

Amen.

"I will be what I will be" - seeking home (Heimat)

2011-09-04T17:05:00.000+01:00

In living as in knowing, be
Intent upon the purest way;
When gale and current push you, pull you,
Yet they’ll never overrule you;
Compass and pole-star, chronometer
And sun and moon you’ll read the better,
With quiet joy, in your own fashion
Will reach the proper destination.
Especially if you don’t despair
Because the course is circular:
A circumnavigator, hail
The harbour whence you first set sail.

J. W. von Goethe (trans. Michael Hamburger in Goethe: Poems and Epigrams, Anvil Press, London 1983)

Perhaps simply because of its final stanza, this epigram of Goethe's came back into my mind on the train last week as Susanna and I made our way back home from a stay in France. Of course, in this piece Goethe is not speaking about a return from a summer vacation such as the one we had been on but of the kind of spiritual return he thought each human soul could make during the course of its whole life. Anyway, Goethe's lines - with which I am going to disagree - provided me with the impetus for today's address - an address which picks up on themes I was exploring with you during June and July.

Since stumbling across it in my early twenties Goethe's epigram has often comforted me. It said that, as long as I remained intent upon following the purest way - that is to say to hold fast to the good, true and the beautiful - I would be capable of navigating myself back to the eternal safe harbour from whence I first set sail; a harbour that goes by many names though it mattered not whether I called it God, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Absolute or Deus-sive-natura.

My Christian upbringing naturally gifted me with the strong belief that this harbour existed and I was taught (via its literature and various religious and philosophical teachings such as Goethe's epigram) that I could access a recollection of this divine, perfect home or harbour - and this, in turn, would not only give me the skills to read compass, chronometer, pole-star, sun and moon to help navigate my way back to my home harbour but also gift me an associated quiet joy and confidence.

This idea of a divine, home harbour has, of course, been a key idea within our European and North American religious cultures and, upon entering the ministry, it was made clear to me that one of my roles was to find ways by which I might jog the memories of this home in those whom I served so that together, in quiet joy and confidence, we might all make our way back to the harbour from whence we had once set sail.

Perhaps this story is true but as I sped through the French countryside last week contemplating Goethe's lines I was forced to admit that as I have continued on my own journey through life I have become less and less convinced that I am a circumnavigator returning to a previously known port and now when I look down to read compass, chronometer or up, to read pole-star, sun and moon, the only measurements I find I can read off them these days are ones that suggest, not a circular, but a complex linear and open-ended course of travel.

To help you see what I mean it is perhaps helpful to begin by thinking about recollection and memory - what Plato called 'anamnesis'. Ernst Bloch reminds us that:

'The [Platonic] doctrine of anamnesis claims that we have knowledge only because we formerly knew. But them there could be no fundamentally new knowledge . . . Anamnesis provides the reassuring evidence of complete similarity . . . Anamnesis has an element of attenuation [that is to say a narrowing or closing down] about it, [which] makes everything a gigantic déjà vu' (cited in 'Ernst Bloch' by Vincent Geoghegan, Routledge 1996 p. 37).

But, to me at least, life has begun to show up as much more creative, sophisticated and alive to new possibility than would be the case if it were merely a gigantic déjà vu. Just before going away for the summer I spoke to you about this in an address called 'Tracing paths of the world's becoming' in which I cited the anthropologist Tim Ingold (Being Alive - Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, Routledge 2011). He said, you will remember:

'To be sentient . . . is to open up to a world, to yield to its embrace, and to resonate in one's inner being to its illuminations and reverberations. Bathed in light, submerged in sound and rapt in feeling, the sentient body, at once both perceiver [of the world] and producer [of things in the world], traces paths of the world's becoming in the very course of contributing to it's ongoing renewal.'

And also that

'It is of the essence of life that it does not begin here or end there, or connect to a point of origin with a final destination, but rather that it keeps on going, finding a way through the myriad of things that form, persist and break up in its currents. Life, in short, is a movement of opening, not of closure' (Ingold p. 3-4).

I'm aware that some people will react strongly against this thought if only because this view seems to remove any possibility of there being a safe homeland or harbour of the spirit which we can attain after the exhausting experience that is the journey of life.

But even with this change of perspective from closed and restricted circumnavigation to the freedom of open-ended 'travel-towards' it is possible to maintain a strong sense of a home, or a safe port to which we are travelling even though it must be one quite unlike that which Goethe - and most of Christianity - envisioned. But to have a hope of attaining this different harbour we need first to break the chains that harness us, rather like an ox, to a circular grindstone in which our life, work and even death really no more than an movement in an endless circle.

We can perhaps best begin to hammer and chisel through the chains that bind by tackling head on the belief that "I am" or that "we are". As Peter Thompson says in his introduction to Bloch's "Atheism in Christianity":

'The "Am" which will exist at the end of the process is not the one who sets off on the journey in the first place, but the one who arrives at his genesis at the end of the journey. In the process of becoming, Nietzsche and Bloch contend, one becomes an "Am" which is not yet visible, not yet complete, nor even conceivable. As Arthur Rimbaud puts it in another context, "Je suis un Autre" (I *is* someone else)' (Peter Thompson's introduction to Ernst Bloch's "Atheism in Christianity", Verso Books, London 2009, p. xiii).

Bloch thought that this and other powerful insights was to be found hiding subversively (and still undischarged) in the Biblical text and he encouraged people to use its stories and myths

'. . . to search for a historical world which can be liberated from its own limitations . . . and which will allow us to pass out of passive and anamnetic circularity into active potentiality' (Peter Thompson's introduction to Ernst Bloch's "Atheism in Christianity", Verso Books, London 2009, p. xiv).

A key story/myth to which Bloch returned again and again is found in Exodus 3. The chapter begins with God speaking to Moses from out of the burning bush saying that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God then continues:

Exodus 3:7-15

In our English Bibles "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" (Hebrew: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‎) is generally translated as "I Am that I Am" and it is a name of God which has powerfully contributed to the thought that God's perfection is static - that He is the unchanging harbour from whence we set sail and to which we have hopes we may return. But the tense of the Hebrew, as the Rabbi and Biblical scholar W. Gunther Plaut points out, 'is not clear; it could mean "I am" or "I will be" (or "I shall be")' (W. Gunther Plaut, "The Torah: A modern commentary", Union of Hebrew Congregations, New York 1981, p. 405).

Bloch wholeheartedly embraces the latter translation of "I will be what I will be" and in so doing begins to unfold a conception of God as change and process rather than timeless and unchanging. He felt that this name - "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" - introduced a way of thinking which 'posits no hereafter or "above", but rather a possible "before-us"' (cited in 'Ernst Bloch' by Vincent Geoghegan, Routledge 1996 p. 85).

