Thursday, 7 November 2024

a day after


A DAY AFTER THE WEEK BEFORE 

I hope, as I write this, I do not do so from my own political bias, which I prefer to keep out of my church-based writing and my preaching. Blind Freddy of course could tell what it is, though even Blind Freddy is not right all the time.

But as I tried to say an eternity ago in last week’s column, I have no understanding of economics. Pundits tell me that largely drove the US election outcome. Before an eternity ago (Tuesday) a lot of sources told me that those signs were good: better than in 2026 to 2020. The Democrats were clearly abysmal at getting that message across amidst the white noise of election fever (which seems to go on for four years in the USA). Ah well. What’s done is done,” as Lady Macbeth muttered. I support democracy, though in an ideal world I would probably support benevolent dictatorship. It saves a lot of money and stress, but sadly tends not to stay benevolent for long. Maybe Ataturk did?

So yeah, I don’t want to talk Right or Left. Democracy suggests both have strengths and weaknesses. Let’s not go there.

But I want to talk decency. I want to talk Christian witness. I want to talk Christlikeness. Even in politics. And I acknowledge, by and large we do it quite well in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Perhaps a little less so in the USA? By and large we don’t say things like “In two days, we are going to take out the trash …” and then name our opponent. (“Chris” covers both sides of our politics!). We don’t, however disingenuously, suggest guns should be pointed at our opponent, whether referring to firing squads or the theatre of war.

Having landed on the wrong side of the US equation this past week I must practice what I preach. Maybe I’m a drama queen? Maybe I catastrophise? Bluntly I am very scared of the next four years. But be that as it may I am faith-duty bound to pray for the leadership (because US leadership is world leadership).

But: benefit of the doubt, for now. Perhaps threats to “round up” illegal immigrants, despatch “the enemy within,” or that a special counsel should be “thrown out of the country” are okay? Maybe, if they are just rhetoric?

But wait: loose words are dangerous. They give permissions to those who are mentally unstable. We saw that on January 6th, 2021. “Stand up and stand by” excited some very dangerous people.

Many American Christians have moved into dangerous territory, alongside many Americans of every persuasion. As Christ-bearers we must pray for and support our elected leaders, until we mustn’t. And then, God forbid, if a time comes when a government becomes anti-decency, anti-human, anti-Christ, there’s a long and time-honoured path of passive resistance and non-violent action.

May that never happen, either in the USA or here. But it could.

 

  

a week before


SOME THOUGHTS A WEEK BEFORE THAT DAY


I am deeply aware of the pending US election. I don’t mean to be, and perhaps at a political and economic level it may not have a great deal of impact on Aotearoa New Zealand, maybe even less here in the deep south. I really don’t understand economics particularly. Some benefit from high interest rates, some from low. A bit like farming, really—how’s poor God supposed to sort out conflicting prayers? Rain, or shine?

But I can speak of faith and spirituality. One candidate in the USA is seen by some to be God’s chosen servant. Hmmm. God operates on a “by their fruits you shall know them” basis. By “fruits” Jesus did not mean economic outcomes. I’m not saying Ms Harris is a card-carrying Christ-bearer. They are rare, too, in US politics, though Jimmy Carter was (and at 100 still is) regardless of whether he was a good president or not.

But a person who encourages Christian Nationalism, a dangerous distortion of the gospel (unfortunately all too common in Christian history), who boasts of philandering, who is a proven abuser of financial trust, and who has at best a cavalier attitude to truth (even more brazenly so than most politicians), is not God’s chosen servant.

Okay. I don’t think Ms Harris is God’s chosen servant either. Or Mr Luxon. Or Ms Ardern, or—I dunno—the list around the world goes on. Nelson Mandela was, perhaps? But I certainly think Mr Trump’s blatant manipulation of fundamentalist Christians in his country is deeply evil. 

