Category: Current Affairs

Coming out of Glasgow Central Station a Big Issue vendor is singing her sales line about the new Big Issue. Not a bad voice, the lyrics not very memorable cos I can't remember them. Provoking a lot of good-natured smiles and occasional looks of perplexed sympathy, but the song is a sales pitch asking for money.

A hundred yards along Gordon Street, a woman is kneeling outside a shop, holding a polystyrene cup, eyes closed, in the disposition of meditation, asking without asking, for money.

Doorbell goes at 6.45pm and a man with glossy publicity brochures is asking about roofs, windows, conservatories and doors. This is a cold call which I try hard not to point out, while also making a brave attempt at hiding my annoyance at what is a commerical unasked for intrusion, asking for money.

An email comes from one of the good causes I once gave a donation to, with several anecdotes of people who have been helped, and several of people who can now only be helped if funds come in, so they're asking for money.

There are endless options for how we choose to use our money, and no shortage of those with various subtle and not so subtle ways of trying to influence those choices. The Big Issue is a couple of pounds, but there are lots of vendors; the polystyrene cup is only one of several to be seen on a saunter round the city centre, and I suppose any amount we give is welcome;  the cold call seller parked his car  outside our door as he worked the street, and it's significantly more upmarket than mine, and he wants me to spend  hundreds or better thousands of pounds on the off chance I've been waiting for just him to suggest how we use the spare loot lying around; the charity generated email is one of a constant flow of conscience pricking, guilt triggering, appeals from worthy causes to which we would all always want to give.

I think money and how I use it is an uncomfortably accurate index of how seriously I try to live Jesus' words. Good intentions don't always lead to the best choices. Once you analyse whether you should give and why, are you not already rationalising a refusal? And isn't there something spiritually to the point in the comment that we regret most the good that we meant to do, and didn't? Of the four options it's no one else's business what I did or didn't give – but just to avoid misunderstandings, we declined the conservatory and assorted real estate upgrades!

I’m not good at texting. It’s one of the aspects of my personal development that needs additional support and encouragement. If I ask why I’m so slow at becoming a skilled texter, allowing for laziness, technophobia, latent luddite syndrome – I become aware of an unexplained but persistent ambivalence I feel bout text-message communication. It’s something to do with the medium, the hardware and the software, my feeling that the actual process gets in the way of the human spontaneity that makes communication personal; or maybe it’s the way texting mangles language to make the text message carry the maximum message with the minimum words or even letters.

The poem below is a playfully serious piece of contemplation on the benefits and limitations of texting. It is one of the responsibilities of the poet to articulate the human and social consequences of cultural change, perhaps especially as they impinge on our uses and abuse of language – to gently warn us when we are being seduced into thinking that something that is good and useful has no down side. The poet is in love – and in the absence of the beloved the main source of relational sustenance is texting. At several key points in this poem, Duffy drops broad hints about the inadequacy of texting as a way of keeping love alive. And the last line pinpoints one of my own hesitations. It is precisely this ability of the poet to see and feel the impact of culturally celebrated technological arefacts on our humanity, and on language, one of the main arteries of cultural expression and human exchange. Which is why I think theology and poetry (theologians and poets) need to talk more to each other.
   
         Text
I tend the mobile now
like  an injured bird

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.

Carol Ann Duffy, from Rapture (London: Picador, 2005), page 2.

The litany of sadness and brokenness that seems woven throughout our 24/7 news-soaked daily lives occasionally still manages to shock. Sometimes the scale of the horrors visited on our planet, and the immediacy of camera, satellite and internet, create levels of information and graphic image that we simply have to filter them down to more emotionally manageable proportions. Compassion, moral revulsion, sympathy, anger, sadness, helplessness, hope, faith, all those feelings and passions that identify us as human, humane; if allowed full expression all the time would make despair and spiritual ennui inevitable.

