Changing People, Changing Earth

During the summer, whilst on a visit to my parents in Wiltshire, I visited West Kennet Long Barrow. It is a chambered tomb dating from round about 3600 B.C.E. At the eastern end there is a set of stone chambers which open out towards the east. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, during its time of use, the light of the rising sun would have shone directly into the back of the tomb. Elsewhere in the British Isles, such as Orkney, similar tombs face the rising sun at the beginning of February. It is possible that these were significant times of the year for our ancestors. Certainly at Stonehenge the main orientation of the monument is towards the rising of the sun at mid-winter.
One of the great gifts to us from the pre-Christian people of ancient Europe is a set of festivals which mark the turning of the seasons. There are eight of these in total: Mid-Winter and Mid Summer, the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes as well as at the beginning of February, May, August and November. Although no one particular religion celebrated all of these days, they were all marked at least somewhere in pre-Christian Europe. It was left to the universal nature of Christianity to bring all eight festivals under one religious roof, so that now you will find Christian festivals overlying all of these days, beginning with Christmas, Candlemas, Lady Day, May Day, Saint John’s Day, Lammas Day, Michaelmas and finally All Saints and All Souls.
Although these festivals were primarily used by Christians to commemorate the story of Christ in different ways, in recent years they have returned to their perhaps original use. The modern Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) is among many contemporary pagan groups to use the “eight seasonal celebrations to help us attune to the natural cycle, and help us to structure our lives through the year, and to develop a sense of community with all living beings.”
I love the festivals of Harvest, Easter and Christmas. At these times the outside comes inside, by way of decorations garnered from the natural world. I have one very vivid small child’s memory of going out to collect holly in the forest with my father. Everywhere was washed out brown fern and grey bark, with cold almost white skies. These celebrations and others are still special to me because they remember in me that child’s joy in the natural world.
It seems to me, whether we are Christian, Pagan or of no religion at all, these eight festivals help us to pay attention to and mark the changing year.
Who knows what the builders of the tombs and stone circles thought or believed? What we can know is that they were keenly aware of the seasons and how both land and sky changed throughout the year. For them it was important enough to mark these events in stone; using the first great technology. In so doing, they have left us with a gift that we should not ignore. They were a listening people who heard a speaking earth. Perhaps like them we can use the festivals of our year to learn to listen again. Who knows what, or whom we might hear?

Wells not walls

The story is told of an English farmer who went to visit a sheep farm in Australia. The farm was immense, stretching in all directions as far as the stretch of the sky.
“You must need an awful lot of barbed-wire,” the English farmer observed.
“Not at all, we don’t use any, we just dig wells, and there the sheep stay.”
We humans also gather around wells. In fact many early Christian settlements were founded near sources of water. They provided all that was needed for drinking and washing and baptisms too. One of the ironies of history is that the building of St. David’ s Cathedral completely destroyed the reason for David settling there in the first place: for in order to construct the foundations of this massive statement of ecclesiastical power, the wells and water-courses had to be drained and diverted.
Where are today’s spiritual wells, where do the thirsty come for drink and the heavy laden find rest?
The wells are still here, but are all too often enclosed, hidden by walls and fences of ambition and fear. They are walls that imprison, and fences that say, ‘this is mine’.
It is time to brake down those walls and cut through those fences.
For many are thirsty, and others still are in need of rest.

