A January thought for a hot July

I remember in the January snow of 2010 spending five minutes filming the back garden. The snow fell silently. The sound of traffic was more intermittent than usual. In the snow the world is quieter. With leafless branches pointing into white skies there’s a great simplicity in a snowscape, as there is in any winter landscape. Everything is stripped back. Like the unbleached woollen garments worn by Cistercian monks.

As snowflakes lose their identity in the snow-bed’s totality of white, so I am reminded that I am nothing and at the same time a part of, and at fundamental level connected to, everything. At the heart of simplicity is the clarity, unity and in the end bare reality so beloved of the mystics. I am increasingly inclined to the view that the ultimate reality, which might be called God, Nirvana whatever, is this clear, silent, still and unfumished heart of an ‘onion-like’ reality.

Any sense we might have of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘self’ or ‘soul’, is an illusion, a trick of the mind, generated to prevent it from seeing the ultimate reality, indeed realising the emptiness. These illusions protect the mind from seeing what it fears to see, that it itself is an illusion. The mind fears emptiness, it fears silence, and thus seeks to realise its self, creating the illusions of ‘self’, ‘soul’, I’ and ‘me’.

At one level we need this sense of self in order to survive. This body of mine needs to be able to say ‘that’s my food’ ‘I will guard it.’ But there’s a down-side as well.

The sense of self can lead to a ‘me versus you’ an ‘us and them’ way of thinking. This in turn pushes us away from realising the ultimate simplicity of reality. There is but one thing. It is mostly nothing and we are all a part of it. As Einstein put it “human beings are a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe”, a part limited in time and space. We experience our self, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest.., a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

The temple in Jerusalem, like other temples had a space at its heart in which to place an idol of the God. The space was called the holy of holies. In the Jerusalem temple the holy of holies was empty. God was represented by nothing but an empty space. God was not to be represented by an image created by human minds and hands. Maybe that is true of you and me. Perhaps in order to ‘see’ ourselves as we really are we must learn to discard the images and concepts we have created to represent our selves.

If this sounds depressing, bleak, nihilistic, and even hopeless, on a cold January morning, it is perhaps that we mistake the unfurnished heart of things for the absence of anything real. That is perhaps an error, for the emptiness points us to the ultimate reality that which I call God. And what is love other than the expression of a need to reconnect beings made separate by the illusion of self. Love is a emptying of self to connect more fully with the other. God, they say, is Love.

A New Year like a new day is like a clean slate, a time for a greater simplicity, a time remember the self emptying nature of love. In the clarity of leafless branches pointing into white skies we can learn again to see our true humanity emptied of all idols and illusions.

Jesus: Teacher or Saviour, or both? Some questions, not answers, for Lent and Good Friday.

In an article for the on-line journal the Huffington Post, an American sociologist writes about Jesus ‘Evangelicals don't exactly hate Jesus’ he writes, ‘They do love him dearly. But not because of what he tried to teach humanity. Rather, Evangelicals love Jesus for what he does for them. Through his magical grace, and by shedding his precious blood, Jesus saves Evangelicals from everlasting torture in hell’
The writer’s use of Evangelical is a little too finger waving at them not me for my liking. Nevertheless, his statement is very provocative, and for me, during this time of Lent, with its lead up to Good Friday and Easter, it’s good to have my thoughts provoked in this way. It begs some real questions for me, and perhaps for you. Firstly, how much does talk about Jesus as the Saviour come from the thinking of a generation after the thoughts and words of Jesus?
A more important question, though, is this:
To what extent does our accepting Jesus as our saviour let us off the hook of following his teaching?
For instance, when Paul writes to the Romans: “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are (put right) with God by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which came by Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an atoning sacrifice…” he means that we are saved from punishment through accepting Jesus as the saviour, not by following the precepts of the Jewish law. Thus it is the person of faith not the perfectly moral person who is saved. Yet if we return to the teaching of Jesus towards the end of the Sermon on the mount, he says “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you workers of Lawlessness!’ This statement occurs towards the end of a sermon in which Jesus expounds his vision of the kingdom of God, and the kind of conduct that is required of people.
At the very end of the sermon he says:
“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise person who built their house upon a rock; and the rains fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
So I return to the questions with which I began: In what way does the idea of Grace and God’s salvation in Jesus lead us to ignore the call of Jesus to live in an ethical way?
I wonder how easy it is to put aside the demands of Jesus when we think of him as a Saviour and not a teacher. Therefore the questions I shall ponder on are: When is salvation? Which age is the saviour for, the present age or the age to come? When I look at the cross on Good Friday, do I see a Saviour sacrificed for my sins? Or a reminder of what remains a painful reality for so many today because the teaching of the crucified one remains unheeded?