Because in Bloch's reading of the Judaeo-Christian myth, God, like us, is always becoming, God no longer lords it "above" us but now walks "with" us on the same journey of becoming - an Exodus from circular captivity to a creative, plural and open-ended freedom. This walking-with-us-liberating kind of God is, of course, most powerfully depicted in our inherited myths and stories in the person of Jesus. The myth of the Resurrection is vital in this story because it is the point at which the baton of divinity is finally passed over to us and we all become part of this divine becoming. In the traditional language of Romans (12:5) it is when 'we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.' It is to say, as Nathan did last week in his address last week, that we can say 'God is in us' and that, therefore, we must 'Live Him'.

This insight is what allows Bloch to say rather strikingly that "Humanity lives everywhere still in pre-history" and that "each and everything is waiting for the creation of a just world." This thought allows him to introduce into play a new conception of in what consists our harbour or home:

'The true Genesis is not at the beginning, but at the end, and it will only start to come about when society and existence become radical, i.e. take themselves by their own roots. The root of history, however, is the labouring, creative human, engaged in reshaping and overcoming given conditions. Once [a person] has grasped this in himself and that which is his, without alienation and based in real democracy, so there will arise in the world something that shines into everyone's childhood, but where no one has yet been: Heimat [home]' (cited in Ernst Bloch, "Atheism in Christianity", Verso Books, London 2009, p. xix).

Coming back to the UK after its shocking summer riots and as we face still more social, financial, political and religious instability Bloch's insight serves to remind me, at least, that we are not trapped in some endlessly repeating circle but always gifted with the possibility of creating better ways of being-in-the-world than the ones we have present to us today or have had in the past. In every moment in which we know 'God is in us' and we 'Live Him', acting on the real open-ended possibilities that always lie before us, we experience not only true human freedom but also a genuine foretaste of the home (Heimat) we have not yet reached but which has always shone into everyone's childhood.

Our contemporary society is trapped in all kind of grinding and burdensome circular ways of being (I'm thinking here particularly of the insanities that are neo-liberalism and fundamentalist religion) and we need to awake to the fact that we are the chained oxen who helping to driving them. However, we know things can be better for we still have within the myths and stories of our childhood undischarged visions and foretastes of what a better world could be. But this home (Heimat) is NOT in the past it lies ready-to-hand but latent in the present (no one has been there yet) and continually cries out to us to be released into the world.

God said "I will be what I will be" and he went forth into the world to set his people free. As "God is in us" and in so far as we then "Live Him" and work for this freedom we are saying "We will be what we will be" and will have begun to set our chisels against the chains to free ourselves to travel home.

Au revoir for the month of August . . .

2011-08-02T18:23:00.004+01:00

The Guv'nor at Wandlebury

This post is just to wish folk a good summer. I'm on vacation during the coming month and won't be checking my emails nor blogging - I intend simply to sleep, eat, read (mostly Bloch I think), walk and cycle (the Pashley Guv'nor) around the Cambridgeshire/Suffolk/North Essex countryside. The photo above was from today's ride in which I went through Wandlebury when the temperature hit 29C. Hmmm, nice.

So, thanks for all your support over the last year - face to face and digitally - I value your comments and contributions hugely. I look forward to meeting you all again one way or another in September.

Michael Roberts

As a meditation for the summer I leave you with one of my favourite poems by Michael Roberts whose work I discovered in my teens and have valued ever since. I had a plan, once upon a time, to do my masters dissertation on his work or even concentrate on him for a doctorate. In the end I did my masters dissertation on Robert Travers Herford and since I neither want nor need a PhD I'll stick to reading Roberts for pleasure and enlightenment. A much better idea methinks.

It is, as I said, one of my favourite poems but it is a very challenging one whose truth I feel daily. Make of it what you will. If you fancy posting a comment please do but please note I won't be able to get them up until I log on again in September.

ON READING SOME NEGLECTED POETS

This is a long road in a dubious mist;
Not with any groan nor any heard complaint
We march, uncomprehending, not expecting Time
To show us beacons.

When we have struggled on a little farther
This madness will yield of itself,
There will not be any singing or sudden joy,
But a load will be set down.

And maybe no one will ever come,
No other traveller passing that way,
Therefore the load we lifted will be left,
A milestone, insignificant.

(You can find this in his, alas out of print, Collected Poems, Faber & Faber, London, 1958 or, alas also out of print, Frederick Grubb (ed.), Michael Roberts: Selected Poems and Prose, Carcanet Press, 1980).

Dove that ventured outside - adding real freight to liberal culture

2011-08-01T11:54:00.005+01:00

Reading: Genesis 8:1-13 (the story of Noah's sending out of the dove)

One of the great tropes of liberal religion, at least at its back-end in the crowd which has inherited its so many of its fruits (i.e. us), was that it hoped to bring about, and to a limited degree did bring about, the possibility of a way of being religious that was free from fear and superstition. I still subscribe to this project and the for the possibility of a religion without superstition and, as many of you know, one of my great models here is the Roman philosophical poet Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BC – ca. 55 BC). In his poem, De Rerum Natura, Lucretius saw that:

"It was long the case that men would grovel upon the earth,
crushed beneath the weight of Superstition (religio) whose head
loomed in the heavens, glaring down with her dreadful visage
until Epicurus of Greece dared look up and confront her,
taking a stand against the fables and myths of the gods
with their stories of those impending thunderbolts from above . . ."

(Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, University of California Press, 2008 p. 3-4 trans. David R. Slavitt)

You will remember that for him this terror, this darkness of the mind was to be dispelled ". . . not by the sun's light or it's ray's shafts but by careful observation and understanding of inner laws of how nature works" (ibid, p. 7) and his poem remains a glorious example of this process at work. I've talked at length about this in a series of addresses earlier this year concerning "naturae species ratioque" - the outward and inner workings of nature - and I refer you back to those addresses if you are interested.

But, even as I maintain an unswerving loyalty to this great liberal project, I have to admit that many - especially certain influential modern secular atheists - have pursued it in a way that I cannot support. The reason is that they have consistently failed to distinguish between superstition and faith such that, even as the needful attempt continues to be made to rid society of superstition there runs a disturbing parallel attempt to rid society of faith. But religious faith and superstition are not the same thing as Wittgenstein succinctly observed:

"Religious faith and superstition are entirely different. One of them springs from *fear* and is a kind of false science. The other is a trusting" (Culture and Value p. 82 - MS 137 48b: 4.6.1948).