Liberality

I must confess to being an old-fashioned liberal (note small l ). What does that mean, and what connections might it have with the Christian faith?
The word liberal is often connected with a similar word liberty, which of course is about freedom. When liberals read the bible, they should be able to do so in a way that is free from dogmatic and apologetic concerns. Put in other words: There is no need to defend the Christian faith from important questions. I’ll give you an example: If we consider the different accounts of the resurrection of Jesus we find anomalies. In Mark’s gospel the women go to the tomb when the sun had risen, whilst Matthew and Luke place the visit at early dawn. John’s gospel, however, insists that it was still dark. Whilst that might possibly harmonise with Matthew and Luke, it cannot possibly be dark when the sun had risen. It seems to me that we need to be at liberty to ask the question which gospel has it right? Or do any of them?
This is the heart of what it means to be liberal when reading and interpreting the bible. For the liberal there can be no orthodoxy, no truth which is not the result of questions freely asked and freely investigated; with the proviso, of course, that any answers that we find are, in and of themselves, still provisional; they may have to change in the light of further evidence. Until the Christian Church as a whole is able to fully embrace this liberality, it remains able to speak only to itself and to those who require certainty, whether or nor that certainty is true.
Liberality has another connotation. I was a guest recently and was blessed by the liberality of my host whose generosity was remarkable.
Liberality, generosity; they mean the same thing. He might have said be free with all that is mine. Liberality, to my mind, ought to be at the heart of Christianity. When asked how many times should we forgive another, Jesus replies seventy times seven. This is a piece of rabbinic overstatement, didactic exaggeration to drive home a point. A generous, liberal attitude is requisite for those who seek to follow Jesus. For God is liberal, big-hearted as the writer of Ephesians reminds us
“but God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
What we see here is a generous God who liberally distributes his mercy.
In the words of a former Bishop of Ludlow, John Saxbee: We serve a Christ-like God who calls us to be Christ-like so that we might win others to the likeness of Christ.
Put another way, we serve a generous God, a loving God, who calls us to be generous and loving with one another, so that through that generosity, that liberality of spirit, others are won to the way of .
Whether you believe in God or not, you can practice in liberality and grace, for in their practice perhaps the world becomes a little kinder.

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

I have just returned from a large international and ecumenical church event in Munich. To give you an example of the scale of it, the exhibition area, where many of the lectures and seminars, as well as exhibitions, took place, is made up of twelve huge buildings each the size of a football pitch. These were filled with people for five days.
On Friday evening, in the Odeon Platz, there was an Orthodox Vespers entitled Service of a thousand tables, where blessed bread would be shared after the service. There were indeed a thousand tables, each with around ten people on them, and more people standing where there were no tables. The service was an hour and a half long, and it was bitterly cold.
That’s over ten thousand people, patiently working their way through a very unfamiliar kind of service and breaking bread with one another. There was more than enough bread, even for those who were standing, in fact the baskets were filled with left-overs. These were people of all Christian denominations (and, I suspect, some of none) coming together to share food. I sat with people I did not know, could barely converse with, and would never see again. It’s interesting to note that the word “company” means “with bread”, and we were indeed a great company.
My accommodation for the conference was with a family who had been instructed that they only needed to provide me with breakfast. Breakfast was rolls, bacon and eggs, all kinds of wonderful foods and a lovely pot of tea made especially for me. Well beyond their call of duty, I was feasted liberally every evening with a wonderful meal and good Bavarian beer besides.
The theme of the conference was “That you may have hope”. The world’s religions offer much in the way of hope on the packaging, but perhaps fall short, as we all humanly do. But it is in the kindness of strangers that hope is really to be found, and it is something that I find all over the place, sometimes where you least expect it. Kindness, of course, means treating others as if they were kin. I have found that it is more readily available than its opposite numbers cruelty and mean-mindedness.
On a recent television programme, the Reverend Peter Owen Jones existed for two weeks on the kindness of others. He noted that “If you are reliant on the goodness in others, that’s what you will find – the goodness in others. But that means making yourself vulnerable, which is not easy.” I didn’t need to go to his extremes to find the kindness of strangers but in their hospitality, I found the real truth in the theme of the conference. For it is in that generosity of the human spirit that you may have hope.

Germany, Britain, Two wars, Rememberence and living with a shared history.

What follows is the text my address to seminar looking at, Britain and Germany: Our Shared History, it will take place in Munich in May.

Firstly a little bit about myself, because in offering this reflection on Remembrance it is important to acknowledge certain things about me and what I bring to Remembrance. 