Okay, I can’t speak for the economic outcomes of right and left in the USA ... or here. But I hope American Christians remain very vigilant, for there is a deeply demonic tsunami of belief that hugging a US flag, holding an upside down bible, marketing a bible (printed in China) renamed after oneself, with added inclusion of a national constitution … is in some way the gospel.

These are not the way of Jesus Christ.

 

 


Sunday, 11 February 2024

on absent Ys

 Fascinating.

The two most inspirational orations I've heard in recent years have been by young women.

Amanda Gorman at Biden's kick-off.

Taylor Swift and NYU's Class of 2022 send-off.

(I haven't hear much oratory from Greta Thunberg, but she's inspirational too).

There's some great role models out there, especially for young women, and often in unexpected places.

On one of my granddaughters' birthday, and ...

despite ...

    toxic ocean sludge,

        equally toxic orange buffoon presidential candidates,

                balding and lethal dictators,

                    climate, ecological (and sociological) emergency,

                                you name it ...

there is great hope.

(Other sheep, not of my flock, comes to mind, and that's important too).


Here's to my daughters and granddaughters and the world they can midwife. (Hey, those with Ys are great too, but they must catalyze a different sub-plot)

Tuesday, 22 August 2023

the universe screams

 when the universe screams 


There are  no words  when faced  with horrors  like  those perpetrated by Lucy Letby in England. I somewhat wish that, like the mosque killer in Christchurch, her name were now being wiped from history. Such names are searchable, but why bother? No words can bring those infants back, nor erase the grief from those who loved them.

How do we speak of God in such a context? Extremely cautiously. Evil and holiness continue to coexist, and not one of us is immunized from the former. As with natural  disasters  or  accidents we can  improve our odds, but  the parents  of those infants  in the Countess of Chester Hospital took no risks beyond the risk of love.

God did not stop the evil machinations of Letby’s twisted mind. God will be present, named or not, as tears are wiped away, nightmares recede, as those who are grieving are held physically and emotionally by those who stand with them in their sorrow. God will be present eventually even in the aching void of those who have loved and lost (including Letby’s parents).  But the word “God” might not. Ever.

Yet  we who are Christ-bearers  must  speak  that  word, still. 

How?  How  after  any  brutal  tragedy? Natural or human-made. 

How?

I am a “Christian universalist.” I believe that no one ultimately stands outside the realms of the salvation won in the Christ-event. But Letby? Or Hitler? Sexual abusers and mass murderers (and any murder is one too many)? Where is God when Lucy Letby …? Where is God for the babies who cannot legally be named, where is God for their loved ones?

God?

Ultimately if there is a God (I happen to think there is) then that God must provide answers. In moments of sorrow I hope Letby will spend the rest of her life (a far better punishment than death) listening to the victim impact statements of those whose children she has killed, the statements she refused to  hear in court. Then,  post-life, post death, my  theology tells me, she must spend whatever “eternity” is, facing the horrors  she  has  perpetrated,  until at last she sees, acknowledges, cries “mercy” for those horrors, and looks into the infants’ and their loved ones’ eyes. Looks, and knows, and seeks at last the mercy only her victims can permit and God-in-Christ bestow.

 

Tuesday, 14 March 2023

Self evaluation blah blah blah

THOUGHTS ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON (AFTER A TUESDAY MORNING)
 

So in one of those wallowing moments saturated with First World Problems that threaten to overwhelm one’s sense of self-worth I decided to do a little self-evaluation. Quite simple. Even for one mathematically challenged.

 

A. What am I good at?

B. What am I bad at?

Just a few representative examples, perhaps.

 

So, (A)

Walking, (metaphorical and literal)

driving

reading

researching

comprehension

writing

public speaking

liturgy

listening

caring

 

(B)?

 

IT

Admin

Heights

Proofreading too, perhaps – but so were Shakespeare and Defoe …

 

I checked the ordinal … the document that governs what my job is supposed to entail.


Some of  (A) featured.

None of (B) featured.

