Speaking Up: 75 Years After Auschwitz

Yesterday, I went for a swim and a sauna. It's usually a pleasant, relaxing experience with, often, an interesting chat to someone. However, I found myself sharing the sauna with five men and another woman. There was an exchange of what you might call political banter going on. I sat and listened to many things I disagreed with. Then came 'the trouble with the National Health Service is all these f*** foreigners are coming here and using it and not paying a penny..." and  'Boris is going to get it sorted and send them all packing' and 'you'll be able to walk into a pub and not hear b*** gibberish spoken in your own country.'

The other woman piped up, 'I don't think you can say that all foreigners are bad.' I tried, 'A lot of people from other countries are on the staff of the NHS, doing much needed jobs.' But I could feel her nervousness and I knew my stomach was knotted as we listened to more diatribes about foreigners and refugees and, yes, women 'who have never had it so good.' It's not easy to stand up for your principles when you are outnumbered by people in close proximity who are loudly and forcefully shooting down what you say in a manner that feels slightly threatening. I don't think we did very well, but we did try.

Today, I've listened to the speeches by survivors of Auschwitz on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Soviet soldiers. 1.1million Jews, Roma, Polish citizens, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners of war were horribly murdered there. As Marian Turski (a survivor) said, 'Auschwitz did not suddenly fall from the skies'. He was quoting something the Austrian President had said to him that had helped him articulate what he felt. The persecution of Jews, homosexuals, Roma and the disabled happened bit by bit, slowly, slowly, a tiny loss of freedom here (no sitting on these benches), a tiny loss of opportunity there (you have to shop after 5pm), a licence to be derogatory (well it's only them, they don't really matter, they never integrated properly). Turski  described how, as a child he observed this process take a hold until such views became part of normality for the perpetrators, the witnesses and the victims.

Eventually the European Jews were crying out for somewhere to flee to safety. Yet nearly every country either rejected them or severely limited the numbers they would accept. 'And that was the point at which Hitler knew he could build his death camps.' The world didn't really care.

Marian Turski spoke of an eleventh commandment that issues from the Shoah (Holocaust). 'Thou shalt not be indifferent.' When you hear lies, when you see governments infringe civil liberties, when you see politicians erode human rights, you must speak out. 

Another survivor, Elza Baker, a Roma, said, 'In a time when minorities have to fear again I can only hope that everyone will stand up for democracy and human rights.' Auschwitz did not fall from the skies. Something similar could happen again. Primo Levi wrote, 'This happened which means it may happen again which means it may happen somewhere in the world.' Another Holocaust begins when we turn a blind eye to the erosion of the rights of minorities, when we harden ourselves against the humanity of people who are different from us, when we denigrate groups of people as 'all corrupt' or 'all bad' and, even jokingly, scapegoat them for our own troubles.

I fear we live in changing political times. Several of the survivors alluded to this. Only last week the safeguards for child refugees in the EU Withdrawal Agreement were voted down by a majority of 342-254 in the House of Commons. This probably affects about 3,000 refugee children who need to be reunited with families in the UK. A tiny number, yet think of the unspeakable misery of separation and the damage being done to young lives. There is a list of the MPs who voted to remove these safeguards here (see bottom of article).

Currently, the Government has issued a consultation document on 'unauthorised encampments' proposing amendments to the trespass laws that will criminalise the lives of Roma, gypsies and travellers, in effect, leaving them with nowhere to live. Even the police appear to oppose the implementation of new laws saying that the current ones suffice. The Government's document can be seen  here and a Guardian article by George Monbiot explaining it more fully here. Parliamentary scrutiny has effectively been reduced by the Government's somewhat cavalier approach to committee work, its tendency to engage in secret negotiations, its tendency not to publish the detail of proposed policies or answer questions in detail and, ultimately, its enormous majority. 

Last week the Church of England bishops issued a statement about civil partnerships and marriage here. The statement makes clear the continued official position of the church which (though somewhat confused) denies the provision of rites for the blessing of civil partnerships or the marriage of same sex couples (paras.17 & 18). Although the bishops acknowledge that there is dissent within the church on the question of recognising and supporting same sex relationships, they continue to uphold as mainstream their rejection. This appears to me to be another of those 'small voices' that normalises or allows the possibility of the objectification and exclusion of a particular group of people who are spoken about, not with.

I was moved by the co-incidence of yesterday's conversation in the sauna and today's Holocaust Memorial to return to a question that has haunted me ever since I read the Diary of Anne Frank as a 10 year old. Would I have spoken up for the Jews when others were abusing them? Would I have stood with them? Would I have refused to join in taunting them? Would I have endangered myself to help them? Would I have hidden anyone who was being hunted? 

I don't know. We none of us know until we are faced by an ugly situation. Judging by my reaction in the sauna, I might have tried tentatively and given up rather lamely. I can see that today, perhaps even more than in the recent past, there is a need to practise those little habits of speaking out, challenging unfounded blame, contradicting hate speech, lobbying for what you believe in, identifying and working with others who are concerned about the right of every human being to be respected, treated with dignity, freed to speak their mind and allowed go about their legitimate business and way of life.

Do not be silent when minorities are belittled or attacked.
'Thou shalt not be indifferent.'