 Yet. There are times, usually when tragedy becomes personal, and touches the deepest places of our vulnerability and hopefulness, when we are, again, shocked and deeply, painfully aware of  our feelings. I’m not the only one whose sense of what is important in life, what is real, valuable, to be cherished and never taken for granted, is heightened by occasions of brutal waste, when nothing can explain such senseless loss. Catherine and Ben Mullany loved each other, were on honeymoon on a Paradise island, had life and joy ahead of them, and no doubt their share of – well no one can know. I heard the news that Ben had died with a distressingly ambiguous confusion of emotions: relieved for him, profoundly saddened at the death of two people in love, angry at the needless anguish of so many people, and wondering again, yet again, what it means to live our lives in such a random, risky, world where beauty of love and lethal violence can inhabit the same few square metres of a honeymoon bedroom.

Over the years I have taken enough funerals to know that the bewildering loss of bereavement, the disorientation and chronic ache of what seems a forever inconsolable absence, are part of the inhernent cost of love, passionate, long-faithful, life-shaping and self-surrendering – love. But when death comes from an act of callous violence, unlooked for, undeserved, inexplicable – then a further layer of despair-inducing misery falls on those left to cope with the aftermath of such loss. I pray tonight for those who now have to care for two bereaved families – three weeks ago celebrating a wedding. I pray for those two families, and wonder how any words, gestures or decisions can make any of this better, easier, less hellish But it may be that with the gifts of faithful presence, wise restraint of well-meaning words too quickly said, and tears which share both the baffled silence and raging anger, God will bring the touch of divine mercy through human compassion. As often now, when words don’t work, I hold my holding cross and think with compassion in the presence of Christ crucified and risen, and believe that even in such God-forsaken anguish, these two families will find strength, the beginnings of comfort, and in time some healing.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

Sarika Watkins-Singh, excluded from school for wearing the kara, a wrist bangle which is an important expression of her Sikh faith, has just won her case at the High Court. I find it interesting that political correctness, originally an approach to language and behaviour intended to avoid exclusive or discriminatory attitudes and actions, becomes in some contexts, precisely that – exclusive and discriminatory.

Now I understand the school policy of prohibiting the wearing of jewellery -which suggests decorative and ornamental objects worn for cosmetic purposes. But I would have thought such a policy would accommodate the wearing of jewellery recognised as an expression of a person’s religious identity – Sikh, Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other acknowledged faith traditions. As a Baptist Christian I have heightened sensitivity to infringements of religious liberty, and belong to a historic tradition that upholds the right of people to express their faith without fear of persecution. I don’t think for a minute the school intended to be discriminatory, though it has been found that Sarika was a victim of religious discrimination. And I don’t think the school intended to curtail Sarika’s religious liberty, though the consequence of a strictly applied blanket policy had that perhaps unintended consequence.

But when the policy was formulated why didn’t religious jewellery feature as an issue; in a pluralist multi-cultural ethos that question should now be standard. And if it had unintended consequences, why fight it in court – admit the flaw in the policy and sort it. Whether the veil, the cross, the kara, the yarmulche – the symbols of a faith tradition are not to be assessed on the same level of social significance as cosmetic jewellery. A school, of all places should be a place where that distinction is recognised and respected – how else teach young people tolerance, respect, and acceptance of the other person whose way of life is different. What is the message to a young Sikh woman if the only options are change your religious practice or be banned from school?  

Following the court judgement Sarika said: “I am overwhelmed by the outcome
and it’s marvellous to know that the long journey I’ve been on has
finally come to an end. “I’m so happy to know that no-one else will go through what me and my family have gone through.”

She added: “I just want to say that I am a proud Welsh and Punjabi Sikh girl.”

Hope the school learns its lesson.

Like most other folk who hope for a world where everybody gets a decent life chance, I’ve watched the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorate in a process of unravelling from corrupt oppression, through violent intimidation, to what is now a tangled mess of human misery, fear and suffering, and the very real possibility that Mugabe is there to stay for the foreseeable future. My emotional responses move from visceral outrage, to impotent rage to headshaking disbelief at the lack of international machinery capable of removing such a brutal threat to the lives and wellbeing of an entire nation.