(Superstition is, of course, a kind of belief and so it can be helpful to make a distinction between them faith and belief. The well-known story of the promoter and the tightrope-walker is a good illustration. You can read a version of it here.)

Any project which, even if unintentionally, begins to drive trust and faith from the world is a bad thing and under no circumstances will I support it. Anyway it is clear to me at least that Epicurus and Lucretius most certainly did not desire this. I would also add (in passing today though it is a vital point in the bigger picture of my own thinking and teaching) that I think Jesus' teaching can be understood as concerned to develop in us a faithful way of being-in-the-world that was not about belief and so could be free from superstition. Alas, much Christian thinking over the centuries developed a quasi-scientific, propositional way of looking at the world - i.e. it believed that it could, and was, talking about metaphysical (and sometimes physical) facts about the world - and so increasingly in many of its forms it has become a superstition not a faith. It seems clear that this tendency is not confined to Christianity.

Anyway, today I want to promote the idea that trust and, therefore, faith is vital, not only to our individual but also to our corporate well-being. And, to begin we must observe that trust only exists as a meaningful way of being-in-the-world in a world in which not everything is, or can be, known in a merely theoretical or unembodied way.

It is important to see that this kind of not knowing would be the case for us even if we knew all the facts of the world.

So, for example, although we might imagine being able to know every scientific fact about a pint of Greene King IPA (that's a kind of beer for the uninitiated), until we actually pick up a glass of it, smell it, and then actually taste it an important truth of the beer would remain unknown to us. Truth is, in this sense, "aletheia", i.e. an "unconcealedness" in which the world is disclosed, opened up, made intelligible to us by our direct participation in it.

So now let's take a similar thought but one couched in a way that, as far as our culture is concerned, is more obviously spiritual than a pint of IPA even as it still uses some very down to earth imagery, namely a dove and a ball, Rilke's sublime poem "Taube, die draußen blieb" - "Dove that ventured outside" (trans. Stephen Mitchell):

*****

Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote:
housed and protected again, one with the day, the night,
knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings
pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss,
innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness;
only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free,
through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself over the vast abyss.
Ah, the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space,
doesn't it fill our hands differently upon its return:
heavier by the weight of where it has been.

*****

The doves who never leave the dovecote and the known aspects/facts of their world, cannot live in the full and abundant way that the dove that ventured outside can. But it is important to notice that the dove who "ventured outside" over the abyss returns to the known aspects/facts of its world - and we read at the outset that she is "housed and protected again". To this important point I will return and when I do I'll hang it on an old and well-known Zen saying that: "In the beginning mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. After practice for some time, Mountains are not Mountains, rivers are not rivers. After that, going further, Mountains are again mountains, rivers are again rivers." (As I use this saying I want to make it clear that I am not claiming this is how Zen practitioners use it. I'm simply using it because I think it helps me illustrates something I feel I have seen and felt in my attempt to live a non-metaphysical form of Christianity - see here.)

What Rilke seems to be trying to show us in this poem is what happens when any creature has faith enough to risk actually experiencing factually unknowable aspects of the world - that is to say to enter into an important way of being by which any world is more deeply disclosed to us - a disclosure which, to repeat, can only come through a direct comminglement in the world. In this poem Rilke illustrates this direct contact through the image of the feeling the dove experiences through her wings as she passes "through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings" (a feeling analogous to the taste of an actual quaffed beer). Whilst never changing the actual empirical scientific facts of the world - this felt, embodied practical knowledge is what changes the dove and us in the most subtle but also the most important of ways.

But, because this kind of change is so subtle it can be very hard to talk about easily because we find that, when we *have* ventured outside and felt the world through our wings as we pass through all distance and fear, on our return the words we must use to encourage others to make this venture must stay the same as they once were if real communication between those of us who have ventured outside and those who have not is to be a possibility.

Before we venture outside we will almost certainly have some idea of in what consists, to use Rilke's list (though we can add countless more), "serenity", "loss", "innocence", "security", "tenderness" and "freedom". Indeed we deem these ideas (and others) so important for our society, our 'dovecote', that it is essential that something about them are capable of being taught to people before they have had the opportunity to experience them directly and at first-hand. But, for each individual in each generation, these abstract ideas are always in need of being won-back by us if they are to be truly alive and genuinely capable of offering us the satisfaction they both promise and we need. As Rilke's says, only the won-back heart is satisfied and truly free.

Mere belief in any idea (even the highest that our liberal society values) without at some point turning it into real embodied knowledge is potentially on the way to becoming merely a superstition. And make no mistake about it there exists such a thing as liberal superstition and it is expressed by every person who only pays lip service to those values and who do not have faith to leave the dovecote and experience that embodied truth about them which is always unknown until truly, felt beneath their 'wings'.

Alas, it seems to me that our liberal society as a whole is today frighteningly confined to the dovecote. In personal relationships, in our commitment to wider society, I daily come across an almost pathological fear of actually venturing forth into the world to touch, feel, taste, smell and see first hand the values we claim to live by and know. Our culture's pint of beer is on the bar but we are strangely fearful of crossing the abyss that stands between us and the tasting.

To be truly in the world always requires us to risk leaping over the abyss - that is to say into a region unknowable to us except by embodied experience.

Here we can begin to draw to a close by tying the story of the dove leaving the ark, Rilke's last stanza concerning the ball and the old Zen story I introduced earlier.

When you and me (along with the words/language we inherit) have faith to venture outside the dovecote/ark the first moments of flight (which may last sometime) are, naturally, frightening and upsetting. Old certainties suddenly disappear. The word mountain - whose meaning in the dovecote/ark we once knew - is now 'not mountain' because below only the abysmal water of the flood stretches out featureless around us. The word 'river' - whose meaning in the dovecote/ark we once knew - is now 'not river' because below only the abysmal water of the flood stretches out featureless around us.

But continuing to fly with faith, the abysmal water of the flood recedes and as it does we can begin the actual touching, tasting, smelling, hearing and seeing of the world and this disappearance of the abyss allows us to become freighted (as Noah's dove is freighted with the olive leaf) with a practical embodied knowledge. When we return to the dovecote/ark and our fellows mountains have become again mountains and rivers have become again rivers. But for us the second word of each pair is now freighted differently - like Rilke's ball flung into infinite space and Noah's dove the words return to us heavier by the weight of where they (and we - for we are our language) have been.

The task - oh, so hard - is to get our fellow doves to realise the difference between the freighted and un-freighted use of words. But the difficulty is that these words look the same and both the doves who ventured outside and those who stayed behind can seemingly still talk meaningfully about "mountains" and "rivers", about "serenity", "loss", "innocence", "security", "tenderness" and "freedom".