I hope I have quoted the words of the survivors at the 75th Holocaust Memorial correctly. Some were translated by interpreters and they were written down by me at the time of hearing. I apologise if I have not got the exact words.     

To Listen is the Greater Part of Prayer

How did you learn to pray? My mother taught me. Every night, before bed, we knelt down and said 'thank yous', 'sorrys' and then there was 'please bless...Mummy, Daddy, Nana, Taid, Auntie so and so, Uncle thingumy...' It could go on for quite while.

That's not so different from a lot of adult prayer. Some of us go in for sincere, conscientious lists of people and concerns we are committed to. Others go in for the dutiful, disciplined offering of set forms of prayer that mark out the times of day and the seasons. Still others regale the Almighty with desires, believing that if we have enough faith, these desires will somehow become consonant with God's and will therefore 'come to pass' as the scriptures put it. Most of us include genuine expressions of gratitude and regret as we go along the way but a very big chunk of much prayer is either intercessory or liturgical, the former expressing desire and the latter involving the recitation of the words of scripture or a denominational text. When words fail us we have recourse to 'your will be done'. A particular dislike of mine is the pastoral conversation that is directed into prayer when things get a bit tricky; I'm suspicious that there's an unacknowledged agenda or that it's a device for exerting covert pressure to conform.

Recently re-reading a biography of Jung, I was struck by a passage in which he describes overhearing his father (a minister) praying. 'I saw how hopelessly he was entrapped by the church and its theological thinking' (p.20, Jung: A Biography, Gerhard Wehr, 2001). This gave me pause for thought. So much prayer is constrained either by our own semi-acknowledged desires and horizons or by what church tradition has told us it is acceptable to think, feel and say. Much Christian prayer seems to miss out on the truly radical aspect of relationship with the Divine which is listening - listening to ourselves to discover the truth about our innermost motives and our habitual behaviours, listening for the stirring of that which is of God within us, within others and within the political and natural events around us. This takes time, discipline, repetition and a persistent commitment to an openness of attitude that lays aside dogma and systematisation.

There are many books about this kind of listening (often called contemplation). It's an inward journey, but also a journey shaped by and seen in outward influences. Here are some questions that might prompt us to review how deeply we listen. The more profoundly we listen in everyday life, the more we increase our capacity to listen to God and vice versa. 

• Who have you really listened to today?
• Who has really listened to you and how did you know?
• How often do you find yourself anticipating what's going to be said or thinking about your reply before the speaker finishes?
• When did you last hear something that changed you?
• When did you last stop to listen to something in the natural world?
• What was communicated in the last memo you read?
• How many repetitions does it take you to pick up a short tune?
• Do you often forget or mis-hear simple instructions?
• When did you last hear something truly unexpected?
• Who never listens to you?
• Who do you tend not to listen to?
• When did you last sit in silence for 10 minutes...half an hour...an hour?      

Child Labour and Chocolate Eggs

When I was a child, Easter Monday was always the day for taking stock of the eggs sitting on top of the piano. There would usually be quite a few and you could work out how many days' supply of chocolate treats lay ahead with careful management!

The egg signified new life, nourishment, hope, the opening up of possibilities as the egg-shaped stone was rolled away from Jesus' tomb. It also meant lots of fun with your friends as you shared the generosity of aunts and uncles, next-door neighbours and grandparents.

Not all children have the same innocent relationship of fun with the chocolate Easter egg. Stop the Traffic is an Australian coalition that campaigns to improve the wellbeing of farmers at the bottom of the food chain and thereby irradicate child labour and the trafficking of children. They focus mainly on the fashion, cotton, fishing, tea and chocolate industries.

In West Africa (mainly the Ivory Coast and Ghana) a proportion of cocoa is harvested by child labour, mainly young boys who are trafficked for the purpose. 90% of the world's cocoa is grown by small-holding farmers who cannot make a living wage from selling their product to the large production companies. Stop the Traffic states that 70% of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa where there are millions of children involved in its production. Farmers are locked into a cycle that does not permit them to lift themselves and their families out of poverty and results in the use of forced child labour.

In order to be certain that your Easter egg or other chocolate product has not been produced using child labour you need to look out for 'Fair Trade', 'Cocoa Life', 'Cocoa Plan', 'Rain Forest Alliance', 'Cocoa Farming Programme' or 'UTZ Certified Cocoa' labels.

Stop the Traffic commissioned a report into the activities of six major chocolate companies. A Matter of Taste is a unique and ground-breaking piece of work looking at the steps these companies are taking toward eliminating child labour and there is detailed information to be found there.

In Britain, many of us associate the production of chocolate with Quaker firms like Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry. Since the last third of the twentieth century these companies are no longer in Quaker hands and have been taken over by some of the multinational giants. But the charitable trusts set up in conjunction with these great Quaker companies remain and are now actively working toward sustainability of the environment and the irradication of poverty and slavery. More can be gleaned about the U.K. scene from Jon Martin's article on the Quaker website, A Quick History of Chocolate and Quakerism 

As you eat your Easter eggs, check for signs they haven't been produced using child labour and that they don't contain palm oil whose production contributes to deforestation. Jon Martin also makes the point that eating recreational food with ingredients transported across the globe is not the best way to use resources or celebrate life. So perhaps a look at how locally produced treats could be incorporated in your celebrations in future might provide for a more sustainable way of marking Easter next year?