Oh well. Back to the day job I guess.

Monday, 13 February 2023

Bloody Phylacteries



BLOODY PHYLACTERIES


It all started when I was asked to write a report on an induction (installation of a new priest in charge of a parish, what used to be delightfully if quaintly called “induction to a cure of souls”).

I tend to look at these things very much as if I were an outsider. What did this or that event look like in the eyes of someone who had just dropped in from Betelgeuse, or the 17th century, or downtown Poorsville or Hungersville, or anywhere where my tribe and its rites are as foreign to the outsider as the carpet on the Mariana Trench is to me.

So I wrote, and faeces hit the fan.

I here reproduce what I wrote – albeit with names and locations altered because I’ve explored and posted all that.[1] That specific is dusted, and I’d like to move on. But the ramifications of the faeces need a touch of house-keeping.

In the old days – that is to say more than a year or two ago – inductions were dominated by a coterie of clergy dressed in their various glad rags, a pot pourri of rumpled or ironed, dazzling or drab humanity, a Chaucerian crew “of sondry folk, by adventure yfalle / In fellaweshipe, and pilgrims were they alle.” In white robes. 

We don’t do that now – possibly because someone eventually realised it looked more like a gathering of the KKK than a show of ecclesiastical support by sister and brother clergy. Or possibly because the parading phylacteries dominated the gathering of the faithful congregants and fellow-pilgrims who are the heart and soul of a parish.

So no one paraded any phylacteries when the people of St Ultan's and assorted others gathered for an induction. No airs and graces, but a church full of those from the congregation, from the faith community, from the wider community, parishioners and clients and colleagues and whanau and perhaps even wayward strangers gathering because they have journeyed or will journey or are journeying with the Rev’d Illyana Intrepid.

And because they wanted to utter their amen or nod or smile as Bishop Thucydides Thunderbolt kicked off a new stanza in Illyana’s life and the congregation’s life and the life of a parish that is much, much older than a mere congregation.  

All this because one of the most historic faith communities of the diocese was kicking off a new phase. A new phase for St Ultan of Ardbracan’s, a new phase for Rev’d Illyana Intrepid. But not new for either. Illyana Intrepid, on and off, has been a part of the parish for, well, a year or two. 

Okay, to be honest she has been associated with St. Ultan’s on and off but more on than off since before she was born.

Until recently that journey culminated in a period in which Illyana, in conjunction with others, were effectively (and effective) sacramental ministers. But as a Beatle once said, “all things must pass,” and now the Rev’d Illyana Intrepid has been led, as her choice of songs reminded us, by the Spirit of God into the seat in which so many servants of God have sat since 1873.

So we gathered, sang, prayed, and of course ate, and Illyana Intrepid is now the priest in a long line of priests presiding over Word and Sacrament in a remarkable parish. She is surrounded by aroha and goodwill, proclaiming with the people of the Underworld the resurrection hope that dwells at the heart of the Trinity.

Kia kaha, Illyana Intrepid and your faith-filled parishioners!

 

It wasn’t a great piece of writing, but I was under pressure for time. Off it went, was duly pixelated and posted. I bumped into Rev’d Illyana in the cauliflower aisle the next day, and she was delighted. That was before the fan turned yellow-brown and sprayed.

I had, I was told, trivialized Anglican rites (I love them), offended anglo catholics (I am one), and spouted anti-semitic hate speech (I am not anti semitic, though I am no sycophant of the modern State of Israel, and let’s recall that Palestinians are Semites, too).

Actually there was some confusion about the alleged anti semitism; some doo-doo-despatchers seemingly forgot that the reference to phylacteries was from the mouth of Jesus, the Jew (Mt. 23:5). Others believed that “phylacteries” was a references to phalluses, and that I was promulgating some sort of public sexual deviance presumably involving foreheads and aforementioned organs.

Under duress I wrote what I wanted to say in response, then deleted it. 