Of course every dove comes back with slightly different freight to another. Venturing forth does not guarantee we will all come back and find ourselves in perfect unity about all subjects. Not at all. But venturing forth can guarantee that we do not develop societies whose form of life/language is increasingly empty of freight - a genuine abyss. My fear is that our Western European and North American liberal culture (especially in its religious and philosophical modes) has become empty and that we have lost faith that our values only have real traction and use when they have been touched/tasted/embodied by us. We may still believe liberal culture is a lively embodied way of being in the world but, increasingly from where I'm standing/flying, that's looking more and more like a superstition based on a fear of living.

Summer is a time of venturing forth. So I'd encourage you to risk flying out over the abyss to commingle with the world and so have a real chance of returning in the autumn with your whole being freighted with a deeper knowledge of the world in which you actually live.

Hope Valley Hill - by Helios (aka Keith Kenniff)

2011-07-26T21:10:00.007+01:00

Caesura CD cover

Well folks, for many reasons, I'm not going to be able to get Sunday's address up online but, in any event, it wasn't one of my best so here, instead, is something more uplifting, namely a plug for a musician whose work I have long-admired, Keith Kennif. He has two monikers "Helios" and "Goldmund" and also works with his wife Hollie in "Mint Julep".

Here's his website:

http://www.unseen-music.com/

And here's a taster of his music. First the track that pulled me in - Hope Valley Hill from the Helios album Caesura and then a new track with Hollie. Do check him out. Enjoy.

A spin on the Pashley Guv'nor along the Lodes Way

2011-07-25T19:09:00.005+01:00

Me with the Guv'nor at White Fen

I took the day off today - much needed after the past few weeks - and took the Pashley Guv'nor out for its first ride along the lovely Lodes Way. Here's how it came to be in my stable of bikes.

My two close friends Agnes and Ronald Gabriel who recently died (see last week's address An Achievable Perfection) very kindly left me a little money to spend on something I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. As readers of this blog know one of my passions is the bicycle and I've always had a soft spot for classic cycles. I have a Dursley-Pederson, my regular day-ride steed is a Viking Ian Steel from 1956 fitted with a Sturmey Archer 3-speed gear, my round town bike is an 80's Raleigh Superbe and my single speed fixie is a lovely 80s Colnago.

Over the years Agnes and Ronald gave me a couple of lovely bicycling books from the 1920s and 30s and since both of them were born in 1928 the possibility of getting hold of Pashley's wondrous Guv'nor (pity about the apostrophe . . .) began to dawn on me as an appropriate thing to get as both a reminder of them and something which will continue to bring me pleasure for many years to come. The excellent Evan's cycles in Milton Keynes got me one to test ride on Saturday and, need I tell you, I brought it home with me. It's a real delight. It is based on a Path Racer made by Pashley in the 1930s and, as they state it's "just the ticket for exploring the English countryside." Below are a few photos from the ride. For those of you waiting for Sunday's address I'll get it up sometime tomorrow early evening.

Here's a link to a pdf catalogue of the bike.

And here's a link for the marvellously enthusiastic and informative site The Guvnor Owners' Club.

The Guv'nor in Lode High Street

Swaffham Bulbeck Lode

Looking south back towards Cambridge over Baker's Fen

The Guv'nor at Wicken Fen Cafe

Preparing the Guv'nor Blend tea after the ride - amazingly the tea comes with the bike!

An achievable perfection

2011-07-18T10:31:00.004+01:00

Agnes and Ronald in Avignon 2007

Yesterday I conducted the memorial service of two of my good friends, Agnes and Ronald Gabriel. In that service, along with a couple of other people, I made a few reflective comments in remembrance of them.

These comments preceded a short ceremony involving the lighting of candles. I began by lighting a tall candle to represent life itself and, as light begets light, from it I lit a slightly smaller candle that stood for Agnes' and Ronald's lives. From their candle Ronald's son, Stephen, then lit four more standing for the love and compassion Agnes and Ronald shared and gave to each other, their families, friends and colleagues; for their healing work as doctors with children and with adults; for their creativity as artists, writers, teachers and academics; for their generous spirit of adventure which encouraged all of us to live life to the full. And then, in the spirit of love I extinguished Agnes' and Ronald's candle saying that as we did this we could see that the Candle of Life still burnt as did the candles of love, healing, creativity and adventure that had been lit from their flame.

We used this ceremony at both their individual funerals (they died only six months apart) and during them the candle I lit after the Candle of Life had been for Agnes and Ronald as individuals. But I knew them only as a couple (they had got together in the very early seventies) and so, in this memorial service, before scattering their ashes in our memorial garden behind the church, it seemed highly appropriate to reunite them in the symbolism of a single flame.

Candles for Agnes and Ronald after the service

This reminded me of something I often say at the end of marriage services, words which are connected with the lighting of a single candle. At the beginning of the service the couple individually light the two outside candles of a three pronged candelabra. Then, after the promises have been exchanged and before I pronounce the couple married, together, they light the middle candle and I say some words uttered by the Baal Shem Tov:

From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven. And when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, their streams of light flow together, and a single brighter light goes forth from their united being.

I have long loved this image and am happy to keep using it in certain contexts - especially when you are lighting candles - but I'm aware that the mention of the words 'light' and 'heaven' leads many people when they hear this story to start thinking metaphysically and theologically of a world beyond and behind our own. As you know, I'm trying to encourage people to think differently about this and to see what we call the Divine as being very much part of this natural world. So, today, - to keep the latent metaphysics in check - I want to link this admittedly attractive and alluring image of a united, heavenward streaming flame with another illustration which keeps us very much down to earth. What this illustration is I'll tell you in a moment but as I re-explore it today I want to take the opportunity to pull it into close proximity with some of the thinking of the anthropologist Tim Ingold that we have explored in a couple of ways over the past few weeks.

It is important also to reveal at the outset that throughout this address I'm holding together in my mind the word 'God' and 'Life'. This has a powerful resonance in the immediate context because when Ronald died and Agnes, Stephen (Ronald's son) and I were preparing the service we decided to use the words which begin all our services here: Divinity is present everywhere. The whole world is filled with God. But, in certain places and at certain times, we feel a specialty of presence. May this be such a place and such a time. Late in the evening the day before the funeral Agnes suddenly said to me 'I don't want you to say God I want you to say Spirit of Life.' She surprised herself here because she had always been quite happy with the word God but at that moment, all of a sudden, she strongly felt it was the wrong word. The word God was used elsewhere in the service but she was adamant that it should not be used here. I want to follow her intuition a little further today.