Or here's an idea for Easter Story Eggs that might be fun (though not chocolatey!) Resurrection Eggs. You could make it with cardboard eggs and real leaves instead of plastic ones.

http://www.creativebiblestudy.com/Christian-Easter-eggs.html
©Creative Bible Study

Gratitude at New Year

Years ago an elderly nun gave me a bit of advice. 'Keep any cards you get thanking you for something you've done. Put them in a box and when you have a really bad week, get some out and read them.' Up to a point, I've followed her advice. I've kept a lot of the unexpected cards of appreciation that people have sent - thank yous for things I didn't even realise I'd done or notes from people whose lives very briefly intertwined with mine and who wrote to say, 'That was significant', letters from people with whom I've journeyed at what turned out to be a special time.

Very occasionally, I look at them. They bring back all sorts of memories of precious people, happy and sad times, places and projects. They remind me, too, of words and gestures that have communicated appreciation and a shared sense of achievement. The time someone marched up to me, looked me in the eye for a full 5 seconds said, 'Thank you,' and disappeared. The time one of the doctors I worked with said something so encouraging I've never forgotten it. The time someone looked round at an event and said, 'This is my idea of the Kingdom of God.'

I find that in the days around New Year I'm often drawn to this kind of reminiscing, possibly because early January tends to be one of the parts of my year when there is more time for reflection. My bit of advice to add to my elderly friend's is that as you go over these memories in your head, it's sometimes nice to write a card to someone who has meant a great deal to you and say, 'Just been remembering that time when .... Thank you.' It means perhaps even more to receive a message that someone still remembers a significant exchange years later. It colours the future more brightly with refreshed hope and maybe even renewed friendship.

The Kitchen Table

With thanks to Aisha Coppack
for the photo

When a table is set it stands as an invitation. Friends from afar, family, the cat who jumps from the stairs onto guests' shoulders, the unexpected caller who sits at the corner with a bowl of soup. The sharing of food and the exploring of ideas, the telling of events and the hearing of moans and groans about this week's grind. A table stands as a reminder that time and food are precious, that people are even more precious and that more can aways be squeezed in. Chipped crockery and odd assortments of glasses - three of this kind, five of another - stand as testimony to other meals, to the passing of time and to the ups and downs of life together. Scorch marks and writing gouged into the wood are reminders of long-gone culinary experiments and last-minute letter writing. And on the table are presents, food and drink brought by others, to be shared and the left overs to be enjoyed tomorrow. The table stands at the heart of life together. Tables are always best with two or more sitting together. But even when there is one, there are good memories and hopes that more will come another day.

Why Write Poetry?

On holiday I indulged in the luxury of scribbling in my journal, reading and musing on what it is I'm trying do in creating poetry. Introducing an article about W.H.Auden's insights into the work of the poet Maria Popova says this, 'The Commonplace Book has been particularly beloved by poets, whose business is the revelation of wholeness through the fragmentary' (A Certain World: A Commonplace Book, W.H.Auden).Throw-away line though it is, I warm to this as a definition of what the poet is trying to do - the revelation of wholeness through small details, the communication of something universal through specific moments of life, the power of reflection on keen observation to see beyond what lies on the surface of an event. Auden says that what the poet has to convey is 'not self expression, but a view of reality common to all, seen from a unique perspective.'

Auden also talks about truth emerging from 'moments of enchantment'. These are moments when we are most truly ourselves, drawn into a sense of certainty that transcends both belief and doubt; we just know. He warns about the possibility of false enchantment (when we desire to possess or be possessed by the object of enchantment) but, I think, sees that the best poetry grows from a true enchantment in which we desire nothing other than that the object of enchantment exists and is communicated. 

Alan Lightman writes about similar moments of suspension between belief and doubt, seeing clearly and stumbling blindly, when he says, 'Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times, to things we do not fully understand....the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world.' Poems so often start with a moment of fascination which, when remembered, worked on, expressed, leads to quite another place than expected.

An Aid to Meditation

A year or so ago a friend introduced me to a method of meditation based on the Sixteen Guidelines for Life articulated by King Songtser Gampo of Tibet in the seventh century. It works very simply and is based on the idea that our values and our behaviour are formed of the things we habitually think and do, the ways we relate to others and the sources from which we draw meaning. The method focuses on 16 qualities:

Thinking 
humility
patience
delight
content

Acting
honesty
right speech
generosity
kindness

Relating to other people and our environment

respect
gratitude
forgiveness
loyalty

Finding meaning

aspiration
principles
courage
service

Each day, it has been helpful to meditate on one of these qualities. What do I understand by it? What do I feel about it? How and where does (or doesn't) it show up in my life? It obviously takes 16 days to get through the process and it's interesting that when I've repeated it over the next 16 days the nature of my relationship with each quality has changed. I've found that certain biblical stories have sprung to mind as I've meditated. Of course, many stories are appropriate to each quality, but here are some I've found helpful:

Humility  Matthew 20 The Labourers in the Vineyard

               Mark 10.35-45 The Request of James and John

               2 Kings 5 Naaman is Healed of Leprosy

Patience  Deuteronomy 29.2-5 & 34.1-5 'I have led you 40

               years in the wilderness...'