Discussions, arguments, negotiations, opinions, resolutions, – there is a very real danger in our world when there is no international forum capable of withstanding the defiance and violence of those who seize power and use it against their own people. The United Nations once again presents as an instituiton so administratively cumbersome, so politically timid, so addicted to rhetoric, so crippled by the impossible expectation that it can perform balancing acts capable of meeting the vested interests of the key actors, that it has been marginalised in a process that has gone on now for years. And the South African President who has favoured quiet background diplomacy is now identified with an election that wasn’t only dishonest, a sham and a mockery of the people of Zimbabwe, but an election which has also become a dangerous focus of polarised enmities and intimdiation. Neighbouring states and African para-national organistations will have their own reasons for non-intervention – but whatever else those reasons are, it is hard to consider them humanitarian or motivated by any balancing concern for political and social justice.

I’ve never pretended that this blog is a place of political expertise, and on serious matters it is more important to be wise than clever, reticent than outspoken.The contemporary political complexities of Africa are so tied up with colonial history, imperial legacies, economic inequities, tribal hostilities and nationalist and political ideologies, that it is is hard to see past them to the human tragedy of a continent rich in resources, so vibrant with human life in its diversity and possibility. So I’m not looking for, becuase I’m not  sure if they are there to be found, quick, painless or even painful solutions.

But as a Christian theologian I am not prepared to back off as if the Gospel of Jesus Christ has no relevance, as if our calling as ministers of reconciliation has no practical purchase in such an unreconciled world, and as if our bearing witness to Jesus as the one in whom the Kingdom has, is and will come, was and is merely wishful thinking. So I am spending a while today thinking about Zimbabwe; wondering what crucifixion and resurrection, love and reconciliation, mercy and judgement, as revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, might lead me to conclude and to pray –

• for the people of Zimbabwe
• for Robert Mugabe
• for the United Nations
• for Africa and its future

I invite you to join your voice with all those praying for justice, peace and reconciliation.

Update

Just watched the Andrew Marr show and heard Desmond Tutu followed by John Sentamu. Two Anglican church leaders, with deep, deep roots in Africa, speaking truth to power and doing so as those with moral authority. Their right to speak on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe, and the influence their words have, give further strength to the international community. Off to church now, to pray and imagine a hopeful future for those who live in fear and despair.

One of the less obvious ways of sensing what is going on around us is to ask what kinds of stories people are telling, and what kinds of novels people are writing. Cultural shifts can be gradual and unnoticed, like tectonic plates moving without collision; or they can be sudden and disruptive if the plates collide or suddenly shift. Rose Tremain's novel, The Road Home, won the the recent awards for the Orange Prize. It's a story about Lev, an Eastern European migrant worker who comes to Britain, his struggle to survive as a stranger and foreigner in a world now harshly defined by economic inequities, and the consequent draining of hope and energy from those who didn't start off with undeserved advantages.

One of the judges in the Orange panel made a comment that might indicate one of those tectonic cultural changes – and whether it is gradual and unnoticed, or latently destabilising remains uncertain, and may depend upon our capacity as a country to welcome the stranger. Referring to the 120 submissions for the prize he observed that the key themes were, "immigration and identity and, alongside that, loss and bereavement.
And these themes are connected. In an age of globalisation and
migration these are the questions that we grapple with." What Tremain has done is provide a compassionate and humane window into the experience of those who come from one country to another to work for a living, and to work for a better life for them and their families. It isn't so much homelessness as economically impelled exile; and that exile involves cultural displacement, emotional loneliness, relational deprivation from those friendships and family ties that sustain and replenish identity. Involuntary economic exile can drain away hopefulness, and leave no sense of life's purpose beyond the desperate search for survival and the small freedoms that some money might bring to those entrapped in a relentlessly uncompromising global market.