Instead I wrote an explanation of what I had said instead … sort of an essay interpreting my own work. 

A recent piece I wrote as a reflection on the induction of the Rev’d Illyana to St Ultan’s has, according to correspondence received by the bishop, generated offence.

This offence appears to have been primarily concerned with my references to the Ku Klux Klan, always a blight on human history, and to phylacteries. These, as Jesus mentioned (Mt. 23:5), can represent not so much a desire to be close to the heart and will of God (as they were intended to), but a desire to be seen to be close to the heart and will of God, which can become a different matter. 

In responding I am somewhat hog-tied. Correspondence with the bishop cannot be reproduced here, so cannot be refuted. So let it be. I can only make two rather generic responses to the two foci of complaint.

In the first place my reference to the Klan was firmly past tense. Referring to the parades of clergy in white robes, parades which I note to have been “former times” (if not that long ago), I suggest that those looking at us without formation in liturgical practice wear a set of lenses different to ours. The gathering and parading of robed clergy can appear more akin to a gathering of a different, deeply demonic group of humans. They wore white robes, but were and are well-known for practicing unimaginable atrocity and evil. They were not a group of women and men recalling their baptism, rejoicing in the white-robed army of martyrs alluded to in Revelation 7:14.

I believe the term used today is a “metric.” What metric are we using to interpret elements in any given context? As one who used joyfully to parade in white robes, even black robes, I am critiquing myself as much as anyone else. What impression did I convey? What impression do I now convey? Which is closer to gospel truth in the streets of the suburb where I live, in 2023? Is there a difference between the clothes I wear in liturgy and the clothes I wear in the street? Do the clothes I wear or any other action I take in Christ convey oneness with or separation from those with whom I rub shoulders in the street?

I believe there was also criticism of my reference to phylacteries. Jesus is recorded by Matthew, that most Hebrew of New Testament writers, as noting a group of religious leaders, Jesus’ own people, Matthew’s own people, who “make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” Consensus amongst scholars and other bible readers is that this was not some sort of anti-Semitic rant from Jesus the Jewish teacher, but a metaphorical, generic description of those who like to draw attention to themselves in contexts where it is inappropriate to do so. If, incidentally, I had been wishing to offend my Jewish neighbours (and I wouldn't), I would have denigrated the wearers of tfillin, but that subtlety evaded my critics.

I was not criticizing Jewish people today. I was criticizing Anglican Christian people of yesteryear - and their contemprary imitators. This chronology I emphasized in my article by noting, “no one paraded any phylacteries, no airs and graces,” adding “but a church full of those from the congregation, from the faith community, from the wider community, parishioners and clients and colleagues and whanau and perhaps even wayward strangers gathering because they have journeyed or will journey or are journeying with the Rev’d Illyana” (emphasis now added). It was a joyous and unpretentious occasion celebrating a new phase in the life of a priest. A new phase too in the community in which she has been invited to serve God in new ways.

I added an apology, avoiding the lame “sorry (if) you feel offended,” but trying to avoid compromising my view, and my right to it.

That view remains. Coteries of clergy dressed up in esoteric finery and/or white sheets (often with hoods, subtly understated), ensuring they stand out from “mere” hoi polloi amongst whom they walk or sit, do the crucified outsider god few favours. They appear through the lens of a post-Churchianity society to resemble the Ku Klux Klan far more closely than they resemble the saints and martyrs of faith that the paraders think they’re recollecting, representing.

I’m not championing Baptist liturgy. In the enactment that Anglican liturgy is, wear costume if it helps convey the sacred. I do. What we do in the specifics of a liturgical role, when we have one, is up to us. The bishop and the inductee were dressed appropriately in ways that expressed thir roles in the liturgy. Otherwise, basically, if you don’t want to make an ass of yourself (and the gospel) don’t dress up as a donkey.

Oh … and if the metaphorical properties of phylacteries and donkeys and fans and faeces elude you enjoy your day without them.