Delight    John 20.11-18 'Mary! Rabboni!'

Content   Psalm 131   

Right Speech  John 18.28-40 Jesus Before Pilate

                      Matthew 15.1-20 That Which Defiles

Generosity  Leviticus 25 The Jubilee Year

                   Matthew 20 The Labourers in the Vineyard

                   Luke 21.1-4 The Widow's Offering

Kindness    Acts 28.1-2 Unusual kindness in Malta

                  Matthew 5.42 Give!

                  Isaiah 25.6-8 God's Kindness

Respect     Luke 7.1-9 The Centurion's Son

                 Matthew 15.21-28 The Syrophoenician Woman

Gratitude   Ephesians 5.19-20 Giving Thanks at All Times

                  John 6.11 Eucharistic Thanksgiving

Forgiveness  2 Samuel 9 David and Mephibosheth

                    Luke 15.11-32 Father Forgives Son

Loyalty        The Book of Ruth (4 chapters)

                    John 21.15-19 Jesus' Loyalty to Peter

Aspiration    Galatians 1.10 Pleasing People or God?

                    John 13.7-10 and Luke 28.29-36 Peter's

                    Misplaced Aspiration

Principles     The stories of Daniel, Esther and Pilate  

Courage        Luke 8.43-48 The Woman Who Touched Jesus

Service         Isaiah 58.10 Satisfy the Needs of the Afflicted

A Window of Opportunity: Pentecost and Politics

The Eastern Orthodox fill their churches with greenery for Pentecost. This is a reminder that it is the Spirit that greens the earth and brings new life into being. 

Stretensky Monastery, Moscow
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/47012.htm

In John's Gospel, Jesus says, when speaking of the Spirit, 'The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it blows. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.' (Jn 3.8) We suffered some ferocious gales a few years ago when we were living in Yorkshire. On one occasion a massive tree was blown down just missing houses, a road and some people out walking in the vicinity.  A traumatic, potentially dangerous event which caused a great deal of damage and, to boot, a bit of a rumpus in the village about whether other trees should be felled. The absence of the much-loved sycamore was mourned. The area around it - gardens and a churchyard - seemed bereft. Where the tree had stood, new light flooded in. Other trees and shrubs shook out their leaves and expanded in all directions, wild flowers began to move into the space and eventually a new tree - a horse chestnut with red candles - was planted. Disaster, conflict and new life in the very short space of a couple of seasons.

Many of us reflected on the extremists' attacks on Manchester and London yesterday, the day of Pentecost which marks the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is hard to hold together, on the one hand, the horror of the attacks and dark thoughts about the grief caused and the state of mind of people who could so arbitrarily go out to bomb, run down and stab and, on the other hand, the kindness, bravery and solidarity shown by so many of those who were involved or who lived nearby. But no easy links between evil and good, death and hope suffice. 'The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it blows.'

I found myself focusing on the ways in which opportunity is created and fanned and experienced. We have the Prime Minister's words, 'Enough is enough,' ringing in our ears but is tough talk, escalating security and more money spent on arms to sell and to protect ourselves what is needed? There is a growing number of voices calling for a new approach to the kinds of extremism that produce terrorism and violence. Unpopular as such initiatives were, breakthroughs came in South Africa and Ireland only when Nelson Mandela and the British government, respectively, began to talk to P.W. Botha's government and the I.R.A.

Are these attacks, coinciding with an election, the opportunity to begin to back new ways of organising our foreign and defence policy and our security and community policing? Talk, listen, challenge threatening ideologies that lurk in our communities. Stop selling arms, refuse to bomb other countries, disentangle ourselves from American foreign policy. Recognise that focus on deterrence and retaliation does nothing more than stoke up resentment among those who feel themselves to have suffered as a result of the policies and actions that result. In such changed behaviours lie the green shoots of peace and they will be costly. They require a revolution in our thinking but then Pentecost is all about a revolution of the spirit. Those caught up in it were laughed at and called naive and mad and traitors of their tradition, and they faced persecution. The voices that are calling for this kind of revolution were well represented this week by the woman who, during Question Time with Jeremy Corbyn asked, 'Why are you all talking about killing millions of people?' A growing body of millions of voters want no more to do with policies based on aggression and retaliation. Voices everywhere are being raised in bewilderment that, in our society, the unthinkable notion is to question the basis of our security being supposed military superiority and the underlying cost of this for us all.  This Thursday is the time to use your voice to unite with others and grasp a unique opportunity to begin a different kind of politics as well as a different way of responding personally to threat, conflict and violence.    

Manchester

We were practising handbells in the village church in Oxton tonight when someone came in to light a candle and say a prayer. It occurred to me that all over Britain, indeed all over the world, people are praying for the people of Manchester and the visitors who were at the Ariana Grande concert last night. In countless homes, churches, mosques, temples, halls, cars, schools, town squares, cathedrals, stadiums people have gathered or stood quietly on their own to remember the people who died. As night falls here in the UK, relatives and hospital staff are keeping their vigil and the police and emergency services are facing another night when they have to carry on with their demanding tasks.