 I was born in February 1967 towards the end of the twenty-second year after the end of the second world war. To the boy who grew up in the 1970s that might have seemed like a long time. To the middle-aged man of 43, 22 years ago seems like yesterday. A bit more context: Both my parents were born in 1943; both of them war babies. My mother was born in Tilsit, now in the Russian Federation, then part of East Prussia. As a two-year-old she was one of the thousands of refugees fleeing the Red Army as they moved west through an eastern winter. By contrast, my father was born on a farm in rural Kent.  
 As a child I was a member of uniformed organisations like the Scouts and the Air Training Corps, which my German cousins would have been horrified by, I think. As a young man I served in both the Royal Air Force and the Royal Yeomanry (a regiment of part-time soldiers).So you can see that upon almost my entire life, the shadow of the second world war has lain.
 In Britain Remembrance Sunday is about Remembrance and Thanksgiving. Remembering the dead and giving thanks for the freedoms their sacrifice has achieved. It is both a civic and military spectacle. Although black is very much the order of the day, this is broken up by the glimmer of medals, the colours of flags and of course the ubiquitous red of the poppies. Despite all of its sad associations it is a day that we Brits look forward to with pride. 
A pride that is easy when your cause was won and your purpose was righteous. It is a pride that I have never been fully able to own. Because, you see, half the combatants in my family were on the losing and unrighteous side also, it seems.
 A few years ago I was in a town in the north-east of Germany and I noticed a small memorial with words in Hebrew and German. “Zur erinnerung und mahnug” These words translated are “To remember and give warning” The memorial marked the site of the synagogue.
 I have to say that I share the same ambivalence to Remembrance Sunday. We are asked to remember the glorious dead, but surely we should also ask why they are dead. Every year we sing “O valiant hearts” written by a local grandee, Sir john Arkwright, and I quote from this hymn 
“Proudly you gathered, rank on rank, to war,
As who had heard God’s message from afar;
All you had hoped for, all you had you gave,
To save mankind yourselves you scorned to save.

These were his servants, in his steps they trod,
Following through death the martyred son of God:
Victor he rose; victorious too shall rise
They who have drunk his cup of sacrifice”.

Clearly here the sacrifice on the Somme is equated with the sacrifice on Calvary. Not only that, but it seems from this hymn, that the victorious dead have won their salvation through fighting for the right side. I have to say nothing could be further from Christian truth than this. I wouldn’t dream of saying it on Remembrance Sunday.
In the final verse of the hymn we find these lines:
“In glorious hope, their proud and sorrowing land
Commits her children to thy gracious hand.”

To me that says it all. The reason I dislike this hymn so much is not its lack of Christian truth but those final words are a sop to thousands of working class men who lost their lives; thousands more whose lives were ruined by injury, thousands of parents, wives and children whose loss all was due to a confidence trick perpetrated by the military industrial complexes of both nations.
The hymn is a way of pacifying what anger there might have been into a ritual of sorrow and pride.
 Could the same be said of Remembrance Sunday itself?
 In recent years the focus has begun to shift away from the two World Wars of the last century. My country has become involved in one very dubious war in Iraq, and in my opinion, a far more justifiable conflict in Afghanistan. On several occasions in most months of the year service personnel killed in action are brought back with great solemnity through the town of Wootton Bassett, and each occasion is a Remembrance Sunday. What I note about this is that we are still proud of our soldiers. We continue to wear our poppies on these occasions with pride. We give our soldiers our support. But many of us, including the most loyal, question our government about the nature and reason for those conflicts. We do so on behalf of our soldiers, sailors and Air-force personnel.
 A few years ago on Remembrance Sunday I asked the question What shall I tell my children about the wars – second and first? It is question that lays right at the heart of our shared history, My response is that I shall tell them about their great-grandfathers: Franz Teubler and John Fell, both of whom fought on the Somme. They may even have fought each other. They came back and my children are their descendents. But I will also tell them of Uncle George and Uncle Werner who remained uncles with no descendents because they did not come back.
 Remembrance Sunday can be about pride and thanksgiving, but we all may have something to learn from those words on the German memorial. Remembrance is also a warning. 
I will finish with a better poem than “O valiant hearts”:
 This is poem, written by Wilfred Owen, a man who knew only too well the reality and pity of war. It is soldier’s poem and perhaps a pastor’s too.
One ever hangs where shelled roads part. 
In this war He too lost a limb, 
But His disciples hide apart; 
And now the Soldiers bear with Him. 

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest, 
And in their faces there is pride 
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast 
By whom the gentle Christ's denied 

The scribes on all the people shove 
And bawl allegiance to the state, 
But they who love the greater love 
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

How many anglicans does it take to change a light bulb? Change!