Before coming to my illustration I want firstly to consider one of Jesus' most problematic, difficult, and even impossible, calls is found in the Gospel according to Matthew where he calls us "to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

This is a teaching that has had the potential to cause a lot of angst and it is perhaps why Luke early on nudged the teaching in a different way. In his gospel he changed 'perfection' to the slightly more achievable - though still very hard - "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36).

Everything hinges, of course, on what is meant by that word 'perfection.' One of the major problems here is that we, i.e. huge swathes of humankind - following Plato - has tended to interpret the word to be speaking of some kind of absolute state of being rather than as gesturing towards a dynamic and open-ended way of being.

Our human conception of in what consists the Father's, that is to say God's, perfection was, in part, arrived at by taking what human beings believed were the best human characteristics/feelings and then expanding them out to infinity. So right from the start there existed a strand within human thinking that placed perfection infinitely beyond our reach. Then, and utterly insanely, those who held to such a view continued to encourage people to try to achieve it. Complete madness.

This later meaning isn't helped by the fact that the Greek word which underlies our English word is 'telios' which means 'end' or 'purpose'. We preserve this Greek word in our language in the technical philosophical/theological term 'teleology'. In theological circles the teleological argument, sometimes known as the argument from design, holds that there exists an order and direction in nature and that this shows in some way the existence of God - a God who is perfect, static, immutable and wholly complete. The most famous current and deeply problematic version of this argument in our culture, as many of you will know, is known as "intelligent design". In this view God's plan is perfect and so the world is playing out wholly to this same plan and will do so until it reaches completion, i.e. God's perfection. So perfection at the beginning, a perfect unfolding, a perfect end. As the book of Revelation puts it: God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (1:8, 1:11, 21:6 and 22:13).

But the idea, that life is "a movement towards terminal closure" (Tim Ingold, "Being Alive - Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description", p. 3) is one that you will remember Tim Ingold - and I for that matter - wants strongly to challenge. Ingold (and I) wants to encourage us to replace the idea that life or the life-process is ends driven with, " . . . a recognition of life's capacity continually to overtake the destinations that are thrown up in its course" and he noted that:

"It is of the essence of life that it does not begin here or end there, or connect to a point of origin with a final destination, but rather that it keeps on going, finding a way through the myriad of things that form, persist and break up in its currents. Life, in short, is a movement of opening, not of closure" (Tim Ingold, "Being Alive - Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description", p. 3-4).

I think there is good reason to think that Jesus understood his own way of being-in-the-world in a similar fashion and I think this because his teaching's overall weight isn't one which seems to be encouraging anyone follow a life tending towards closure but, instead, continually to have life and hope and to have it abundantly. So, at this point I'd like to suggest that we may better understand the teaching to be perfect 'as your heavenly Father is perfect' as a call to be 'perfect as life is perfect' in its continual movement of opening not closure. Perhaps this is what Agnes had intuited when she wanted to speak of God as the Spirit of Life.

Lichen

OK, with that thought in mind we can turn to the illustration I referred to at the beginning of this address. Some of you may remember it - it is 'lichen' and why it connects with my close friends will quickly become clear in a moment.

Lichens are fascinating composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic association of, on the one hand a fungus and, on the other, some kind of photosynthetic partner which is usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium. Now I'm not a biologist and so cannot speak in any meaningful way about the important scientific issues involved in this. No, what fascinates me as a minister of religion is how it seems that the two partners involved in this living symbiotic relationship appear to have got involved with each other *after* they had achieved a certain kind of perfection as separate organisms. Indeed the individual organism still exist and thrive apart from each other.

Now Agnes and Ronald were just such individuals - both achieved success as senior consultant psychiatrists in the NHS during the 1960s and then in later decades in Canada. They both individually had lively social and artistic interests and successes. Then one day they met each other and the perfection of their individual lives - a perfection remember which is tied to openness not closure - was itself the very possibility of their having an ongoing perfection as a symbiotic organism. They were individually alga and fungus with their own distinct kinds of perfect flourishing. But, together, they became lichen and in this new form they also flourished in a new kind of perfect way - a way that helped them continually to overtake the destinations that were thrown up in the course of their collective life.

But, in keeping with the trajectory of this address, please remember that Agnes' and Ronald's perfection did not consist in achieving some absolute moral or physical state - they were not some holy or saintly couple - God Lord, no, they were as prone to the same failings and foibles as any of us. Instead their perfection as a couple was not a trajectory of a single light streaming heavenward towards a static absolute perfection but one which is better thought of as a 'horizontal', plural and symbiotic streaming into or, perhaps better, a comminglement with the world.

What was wonderful about them was that in the eleven years that I knew them at no point, even during very serious illness and then eventual death, was there ever a sense that they were somehow converging on a moment of closure. And, because they were not converging on closure but instead were continually commingling with the world overtaking the destinations that were thrown up before them we who knew them were encouraged to live likewise.

It seems to me that we as a religious community must learn from this. Churches often understand themselves as coming from something perfect (God - Alpha) and as a body which should be seeking to *restore* this same perfection in a New Heaven and a New Earth (Omega). Indeed the image of the spark of perfect light existing within us (as individuals and as a community) is, thanks to our culture, very strong and we can see why it is tempting to talk about those sparks re-uniting as a single pure flame to stream back heavenward into God's perfection. But I'd quite like to encourage us to see the world differently - including flame and light - and, though not as glamorous as light, the image of lichen can help.

It helps us understand our life together (our symbiosis) not as occurring between Alpha and Omega, converging on closure on a single perfection but as Alga and Fungus - a plural, commingled life which continually (and 'horizontally') overtakes the destinations which are thrown up before us. To be people of Life, light and lichen.

So, I say again, perhaps something like this was what Agnes suddenly saw when she insisted on speaking of God as the Spirit of Life. I am happy to have been able to accede to her request, not least of all because of the fruit it has born in my own life.

"We need not think alike to love alike" - or what the sun tells us

2011-07-10T17:32:00.005+01:00

MP3 Please read Mary Oliver's poem below before listening to the mp3.

Reading: "The Sun" by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone -
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance -
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love -
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed -
or have you too
turned from this world -

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems Vol. 1, Beacon Press 2004)

***

As the notices revealed, last week was, in all kinds of ways, very fraught and insanely busy. I knew early on that I would be left with no more than a couple of hours to prepare this address and so, to help the situation I took what is for me an unusual decision to choose a reading at the beginning of the week upon which to base my address - the idea being that I could think about it intermittently and at least have half an idea in my head about what to say by Saturday afternoon when I at last became free. I chose Mary Oliver's poem "The Sun" for two basic reasons. The first was that I thought it would trigger some reflections that would be wholly unrelated to the weekend's events - I just wanted to forget about them for a bit. The second was because of it's final stanza in which she asks whether we have turned from the world and gone crazy for power and for things. I really did feel that the events of the last two weeks - culminating in yesterday's marches - were stopping me from seeing the beauty of the sunset and had especially got me caught up in questions of political and religious power. Questions which, I ought to add, I think must be considered by us in our own gatherings because we are a religious movement that gained its basic shape through protesting and tackling both religious and political forms of oppression.