Photo St Magdalene Chapel, Ripon
©Janet Henderson

I know it is small comfort, but I pray that everyone affected by the horrific action of the terrorist last night will be aware that there are people of goodwill everywhere thinking about them tonight, wanting to stand in solidarity, unable to imagine how they feel yet grieving at the awful result of this heartless, callous act.

God, be with all who grieve, 
wait with all who are at their wits' end searching for a loved one, 
watch with all who sit beside a hospital bed not knowing what tomorrow will bring, 
calm all who cannot get the images, questions and 'whys?' out of their minds, 
help the broken hearted feel the warmth of love that holds them despite their pain,
and send us all out to shape a more generous, respectful, caring world 
so that the shadow of this tragedy will not darken into night
but, through our tears and outrage, be turned into a search for the kinds of justice
and understanding that remove the scourge of terrorism from this and every nation.    

On Easter Monday

The first time I experienced a 'walk through Holy Week' was when I joined the Ichthyan Singers in Cambridge. The name of the choir was taken from the Greek word ἰχθύς (or ichthus) meaning fish. One of the symbols used by early Christians was the fish. The Greek word 'ichthus' is an acronym for 'Iesous Christos, Theou Hios, Soter', the transliterated Greek words meaning 'Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour'.

The choir sang the full range of church choral music from Palestrina, Bach and Tallis to Bairstow, Finzi, Howells and the blues! Each Holy Week we spent the eight days in one parish, singing all the services. This introduced me to the practice of journeying through the events of the last week of Jesus' life and, to some extent, experiencing the emotions they engender. It's an overwhelmingly powerful story of celebration, betrayal, misunderstanding, political intrigue, legal process, torture, crowd pressure, forgiveness, death, grief, astonishment, reconciliation and hope. Over the years I've continued to keep Holy Week with Christian communities as varied as a Roman Catholic seminary, a Maltese parish, four British cathedrals, churches on vast outer city estates and the deeply rural churches of North Yorkshire. For the past three years, worshipping as a Quaker, I have not kept Holy Week but have endeavoured to focus on recognising the experiences held within the story through weekly contemplation at Quaker Meeting, meditation with other Christians and people of prayer in our villages, and through daily silence and private meditation.

The purpose of this post is not to suggest that one way of marking the events of Jesus' death and resurrection is 'right' or 'better' than another. It is, rather, to try to express something of the impact of dwelling on them on everyday life.

It's undoubtedly true that the journey I embarked on with the Ichthyan Singers was the beginning of a life long practice of drawing strength and inspiration from the many layers of the stories in the Gospels. There is something about living, if only for a week each year, with the words of Jesus ringing in your ears and His, at times, puzzling actions at the forefront of your imagination that builds into a rich storehouse of imagery and thought resourcing you for everyday life. Facing death, bereavement, grief, pain, argument, betrayal and life's inevitable tragedies has been done through the lens of Jesus' story. Darkness, conflict, despair and death are very real and feel very much like endings but the events of Jesus' death and resurrection allow us to tangle with what life sends in the light of a broader context where death is experienced as the precursor of a renewed and different life. In particular, for me, the liturgy and poetry of Holy Week have been sources of inspiration and empowerment for nursing and for ministry with those facing terminal illness and the loss of loved ones.

However, it's also true that there is a danger in this concentrated form of remembering. For years I've been very aware of the way Christians tend to stuff Lent and Holy Week full of extra activity and extra talk of sin without there being a noticeable sense of renewal beyond the emotion of the activities themselves. For seven weeks of the year there is a psychologically heavy feel to the words and music of the churches. Sometimes this coincides well with the period just before the earth wakes up and trees and plants spring into bud; other years, when Easter is late, there is a dissonance between the sombre world of the desert prophets and the joyously emerging spring. Either way there can be a sense that the spiritual path you are invited to walk is not touching the real things of your life as much as it might. It's sometimes more like a soon-forgotten pilgrimage of good intentions rather than a slow dawning of renewed and sustained changes in behaviour.

Quakers look to experience divine life in the here and now, in our own lives this very day. To that extent, although there is no problem with remembering and celebrating texts and events that speak of how God inhabits death and life, the focus of our attention is on the ways God inhabits both the created order and the individual human spirit now, today. The desire is to see and hear where the Spirit is leading us. The themes of betrayal, death, resurrection and the indwelling of God are lived out in acts of truth-telling, justice, reconciliation and restored dignity only as we attend to the leadings of the Spirit of God within us every day. One of the conditions for this 'leading' is silence in which listening can happen. And one of the conditions for silence is a greater simplicity of life where everything is stripped back and the important begins to emerge.

Perhaps it's worth lingering over the meaning of some of Jesus' post resurrection words, and pondering how they shape us and our living?

'Do not hold on to me, but go.' Don't cling for safety to the familiar, even the familiar things of faith. Go to all without preference or favour?

'Peace be with you.' Be people of peace whatever the cost?

'Receive the Holy Spirit.' Search out and live by that of God within you?

'Tend my lambs, feed my sheep.' Work for the practical, physical well-being of all people and the distribution of the earth's resources so all can live? 

'Someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.'  Be willing for whatever God's Spirit directs you to?