In the end I published the apology unadorned. I figured those deeply immersed in their own institutional esoterism were probably not going to see themselves through the eyes of outsiders, and Anglican Christianity would be pushed further and further to the fringes of society.  

 



[1] I have removed one paragraph that would serve no purpose here beyond identifying St. Ultan’s and its Illyana. 

Thursday, 3 March 2022

bricks and walls

 

ANOTHER BRICK IN … SOMETHING


It was an epiphany of sorts, and about as unsettling as they usually are. There I was, driving along, somewhere south of the last town, and Pink Floyd shuffled their way into my consciousness. I never really got into The Wall. Perhaps there comes a time when angsty anti-establishmentism becomes a bit sort of pubescent, really. Maybe. 

Unless you’re Roger Waters. He stayed angsty, writing songs against the establishment. Good songs, too. But for most of us the fire goes out, somewhere around that moment when our first child comes along, and well, mouths to feed, houses to roof.

Still, “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” is one of those songs I couldn’t ignore, even if like most people I ignored the album. Dark Side of the Moon, yeah. The Wall? Yeah nah. Life’s too short. But the song? Margaret Thatcher hated it, so that sold it to me. I’ve loved it ever since.

On this occasion it broke through something of a dwaal. That’s a lovely Afrikaans word that will have to be translated by the weaker “daydream” I guess.  But you know … as the kids from Islington Green School chanted the chorus, “Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone” I came back from my dwaal and heard the tail of the song as if for the first time, somewhere south of the last town.

“Wrong, do it again!” yells a teacher, exemplifying, with the slight sneer in his voice, the “dark sarcasm” berated in the body of the song. I winced a little. I didn’t hear those sneers too often, but they were there in the psyches of the Masters of my childhood. “Wrong. Do it again,” and the thwack of whatever weapon came to hand across my butt remains a sound indelibly etched in my consciousness. Wrong. Do it again. Thwack. Hockey stick, sandal, slipper, coal shovel, whatever.

But it was as the voice started expanding its owner’s logic in naked fury that I realized my own footprints in the story. “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding.” It was an order I recalled from those hard days in a bleak boarding school – though it was more likely to be the limp, dead silver beet that I was being forced to eat. “If you don’t eat your vegetables you can’t eat your pudding” doesn’t scan so well, and I don’t recall the abbreviation “veggies” doing the rounds back then. Not proper, you know.

But the harsh cry of the dislocated, spaceless, timeless voice doesn’t stop there. “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”

It is the cry of a man whose universe is crumbling. For him there was an indisputable logic in his summation of the situation. No meat, no pud. How could it be otherwise? No water, no swim. No air, no breathe.

But to the kids his frantic cry was nonsense. He was just another brick in the wall, holding them captive, incarcerated in old dreams that had died a long overdue death. “Screw your meat” – or veggies, whatever. And I had been one of them (not in Islington, admittedly). I had hated what I saw to be the phony values of the generation before me. No marriage no sex. No military service no citizenship. No bombs no peace. How can you have any peace if you don’t manufacture your bombs?

The man’s voice faded away. His eternal truths were crumbling. If the song had been Lord of the Flies the kids would have overthrown him, torn him limb from limb. And I was a shit of a kid. I would have mocked him mercilessly as the crowd advanced and the wall began to crumble. All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

It was wrong and it was right. Perhaps now I’d try to find the compassion to love the poor man whose world was crumbling. But I doubt it. I fear I would have been a part of the fickle, angry, hate-fuelled crowd. I still recall with horror a geography teacher fleeing our class in tears. Another brick in the wall.

Perhaps I might even have been Alt-Right. I hope not. But I wonder: my psyche dwelt in furious places. I was never brave; even now when I hope I’ve found something like compassion I’m not sure I would exercise it when push came to shove, and the realities of yesterday’s hero began to crumble. All have sinned and fall short. Welcome to Lent.