What is Theology and can one ever get it wrong?

Richard Dawkins whether wonders Theology is a subject at all, and a friend asks whether someone doing theology can ever get it wrong.
So what is theology? The first thing to say is that Theology is not doctrine/dogma. Doctrine and it development over the centuries is one of the objects of study within the academic discipline of theology, but it is not theology.
As an under graduate I studied the core areas as well as the options around that core. The core subjects with the academic discipline of theology are doctrine and its development, the critical study the New Testament and Hebrew Scriptures, the philosophy of religion, the history of the religion of Israel and the history of Christianity. Within the latter history the first five centuries are a key area of study within the subject of theology. In all these areas the same critical rigour one finds in any other of the liberal arts subject is taught.
That is certainly how theology is taught in British Universities.
I wonder sometimes why Richard Dawkins doesn’t know this, he only need visit the faculty web pages of his own University to find out.
For me Theology is the critical study of religion, religious beliefs and practices, the development of belief and belief in contemporary society. To study theology one must learn how to be an historian and anthropologist, a philosopher and linguist but most of all one must learn to be critical of one’s own beliefs and the beliefs of others. The first essay I given as an undergraduate was titled, ‘Old Testament Study demands a combination of faith and reason. Discuss.’ The readings set for the essay were in themselves an introduction the critical thinking.
So that’s what academic theology is all about, but what of my friends question Can someone doing theology get it wrong? In the academy as with any other subject it is possible to get it wrong, any one saying Nestorius was a monophysite, has got the wrong answer.
I sense however that that is not what my friend means. You see to Athanasius, Arius was wrong because he denied the divinity of Christ whereas to Arius, Athanasius was wrong because Athanasius proclaimed Christ’s divinity. But these are just religious opinions of which we can ask; ‘What would it take to disconfirm this opinion?’ If the answer is, ‘Nothing’ they can be treated as what they are opinion and no more. Yet even here logic and reason are not redundant. Opinions even when un-falsifiable must be consistent with one another. So whilst both Nestorius and Cyril agreed with Athanasius, Nestorius got it wrong because he would not accept the logical correlate of Christ’s divinity, namely the doctrine that Mary was the theotokos, the bearer or mother of God. If Mary is not the God bearer, then who is Christ? One can’t accept one opinion without accepting the other. These are still opinions, but they form part of a logically consistent set of opinions. Can you do theology and get it wrong? Sort of.
When we do theology in the church we are reflecting upon all what has been believed in the past and reflecting also on what has changed in our understanding of the world today. From those reflections the church continues to create a meaningful narrative by which it can live its life of faith. But the theological narrative should never be a fixed narrative. It is narrative that is still in the process of formation and as such is never the final word. Whilst this narrative theology can never be wholly right, its very falsifiablility should ensure its continued place at the heart of the community of faith and doubt (the Church).
To finish then two statements on the dangers of theology, both of which have been addressed to me by religious conservatives.
‘Don’t go and study theology, theology will lead you away cross.’
‘The problem with the study of theology is that people who start it begin with a simple faith and end up with complex doubts.’
If that is true, then the friends of reason have nothing to fear and everything to applaud in the study of Theology.

Jesus advises John to look at the evidence,

Matthew 11:2-11 NRSV
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

The theme for the third Sunday in Advent is the forerunner of Jesus: John the Baptist.
The first thing to note is that John, now in prison, may be having doubts about his understanding of who Jesus is, for he sends a message to Jesus saying “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Here we see John doubting his own conviction. This should not disturb us.
To quote Joan Chittister ‎"Doubt is what leaves us open to truth, wherever it is, however difficult it may be to accept. Without doubt, life would simply be a series of packaged assumptions, none of them tested, none of them sure, and all of them belonging not to us, but to someone else whose truth we have made our own."
John, here, is asking a question. So should we. Jesus, in turn, responds by saying “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” In other words, he says look at the evidence. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk… and so on.
So, in this first paragraph, we have a paradigm, an example of how we might proceed. Doubt elicits a question, and the response to the question is to demand that we look at the evidence. Notwithstanding the nature of the evidence which some in the modern world will find difficult to receive, never the less there is a clear critical approach here. Doubt creates questions which require evidence in order to be satisfied. So much for the first paragraph.
In the second paragraph, Jesus asks the question about John:
“What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes?”
The implication is of course neither. People were not coming into the desert to look at the desert nor to find princes in their fine robes. No, they had gone to find a prophet, which is no more than somebody who speaks truth to a situation. Prophetes means ‘the one who appears on behalf of.’ and the Hebrew word ‘Nabi’ is ‘the one inspired to speak’. Both speak into contemporary situations. Prophesy is not primarily about prediction.
The message of John and Jesus is very simple: Repent. Change the way you look at the world. It seems to me that this repentance, this change, is a continuous process, because change in thinking will always follow changes in understanding. And changes in understanding will often be the result of some new piece of information, some previously unknown evidence.
What is it you hear? What is it you see? How does that change the way you understand the world?