Two Calls to Reconciliation

It's usually very peaceful in Southwell Minster. Wander in on a grey afternoon and you will find a polite, helpful but un-intrusive welcome. There's often an interesting art exhibition in situ and I was not disappointed last Thursday. An hour to spare between appointments on a wettish afternoon presented me with an unexpected opportunity to drop in and I was delighted to find, as so often, an exhibition that chimed in with the season, stimulated the imagination and raised all sorts of questions about familiar stories and beliefs.

The artist Ian McKillop currently has an exhibition of paintings in the Chapter House entitled Transforming Pain Into Hope. It consists of two series, 'The Seven Last Words from the Cross' and 'The Seven Songs of Resurrection.' The extraordinary thing about McKillop's paintings is the extent to which, at times, he places the viewer alongside and very close to Christ so that you are looking at the scene almost from Christ's perspective. This is theologically very powerful and achieves Mckillop's expressed aim of helping the viewer explore what it means for the Divine to enter the world through the Christ event. McKillop's 'Seven Last Words from the Cross' challenge the viewer to think about the Divine response to persecution and violence and about the yearning for reconciliation that lies at the heart of the Godhead - sometimes uncomfortably as we see that love and forgiveness are bestowed universally and not confined by human notions of justice.

The 'Seven Songs of Resurrection' were astonishing, I thought, for their portrayal of the Spirit of the Risen Christ being unleashed and gradually transfigured into the Spirit that enters the lives of all believers. The sense of Divine power pervading the world through transformed lives was palpable. 'These paintings are...conceived as memorial to innocent lives taken as a result of war in all nations.... Destructivity, terrorism or warfare is not Christ's way to solve political or social problems. The images ask us to learn new ways, following Christ's loving, self-sacrificing, forgiving, non-recriminatory, peace-bringing example. We are asked to pray and work for peace.' These paintings were inspired by a visit to Wurzburg, a city devastated in 1945 and rebuilt preserving and creating as much art work as possible.

The exhibition closes on 22nd March so hurry! For more information about the artist and a preview of his work, go to McKillop's website here

It was hard not just to stay with the impressions and thoughts created by these wonderful paintings on the nature of forgiveness. However, I couldn't resist a small pilgrimage round to the south side of the Minster to see one of my favourite works of art. Jonathan Clarke's 'Stations of the Cross' have been at Southwell for a number of years. Portrayed in aluminium and oak, Clarke's stations have two very distinctive features. Firstly, you are invited to touch and to walk along the Via Dolorosa through tactile experience. Secondly, the size of the cross changes as you progress along the route. It becomes larger as its burden becomes heavier and, at the point of crucifixion, it fills the visual field. Uniquely, you are then invited to move beyond the cross, turn, and look back toward Golgotha from the perspective of the deposition and tomb; as you do so, the size and impact of the cross diminish.

You can see an image of Clarke's Stations in the gallery on his website here (in date order under 1999.)

A great deal of food for thought, imagination and prayer.
Thank you, Southwell Minster!

Candlemas 2016: Mary at Southwell

Southwell Minster has been hosting an exhibition The Art of Mary  here as a lead into the celebration of Candlemas. It presents the work of 22 contemporary artists whose names I've included below. It's a really unusual and exciting exhibition showcasing an amazing variety of images that provoke conversation between themselves and enliven the attempt to conceptualise the Mary hidden in the stories, biblical and traditional, we have about her. This is the interaction of theology and art at their best.

Matthew Askey's very personal oils portray the 'self effacing generosity' required by motherhood while Mark Cazalet's Epiphany Star is universal in scale, combining ideas from the Magnificat and the Magis' profession to produce an extraordinary canvas ranging across the joy and grief of Mary's experience and connecting it to the experience of all humanity touched by the Divine. Nicholas Mynheer's ten Scenes from the Life of Mary encompass most of the narratives we have about Mary 'from the teenage mother (who pondered the word of God in her heart) to the young mother who seemingly overrides Jesus' words at Cana...to the mature mother at the foot of the cross.' Each picture introduced me to some observation or question about Mary I had not encountered before. Karen Thompson's photographs, although 'inspired by the art of Renaissance painters and 'Old Masters',' had a very contemporary feel and raised for me questions about memory and generational wisdom passed between mothers and daughters. One of the most striking paintings, (perhaps its impact was enhanced as it was the first one I saw) is Roger Wagner's Writing in the Dust. At first viewing, it does not seem to be about Mary at all but about the woman taken in adultery in John 8. The artist's comment explains why this depicts something significant about Mary but I won't spoil the impact by repeating it here. However, the painting is haunting in the many, many questions it raises about first century and twenty first century relationships between religions, genders and communities. Jean Lamb's Our Lady of Mercy and Our Lady of Sorrows, displayed to good effect in the Chapter House, brings Mary's open, potential-drenched womb to the heart of the exhibition and adds the teasing detail of unknown divine? human? hands holding or, perhaps, presenting Mary herself as gift among us. Susie Hamilton depicts the post-annunciation moments following the angel's departure, showing Mary deep in thought amid gorgeous, light-filled emptiness. Sophie Hacker's First Communion of the Virgin is inspired by Oliver Messiaen's Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant Jesus and returns us to the universal significance of the Christ event - Mary's womb with a 'fragment of nascent life' presents over a background of star-scattered space. 