Anyway, as it happened, after choosing the poem I not only continued to forget to look at the sunsets but also forgot even to think about the poem. I got to Saturday morning but because I'd had to prepare the forthcoming memorial service for Ronald and Agnes with Ronald's son Stephen (all the while keeping an anxious eye on a live twitter feed about the two marches) by the time I actually got to sit down with the poem at about 3pm I felt utterly unable to draw out of it the strong message that I know exist within all of Oliver's poems. All I could make out of it was "OK folks, aren't sunsets lovely." God help us, sermons that are really no more than such platitudinous statements are the thing I hate most about much liberal religion and this was a feeling I shared with my Old Testament and Hebrew tutor, Father John Davis. I found this out after the two of us had attended a terribly sentimental funeral service in my college chapel in which the deceased had been consigned, I kid you not, to a beautiful sunset. As we were leaving Father John told me how when he died he wanted a proper funeral in which he was sent forth to God Almighty who would judge the quick and the dead not some vague sunset. On balance, given only a choice between these two, I'd chose the sunset over the excessively judgemental God but I knew what he meant and I was proud and honoured when he died to find out he had asked me to read from Ecclesiastes at his own requiem mass.

But that's somewhat by the by - the main point is that I couldn't see how to speak to Oliver's poem in a way that had any real depth to it and so the poem had to go. Then I remembered that Richard Howett, our local MEP, brought to the unity service a poem of peace written by John Andrew Storey, a Unitarian minister with Quakerly leanings who died in 1997. It was a touching thing for Richard to do and, since I knew John Andrew Story it had especial personal resonance for me. On my shelves I have an anthology published after he died and I thought, well, maybe this poem would be in there and I could use that. Alas, it wasn't but, as I looked through it, the following piece and poem shone out at me. Why this was the case will be obvious the moment you hear them.

Reading: The Ultimate Reality and Sunset

Many years ago, taking a walk on the cliffs at Sheringham, I was halted in my tracks by the magnificent spectacle of the sun making its majestic descent into the sea. It was the most beautiful sunset it has even been my privileged to witness, and as I watched that breathtaking sight the thought came to me again - as it had come many times before - that it would be utterly impossible to describe such an experience to a blind person. What words would you use to describe a sunset to a blind person?
The thought came to me too that we have the same problem when we try to describe or define God. I do not think it can be done, and I do not think we should even try. We all need more humility in talking about that Ultimate Reality we call 'God'. We should seek not to impose a definition but show a way of life and demonstrate a religious discipline that can lead to personal experience - and experience that involves not only ethical endeavour but also the practice of prayer/meditation. For me the value of religion is in this, that it shows us the path which, if faithfully followed, leads to a personal experience of the Divine.
When the experience comes one can only bow down in speechless reverence. On returning to our holiday flat I sat down and scribbled in the back of my diary some words which eventually became the following poem:

Evening in Sheringham
walking the cliffs,
skies reddened,
no breeze stirred,
no bird sang.
The sun set on a silent world
What beauty for the eyes,
what treasured memories for the mind.
A thought occurred -
how could one tell the blind
of such rare gifts,
with what poor words describe the changing shades,
the sea's reflections,
as the rays are caught?

A deeper thought as sunlight fades -
the power behind the sunset's glow?
Life-Force or Universal Mind,
no creeds reveal,
no church can show,
for 'God' can never be defined.
Only experience can know
what words can't tell.
With inward eyes at last we find
that which is Ultimately Real.

(The Inquirer, 23 July 1994)

But, before I come to the immediate point of this address there is one more connection to be made. Because of John Andrew Storey's mention of the futility of describing a sunset to a blind person, I could not but help being reminded of a section of Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief - a book which as you know is my constant companion - where he is talking about Jesus' healing of the blind man found in Chapter 9 of John's Gospel:

"Any demands for proof of the truthfulness of [Jesus']teaching are similar to people demanding evidence from a blind man on how and why he came to see the light. A healed blind man, remaining the same person he was before, could only say he was blind but now he sees. Exactly this and nothing more can be said by the person who did not previously understand the meaning of life, but then suddenly came to comprehend it. Such a person would only say that he previously did not know true goodness in life, but now he knows it. Like the healed blind man, who says 'I do not know anything about the correctness of the healing or the sinfulness of the healer, nor anything about some different, better healing. I know only one thing and that is I was blind, but now I see" (Leo Tolstoy, Gospel in Brief, trans. Dustin Condren, Harper Perennial, 2011, p. 80).

OK. Now we may cut to the chase - but I ought to make it clear that as I was writing this address it was not until the last minute that it became clear to me that I was actually on the trail of some real quarry. If I hadn't you would have been hearing from me an old address!

To see it we must return to the multi-faith service held here on Friday. Whenever I take part in, or as this time, conduct the kind of multi-faith service we had here on Friday I am struck by *how* differently the world shows up to the many people who are taking part. I'm also struck by the fact that, to be truthful - it's one of the painful duties I have - I simply don't comprehend much of what is being said by the contributors. I used to worry about this a great deal and did what many people do which is simply side-step the whole issue by convincing myself that it was possible simply to translate what I was hearing into something clearly intelligible to me - intelligible in a rational, proof-oriented sense. So, for example, I'd hear a Hindu talk about Brahman, or a Christian speak about the Trinity, a Muslim talk about Allah and I would say to myself well, really, we're all referring to the same X - with X being whatever was my preferred understanding of God at the time, let's say Spinoza's 'God-or-Nature' or Hegel's 'Absolute'. But half-an-hour of proper conversation with my Hindu, Christian or Muslim friends very quickly reveals that they most certainly are not referring to such a Spinozean or Hegelian conception of divinity when they are talking about Brahman, the Trinity or Allah. Hmm.

The problem here seems to be a theological/philosophical one and attempts to solve the problem naturally also mostly centre around theology or metaphysics. But over the last four or five years, increasingly I have begun to feel that it is a pseudo-problem and consequently it doesn't require a solution - least of all a theological/philosophical one - for us to be together in an important and meaningfully unified way as we were on Friday. If we go back through the readings, in reverse order, I hope you'll catch a glimpse of what I mean.