It is pollarded oaks that live the longest. For up to 1000 years, every Autumn they sew the seeds of their own successes. By contrast, their un-pollarded cousins are short-lived. What lesson here then, is there for the Church of England?

In the village of Ramsbury, near to where I grew up, there was an ancient tree, standing resplendent in the market-place. It was the symbol of the Ramsbury Building Society, and my childhood money –box from the same Society had a picture of the tree upon it. Like our own Great Oak, it was hollow. By the time I was a teenager, the tree had begun to die. Everything was done to preserve it, but eventually the decision was made to cut it down. This, of course, created a bit of an uproar. How could this symbol of the village be allowed to die? The fact was it was already dead. Its branches had gone, and all that was left was a hollowed-out trunk. In its place a sapling was planted. – one that still continues to grow to the stature of its predecessor.
I think there is a message that may be hard to listen to, but never-the-less needs to be heard. There is no point in trying to preserve something that has become a hollowed-out husk of its former self. Pruning and pollarding perhaps postpone that hollowed-out fate.
I don’t know whether the Church of England has yet reached the stage of being a hollowed-out husk, but it seems to me that it is in great danger of becoming just that. It is over 500 years old and it can no longer touch lives in the way that it formerly did.
When I was training for Ministry I was asked when had I decided to go into the church? I answered somewhat pedantically that I had been in the church since 20th August 1967, the date of my baptism. In the end old trees cannot be preserved, and they go the way of things. No amount of preservation can preserve something that is both out of time and out of place. What’s needed is the renewal of new life, and that renewal can only come when the minister, that servant within ourselves. When we receive a service from anyone, we are receiving something from that which is good.
Trees come and go. So too do institutions. Let us not weep over the demise of old trees and tired institutions. Rather, let us continue to rejoice in the life that is within us, and the service to which each life is called. These are the green shoots of May, and these are the things worth nurturing.
Nobody likes change. That’s tough. The impermanence of all things is an unchanging reality. Not even the stones live for ever. Living things change by continuing to grow. Whereas dead things change only through decay.

Spiritual but not religious

“It seems that many people like to describe themselves as "spiritual," but, if pressed to define the word as it applies to them/explain what they mean by it, I imagine that they wouldn't be able to and/or wouldn't want to. That's incredibly frustrating.”
 These are the words of an atheist blogger and college lecturer, Miranda Celeste Hale. She voices a typical frustration felt by many atheists at the word “spiritual” and the similar word “spirituality”.
 So what do these words mean? The word “spirit” from which they both come, is usually taken to mean a non-material part of our personal existence and/or existence in general. In terms of its origin, it just means “breath”. Neither of these really helps us understand the words spiritual or spirituality. And, although these words look similar, they are speaking about different things. 
 I often hear people say “I’m not religious but I am spiritual.” Perhaps they mean that although they have religious feelings, and perhaps a belief in God and life after death, they don’t sign up to belonging to a particular religion or set of religious beliefs. So, saying “I am spiritual but not religious” is a less clumsy way of saying “I am religious, but I don’t believe in any particular religion”.
 So, if that is “spiritual” what is “spirituality”?
 If “spiritual” describes the person, then “spirituality” is a word that describes our way of being spiritual or religious. For instance, one might talk about a Cistercian spirituality, Cistercians were the monks that built the Abbeys at Tintern, Fountains and Dore. Cistercians live lives of silence, simplicity and solitude. They live their lives in silence. They spend a lot of time on their own. Their churches are very simple in design and even their clothes are made of un-dyed wool. In these three things they find their royal route to God.  
 Franciscans also live in simplicity and at the heart of their spirituality is a life of poverty combined with the service to others. That is their way of being Christian. 
 Of course spirituality is not limited to Christianity or even, some would argue, to Religion. There is even a little Atheist book of spirituality by a French philosopher. 
 So, spirituality is a way of being spiritual or religious or even non-religious. But I think it is also a way of living with reference to the big questions: Who are we? What are we? Why are we? and How shall we live?
 You might call it applying big answers to big questions in everyday living. Lent continues during this month (Ash Wednesday was 17th February). It’s as good a time as any, to reflect on those questions, and to apply our answers to our everyday lives.