The other artists are Hester Finch, Chris Gollon, Lee Harvey, Ellie Hewitt, Rebecca Hind, Iain McKillop, Hannelore Nunn, Celia Paul, Gill Sakakini, Anna Sikorsky, Helen Sills, Hanna-Leena Ward, Tom Wood and Sandra Cowper. Matthew Askey led a schools-based project (the Minster School, Huthwaite and Selston schools) to create an origami nativity.

The exhibition as a whole is a wonderful preparation for meditation on the mysterious story of Christ's presentation in the temple. I went twice with different friends and both times found it rich with insights into the way sorrow and joy, practicality and dreams, specific detail and universal significance, fear and hope are brought together in the words exchanged between Simeon, Anna and Mary. 

On Not Celebrating Christmas

Quakers don't traditionally celebrate Christmas.The incarnation is something that we try to be conscious of everyday. Moments and places of God breaking into the world that catch us unawares are causes for joy and celebration at any time. I seem to recall Calvin taught something similar about the crucifixion and resurrection and the keeping of Good Friday and Easter. God's presence at the heart of the world's suffering, the hope that suffering will be transformed, and the reality of new life where it is are always with us; the challenge is having eyes to see.

It's interesting (and difficult) not celebrating Christmas in a culture where you can't get away from it. Carol services, trees, cards, carols on the radio and in shops, gifts, the obligatory rich food and mulled wine and, above all, the expectations make it nearly impossible. So what is the sensible way through?

It's been a complete refreshment to the soul and a very spiritually enriching experience to take a step back. Where there is real joy and excitement, it's wonderful to watch and join in. Where the impact of the story of Jesus' birth is genuinely challenging, delighting or changing lives, that's something to make the heart sing. It's been lovely, though, to avoid, as much as possible, the commercialism and the frenetic sense of having to engage in so many expectation-driven and only tangentially relevant activities.

The quiet has proved rich and I have pondered moments like 

* The calm of midweek evening streets in Nottingham for a short interval after the shops have shut.
* The December Peace Supper when we ate and talked about education programmes to teach children skills of reconciliation.
* The silence in Sunday Meeting for Worship unusually punctuated by the children's contributions - a story, a single verse from a carol, a light given and stars made. (I still marvel at how the children enter into silence - a whole hour of it on this occasion!)
* A shivering man who asked us straight out, 'Please will you give me enough for a hot drink?' We got talking and I began to appreciate how easy it is, if you have some money, not to think about its real value. It takes a lot of 5ps, 20ps and 50ps to afford a drink, a meal or socks.
* Letters from friends around the world not heard from very often. Meetings arranged with old friends for the year ahead. 
* The welcome of being invited into neighbours' homes, to the village Panto and to the WI dinner as strangers and newcomers.
* The neighbour who rigged up lights in our hanging basket to illuminate the driveway.
* Fires and the warmth of shared meals.
* The background of floods affecting friends in Cumbria and Yorkshire and Wales and the executions in Saudi Arabia reminding us again that the old, old stories of rulers and natural phenomena disrupting human life have contemporary relevance.

My one concession to conventional Christmas celebration was a tree. My father was a forester and we have my grandparents and parents' decorations, some handmade and dating back to the 1920's. I love to have a tree in the house for a short while each year because it reminds me of Biblical trees from the Garden of Eden (conveying knowledge and the power of life and death) to the Book of Revelation (where the tree on the bank of the river that flows through the holy city produces fruits that are 'for the healing of the nations.')

To those of you who have kept the 12 days of Christmas, may their joy and insight remain with you throughout the year!

Our Father at the Cinema

The banning of a Church of England advert for prayer consisting of the recitation of the Lord's Prayer has undoubtedly resulted in hundreds of thousands of people watching the ad and hearing the prayer! It has also stung the Church of England and, indeed, many people who count themselves Christians and can't see what all the fuss is about, or who regard the ban as an attack on freedom of speech and religious belief. Even the Prime Minister commented that he thought it all ridiculous, perhaps reflecting a sense of shock that, in a nation that has until recently regarded itself as Christian, this could happen.

"The Lord's Prayer may be committed to memory quickly
 but it is slowly learned by heart.' F.D. Maurice
photo www.footstepscm.wordpress.com

Digital Cinema Media, who imposed the ban, state that their decision is based on anxieties that the ad 'risked upsetting or offending audiences'. More importantly, I think, they also state that showing it would run contrary to their policy of not screening ads that 'in the reasonable opinion of DCM constitute political or religious advertising.' They hold that 'a clear neutral stance remains the fairest policy for all and allows DCM to treat all political and religious beliefs equally.' This is a very coherent position. The Church of England's legal department have stated that this decision may give rise to legal proceedings though it's difficult to see on what grounds they would succeed since the Equality Act 2010 makes it clear (Section 13) that discrimination depends on a person or company treating A differently from B - it's not discrimination to treat all entities equally well/badly (sometimes called the 'bastard to everyone' defence!) So the debate is centring on 'giving offence' and the fact that there is no 'right not to be offended' in British law. 