Tolstoy recognises that there are some important things in the world that for you suddenly show up as true. The man who is blinded to the meaning of his life (and remember Tolstoy is understanding blindness in this account as not being able to see meaning in life) is suddenly healed in some way; before he could not see a meaning in his life, now he can. Tolstoy points out that this cannot be talked about in a way that allows you to prove whether this is correct or not, or even whether there is a better kind of seeing/meaning around the corner. Again all you can say is 'Before I did not see the meaning of life, but now I see it and I do not know anything more than this.'

Returning to John Andrew Storey's analogy it should be clear to see - and no pun is intended - that should the sighted man try to show the blind man a sunset the attempt MUST fail and, even if the blind man were able to use the words and 'imagery' that relate to sunsets in a grammatically coherent way (that sounded like proof he did understand) we *know* he doesn't know about sunsets in the way the sighted man does.

Now some might feel this is a very negative conclusion - a way of saying well some people will never see 'God' - but it's not at all like that. The key thing to remember is that both the sighted man and the blind man can only live in the world (and in response to the world) as it is showing up for them and here is where John Andrew Storey, in my opinion, goes to the heart of the matter. He says, you will remember, that in the light of this what all of us must do [and the only thing we can do] is "show a way of life and demonstrate a religious discipline that can lead to a personal experience - a discipline that involves not only ethical endeavour but also the practice of prayer/meditation."

And this is what I saw and experienced in that multi-faith service. People acting compassionately together because of the way the world shows up to them - because out of that showing we all knew we had to come and be here together in solidarity - in unity. Not a metaphysical unity but a very real, social and physical unity.

I began the whole service by reminding people that in this church's memorial garden is a stone plaque upon which are engraved some words of the 16th-century Transylvanian Unitarian Bishop, Francis David (1510–1579): 'We need not think alike to love alike'. And here, on Friday, it was embodied. Beautiful.

So now we may return to the beginning and to Mary Oliver's poem. It is a simple but vital call to respond to how the world is actually showing up to us and not to pretend to another person that we are acting out of the world as it shows up to them. What the sun seems to be telling Mary Oliver and, therefore, us, is that we have to live fully and honestly by what we *do* see. We can't do anything else, we can't get behind, or beyond how the world actually shows up for us. As Wittgenstein once said: "Don't think, but look!" (Philosophical Investigations §66). And, on Friday, if you actually looked and didn't think, you could see, really see, that 'We need not think alike to love alike.'

*****

A place called England: tracing paths of the world’s becoming – a case study

2011-07-03T17:30:00.005+01:00

My 1956 Viking Ian Steele at Coploe Hill

Before giving the address I played the children and the congregation a song written by Maggie Holland called "A Place Called England". Apart from (St) George and (King) Arthur the names that appear in the song are not famous people but ordinary people Maggie knew or knows.

This song won her a BBC award and she tells us that it was 'inspired by Christopher Hill's book "The World Turned Upside Down", Leon Rosselson's song of the same name, Naomi Mitchison's "Sea-Green Ribbons", William Cobbett's "Cottage Economy", Hamish Henderson's "Freedom Come-All-Ye", Jean Giono's "The Man Who Planted Trees" and "animated discussions with (rightly) proud and passionate Scots like Dick Gaughan".'

The song has become an important in some of the debates about how we might reclaim a positive sense of English identity. Here's a live version of the peerless June Tabor performing the song and the lyric is reproduced below. Get June's version HERE and Maggie's HERE:

I rode out on a bright May morning
Like a hero in a song
Looking for a place called England
Trying to find where I belong
Couldn't find the old flood meadow
Or the house that I once knew
No trace of the little river
Or the garden where I grew

I saw town and I saw country
Motorway and sink estate
Rich man in his rolling acres
Poor man still outside the gate
Retail park and burger kingdom
Prairie field and factory farm
Run by men who think that England's
Only a place to park their car

But as the train pulled from the station
Through the wastelands of despair
From the corner of my eye
A brightness filled the filthy air
Someone's grown a patch of sunflowers
Though the soil is sooty black
Marigolds and a few tomatoes
Right beside the railway track

Down behind the terraced houses
In between the concrete towers
Compost heaps and scarlet runners
Secret gardens full of flowers
Meeta grows the scent of roses
Right beneath the big jet's path
Bid a fortune for her garden
Eileen turns away and laughs

So rise up George and wake up Arthur
Time to rouse out from your sleep
Deck the horse in the sea-green ribbons
Drag the old sword from the deep
Hold the line for Dave and Daniel
As they tunnel through the clay
While the oak in all its glory
Soaks up sun for one more day

And come all you at home with freedom
Whatever the land that gave you birth
There's room for you both root and branch
As long as you love the English earth
Room for vole and room for orchid
Room for all to grow and thrive
Just less room for the fat landowner
On his arse in his four-wheel drive

England is not flag or Empire
It is not money it is not blood
It's limestone gorge and granite fell
It's Wealden clay and Severn mud
It's blackbird singing from the may-tree
Lark ascending through the scales
Robin watching from your spade
And English earth beneath your nails

So here's two cheers for a place called England
Badly used but not yet dead
A Mr. Harding sort of England
Hanging in there by a thread
Here's two cheers for the crazy Diggers
Now their hour shall come around
We can plant the seed they saved us
Common wealth and common ground

In this address I want to try to show how the things I have talked about in the previous two weeks play out. In a nutshell what I said in those earlier addresses was about us developing an ability to read the world - i.e. better able to respond conversationally to what it seems to be saying to us and, secondly, to do this by understanding ourselves, not as a discrete disconnected things in a world of other discrete disconnected things, but as a sentient "line of becoming" which, itself, is but one of the sentient world's countless complex paths of becoming and ongoing renewal. The hope is to bring us to a " . . . a recognition of life's capacity continually to overtake the destinations that are thrown up in its course" and to see that, as the anthropologist Tim Ingold said:

"It is of the essence of life that it does not begin here or end there, or connect to a point of origin with a final destination, but rather that it keeps on going, finding a way through the myriad of things that form, persist and break up in its currents. Life, in short, is a movement of opening, not of closure" (Ingold p. 3-4).