The gold is out there, we are just not listening.

It is Advent and my thoughts are turning towards Christmas.

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him, still
The dear Christ enters in.

Just reading these words from the famous Christmas carol makes me feel quite excited that Christmas is coming. But this third verse from O Little Town of Bethlehem contains a secret that easily missed at Christmas:
Silently.
Silence is very much in vogue at the moment. It began, I think, with an endurance of a film called Into Great Silence. This three hour documentary with no commentary or incidental music observes the silent lives of Carthusian monks for six months. Then there was Sarah Maitland’s Book of Silence. Recently, on BBC 2, three programmes entitled The Big Silence followed five not particularly religious people through eight silent days in a Jesuit Retreat House. They discovered in that silence something that was life-changing. Also, this year the Royal British Legion released a silent single for Remembrance.
So what is it about silence that’s so important?. It has been said that silence is not the absence of sound but the beginning of listening. John O Donohue wrote that “Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits."
I do not think that silence leads us to anything supernatural. Rather, it leads us to the deeper natural, the parts of existence to which we pay little attention because we never stop to listen for long enough. I believe there is a deep human need for that deeper-natural that we find in silence. So where has this silence gone?
Between the years 1066 and 1800 England’s population grew from about 1 million to 8 million. In the two hundred years since, the population grew to just over 49 million. So for every person alive in 1801 there are now another 5 people. That’s a lot more chatter! The great growth in population coincided with industrialisation in this country. I want to argue here that for the greater part of human existence, the world has been a much quieter place, fewer people and no mechanical noise. The loudest thing most people heard before the industrial revolution was the odd clap of thunder.
Quietness, like trees and clean seas is just another part of our environment that we have lost through the process of industrialisation. We cannot turn the clocks back, and neither should we, for industrialisation has brought great benefits too. But just like other parts of our endangered habitat, silence should perhaps be sought out and conserved. Making time for this is difficult. I have suggested in the past buying an egg timer, turning it over and spending three minutes looking at the sands and just listening. That’s one way. Perhaps, also, we need to look for the natural silences, for instance, the tiny pause at the top of each breath. The silence that can be found in the midst of a busy supermarket, surrounded by people – yes, even this can be a place of inner silence in the midst of a busy Christmas. I think we urgently need to find silence as much as we need clean air and clean water.
How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
There is a gift to be found in silence, but this gift is one of which we cannot speak, we can but listen, look and silently behold.

Hazlenuts and Farmers

I have in my hand a little hazelnut which I picked up on a walk between Almeley Parish Church and the Friends Meeting House. As I picked it up during the Harvest Festival Season it became the basis of my thoughts for Harvest, which we have now completed.
Human beings in their present form came into being some 200,000 years ago. If you were to compress the whole of this length of time into a 24 hour day, then the last Ice Age finished around an hour before midnight. In all the 23 hours prior to that point there was no agriculture. People lived by hunting animals and gathering berries, roots and nuts like the hazelnut I have in my hand. It is around that point we find the beginnings of Agriculture at the start of the New Stone Age.
This revolution did not reach these islands until some 6000 years before present. It was during this time that our ancestors were able to develop the skills and technology to build the Megalithic tombs such as West Kennet Long Barrow and Arthur’s Stone. It is Agriculture that made this possible. No-one who spends most of their time hunting and gathering will have the leisure to organise society in such a way that these things can begin to happen.
Of course, our technology has moved on. I am writing this on a computer; my third! Something I would not have dreamed of, even in my young adulthood. None of this, however, would be possible without the thing that made the first technology possible. Our very lives still depend on Agriculture; on farmers taking the risks with their resources, sowing their crops, not knowing what the weather will be doing during the Harvest season.
All our human activities are wonderful things. But the sustaining energy for them all is provided by agriculture. So the next time you are passing a farm, take a moment to give thanks for our farmers.

Is Accommodationism so bad?

Accommodation is the new dirty word. That is strange given what the word means. It means adapt myself to others with whom I share this planet especially those I oppose and who oppose me. I suppose I must ask myself the question 'How must, and to what extent should I adapt myself in order that I may live in peace with my opponent?' And whilst what I oppose may well be a thing, (i.e. religion, political ideology, builders of roads, whatever), my opponent will nearly always be another person or set of persons.
Of course there are things that I will not adapt to, but does that ever include people?

Shouldn't accommodationism be given the benefit of the doubt?