I've recently been to see Spectre, Suffragette and MacBeth and I wonder how I might have reacted had any or all of them been preceded by the screening of ads with an uncontextualized and unexplained recitation of, say, the Tephilla and Shema (Jewish prayers) or verses about alms-giving from the Koran or a demo of the principal positions in Tai Chi. I imagine I would have watched politely and even been quite interested but I would have been puzzled about the relevance and purpose of showing them. And I might wonder whether, next time, there would be Pagan, Buddhist, Humanist or Sikh ads and where this was all leading.

Odd, this move to advertise the possibility of prayer. We are told by various surveys that between 65% and 80% of the population prays. We know that a lot of people use the Lord's Prayer; as the churches have hastened to point out in defence of the ad, billions of people around the world use it every day. We know that, as well as people of faith, some people who regard themselves as agnostic or of 'no religious belief' pray at times of extremity. We know that prayer is profoundly and intrinsically bound up in the way we live and that to separate it from this whole-life context runs the risk of emptying it of much of its power. We have the example of Jesus who appears to have taught the Lord's Prayer to His followers, at their request, and then trusted the example of their prayers, lives and words to spread it. And we have the example of the relative ineffectiveness of teaching the Lord's Prayer to generations children at school by staff who do not share the faith, as has happened over the last 40 years.  So what is the ad setting out to achieve and what can we learn from the reaction to the ban?

If the idea was to communicate that everyone has the option to pray, it was unnecessary. In my experience people know that. If it was to remind people of the existence of the church or the words of the central Christian prayer, there are probably better ways to do it. If it was to invite people into a relationship with God and with other people who pray using the #justpray hashtag as I suspect it was, then OK, but let's recognise this for what it is, namely, an evangelistic enterprise using competitive, consumerist tactics to influence people's spiritual practice and choices. I'm not convinced that this is where the church best puts its effort and money.

Strangely it is in it's own miscalculation that the Church of England has succeeded. Due to the DCM ban, thousands of people have sat quietly in their own homes and places of prayer and meditation and considered the relevance, power and challenge of these ancient words. The prayer Jesus taught His followers is based on even older prayers from Judaism. Who knows what the fruits will be? Who says spiritual benefits are not born of mistakes? There's something about redemption here. But there ought to be something, too, about honesty. We live in a religiously diverse society where faith or belief systems that assume, as of right, to have a voice that is denied others are dangerous. Jesus lived at the cross-roads of the main trade routes of His time where several of the world's religions were in evidence. He seems to have trusted to the fruits of a life of genuine prayer over-flowing into action to persuade people to try prayer out for themselves. 'Jesus was praying in a certain place and after He had finished, one of the disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray.' (Luke 11.1) Attempting to join the maelstrom of consumerist advertising, though well meant, is not necessarily the same thing and is not quite where we should put our faith or our hope for the future of Christianity.     

Orthodox Insight

Green Frog Moments

There was a cartoon doing the rounds on Facebook recently that showed a recumbent Green Frog having one of those deeply necessary pre-creative moments.

© Silly and Snarky on Pinterest www.pinterest

We all have them! Some of us more often and for longer than others. They're not just moments in our days, but, sometimes, seasons in our lives. I don't know about you, but I can spend hours tending slightly hazy intuitions and driving half formed ideas around in my head. But suddenly some invisible lever will be thrown and I'll sit down, often not even with a plan, and write the thing I've been trying to feel my way towards in a matter of minutes. It may need a bit of revision but I'm often surprised at its coherence and left wondering 'where did that come from?' As T.S. Elliott observed about the mystical nature of writing poetry, 'We do not know until the shell breaks what kind of egg we have been sitting on.' That could equally well have been said by an artist, musician, sculptor, cook or anyone who approaches life as an opportunity to create.  

One of my favourite sites for inspiration and mental-cud-to-chew is Maria Popova's Brain Pickings. If you don't know the site it's choc full of thought-provoking material for anyone engaged in the creative process here (also on Twitter @brainpickings). She just has that knack of putting together really interesting material culled from the writings of artists and philosophers in all walks of life. She's recently shared a couple of very good posts about writer's block and creativity, exploring the 'circular' nature of the relationship between spirituality and creativity. 

I shared the Green Frog cartoon on Facebook and found that it chimed with a lot of friends. So much so that I half-jokingly suggested we form a 'Green Frog Society' dedicated to upholding the importance of Green Frog Space in our lives. The original cartoon suggested that this was a thing women do more than men but I completely disagree! Men more than welcome as well!

The next thing that happened was that a lovely friend who creates in glass sent me a specially crafted Green Frog coaster for the essential cuppa that accompanies so many Green Frog moments. There I was, working at my desk (and actually I was writing an article that day!) when the postman brought a package. How intriguing! So imagine my delight when out fell...

Green Frog Coaster, created by Jacquie James, Cardiff

I invite you to celebrate Green Frog Space. We need more of it in all our lives! We need to talk about it and share it and, most especially, share its fruits with our friends. When I attended a conference in the Czech Republic, I was bowled over by the way, each evening, people would gather round to share beer and nibbles and tell stories, recite poetry, sing or play a song - often witty and slightly political. It seemed that time taken to create something original which could be shared was really valued.

If you value and want to promote Green Frog Space, share the Green Frog coaster photo however you like, and let me know via Facebook or Twitter (@archdeaconjanet) or post a comment here. 

Meanwhile, I'll enjoy that brain-stimulating cup of tea…