(Tim Ingold's new book is called "Being Alive - Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description")

I begin this address (though it is not really a beginning for we are always-already in the world) with the forthcoming event to which I referred in the notices - namely the most unwelcome visit of the far-right English Defence League to protest against the building of a new mosque here in Cambridge. Although it is clear one must find a way to challenge such views it is never absolutely clear what is the most appropriate way to do this. However, what is absolutely clear, is that a process of discernment must take place within the wider community as a whole with all the affected voices being heard. Ensuring that something of this process does occur has taken up much of my week. However, by the time I got to Thursday afternoon I was wiped out, flagging and more than a little down. I've never found it easy to get myself, alone, out of such a mood and have learnt that to get out of such a slough of despond I need a conversation with the world. The quickest way to get that help is to go out into the world - consciously to take one's own line of becoming into the countless other lines of becoming that form the very meshwork of existence itself. I have a number of ways of weaving myself consciously back into this meshwork but on that day chose to ride my bicycle because I felt I really had to get beyond the city limits. But where to go? Again it is key to listen to the world - noticing how it is showing up for you. On Monday of last week, after conducting a funeral, I was invited back with the rest of the mourners to the home of the daughter of the deceased in the village of Duxford. I hadn't been to the village for a while and, as I drove there and back I was reminded of some of the lovely lanes nearby. Alas, I got back that Monday evening to the beginning of the shenanigans around the EDL and all too quickly forgot about those quiet roads. But now in my mind I saw their distinctive weave and felt their pull on my own line of becoming. The conversation had begun (though do remember that when I set out I did not know it would result in something that could become an address).

I got on my bicycle (the 1956 Viking Ian Steele - photo above) and made Duxford in good time and decided to spin on south to Ickleton. Here there is a site of a Roman villa and to the west, just over the river Cam in Great Chesterford, there was a large Roman fort and town.

Great Chesterford is one of the earliest Roman sites in Britain and may have been occupied during the initial campaign season of Aulus Plautius in A.D.43. It may even have been first used by the men of the legendary Ninth Spanish Legion. Here the landscape reminds us of what was for the people of this land a very frightening alien invading force. But, like all Roman sites, it quickly became something we now call a Romano-British town and so a major co-mingling was begun - the Romans here became British, the British became Roman. A mile east of the town was what the scholars call a Romano-Celtic temple - that is to say even the gods got to some serious co-mingling.

I couldn't but help but be reminded that the members of the EDL, just like you and me, are products of such a riotous national and religious co-mingling.

Musing on this word from the world I took off further south to cycle up Coploe Hill. Half-way up it is an old chalk-pit which has become a nature reserve and there I've enjoyed many flasks of tea. I decided to repeat the pleasure. If you look west from here you can see some rare 'strip lynchets' which are banks 'formed at the end of a field by soil which, loosened by the plough, gradually moves down slope through a combination of gravity and erosion.' These banks were, of course, made by those who were descended from all that commingling in the valley below - and here, for centuries these people tilled the good earth until, slowly but surely, they became again in their own minds one people. A process that had to be repeated yet again, of course, when the Normans came.

The strip lynchets (very hard to see in this photo) run
from the field on the far-left of the picture to the centre.

The Anglo-Saxon arch

Fortified by tea and a banana and this second word from the world I set off once more intending to turn west off this road shortly after the top of the hill. However, I was so wrapped up in my thoughts about the commingling of peoples that I quite missed the turning and eventually found myself at an unexpected T-junction a mile or so beyond the turning I needed. Ooops. Going on would add too many miles to my ride so I had to turn around and retrace part of my route. On the way back I noticed a small signpost to Strethall church which lies at the end of a short single track road - perhaps a quarter of a mile long - that stops abruptly in a farmyard hard by the church. I had the time and the inclination to go and look and I'm glad I did. The small eleventh-century church (1050-1100) church - unlocked - is a real delight. On stepping inside one is immediately struck by the chancel arch which H. M. Taylor describes as "one of the finest examples of Anglo-Saxon workmanship in smaller parish churches" - and he is right. Often it's just the architecture that shows up when you look at such things but today I heard something else for the Anglo-Saxons were also much commingled and the cause of further commingling of lines of becoming. As most of you will know when the last of the Roman soldiers left Britain in AD 410 a mixture of folk arrived here from north Germany, Denmark and northern Holland - Saxons, Angles and Jutes and, just for good measure, some Franks and Frisians too.

From "Our Father" by Joan Gale Thomas

My habit upon entering a church - at least when I'm on my own - is to go straight to the altar rail, kneel and say the Lord's Prayer - itself, of course, a prayer that commingles us with far-away lands and the line of becoming that was Jesus of Nazareth and thence the complex weave that we call the Christian tradition. Anyway, I've always done this and I imagine I always will. As I say the prayer I know, really know, that generations of my forbears have done likewise and that this speech-act weaves me into this ongoing line of Christian becoming as well as with those of all who have found in this particular church a sense of deep meaning and worth. Saying the Lord's Prayer is for me an embodied thing far greater than simply the superficial meaning of the words. But, on this occasion, it spoke in a particularly special way because in 1970 when I was 5 years old my grandmother - who taught me the prayer - gave me a book which illustrated the text with what I thought were magical drawings. You have one before you now and you will see that it speaks of, and illustrates, children of all nations together going to worship. Consequently, in this place and at this time, the words of this ancient prayer spoke to me in a particularly compelling way as being about the deep comminglement in God of all peoples' lines of becoming - a third word from the world.

It was for me a very moving moment and was still very much with me as I mounted on my bicycle and cycled on to the turning I had missed earlier. At this point the road climbs to a 100 metres from which highish point you can see right across the fields to the big house called Ickleton Grange and thence to Chrishall beyond. And, right down the middle of it all, is the wonderful sight of an open road - a veritable path of the world's becoming - calling you down into this landscape. Everytime I have traced this road I have stopped here before enjoying the descent. And standing there, looking at the carefully tended summer fields, with the skylarks singing all around and with the world's words which throughout the ride had been speaking constantly to me about the commingling of peoples who went on to work this land together, suddenly into my head and onto my tongue sprang the verse from the song I played you earlier:

Looking north-west with Ickleton Grange on the right

England is not flag or Empire
It is not money it is not blood
It's limestone gorge and granite fell
It's Wealden clay and Severn mud
It's blackbird singing from the may-tree
Lark ascending through the scales
Robin watching from your spade
And English earth beneath your nails

The whole landscape was speaking to me in this way - it was saying to me that belonging to this landscape - this common wealth and common ground, this England, whatever the land that gave you birth - is conditional only on having a love of freedom and of the English earth, and for those who do so love, those who are prepared to get English dirt beneath their nails, for them there really is room both root and branch.

Here, atop this lovely Essex hill, despite my tiredness, there came swelling up the physical and spiritual energy necessary for the coming week's struggles. I set off into the valley and homeward bound still unsure, to be sure, about how exactly to proceed, but knowing deeply why I will never ever support any ideology - political or religious - that seeks to despoil this extraordinary place of welcome, inclusivity and commingling of people and ideas called England.