Tremain's book is an essential corrective, a gently prophetic invitation to readers to respond with human sympathy and understanding to those who have to leave home in order to earn what is needed to live – both for themeselves and for those they themselves love, and leave at home. Tabloid harangues about cheap labour, job stealing, Britishness and a whole lot of other strident resentful excuses for exclusion are at best annoyingly selfish, at worst uninformed rants about the virtues of hating. A novelist who writes imaginatively and tellingly into the experience of those who come as strangers to our country, is one whose role as instructor in social ethics and humane citizenship, gives us a cultural gift that deserves its own kind of prize. Voices like hers, and demonstrations of bridge-building through narrative shaped by imaginative empathy, give hope for those of us listening for signs of our own culture's capacity for hospitality, welcome, friendship, and some signs that we are coming to recognise it is in our own interests as human beings to 'look humanely forth in human life'.

Margaret was asking about whether my MP, Jim Sheridan, got back to me about the abolition of the 10p tax band. The answer is yes – three times! First response was an honest admission that he was and is strongly resistant to removing the 10p tax band unless it was demonstrably clear that lower income people would not only, not lose out, but be overall better off. While understandably supportive of other measures his Party have taken while in Government, he acknowledged that the abolition of the lowest tax rate, which so obviously benefits lower income people, would undermine much of that good work – at least in the public perception.

While acknowledging both his candour and the validity of some of his points, I wrote back following the inept and vague musings of the Chancellor on Andrew Marr AM, to express astonishment that he claimed a budget can’t be changed once the financial year has started. So either the problems for low income people were not anticipated (not very competent or socially aware), or they were, but the hit was worth taking (so what about social justice), or the system was now so complex that valid adjustments can’t be made (back to competence and that well worn Reid phrase ‘fit for purpose’) – to a fiscal system of which the now PM was the architect. A second reply enclosed an even vaguer set of proposed responses from the Treasury to compensate those who lose out – with Jim Sheridan clearly aligned with those making the strongest possible representations.

Then earlier this week a further letter from my MP, with a further enclosure showing why the 10P tax rate isn’t effective – not least because its benefit is universal whereas relief for lower income folk should be targeted and more generous. As our Austrian waiter used to say in Mayerhofffen – ‘All OK Fine, but…..’ For me the but is, the child tax credit, pension credit payments are dogged by non-take-up, and require post graduate qualifications in filling up complex forms and negotiating the labyrinth of bureaucratic admin and means testing – a process not unrelated to non take-up. My further question relates to the claim now made by the PM, the Chancellor and the enclosed literature sent to me – that the 10p tax band was never intended as other than a stop gap till other measures were in place, and that it isn’t all that efficient a way of helping the poor. You see my problem is that the Government wants to be seen to reduce income tax for everyone – there is now no pretence that extra money for lower income people should be financed by taxing more those of us who can afford it. Which raises the question of how a Government needing increased revenue can raise the money while giving it back to all earners. Answer has to be indirect taxation – but that too is a universally applied tax method and hits the poor hardest.

Tax is a complex process. Economic fluctuations and pressures are now harder to predict, control, or avoid. But I am still deeply suspicious of a Government that abolished a measure which DID help all lower income people, and only after a year its MP’s woke up to its consequences. And it was done as a publicity stunt by a Chancellor whose eye was off the ball, cos he was looking towards the goal of being PM. And much of the explanation since has been to devalue the continuing usefulness of the 10p tax band – while putting in its place measures so vaguely defined the threat of a Labour revolt still exists.

Sorry for the long post – but it started as an expressed concern about social justice, conviction politics in relation to the poor, and a Government own goal. I can’t say my own concerns are now allayed. Trust is always something others give – it can’t be bought, and it shouldn’t be sold cheap. My local MP, Jim Sheridan is one of many good local MP’s whose embarrassment by all this is tangible, and whose loyalty must be strained to limits beyond which Party leaders are entitled to go on expecting support. What I can say is that my local MP has responded to and taken seriously my representations – and with a balance of personal candour and defensiveness of his Party, for which I am grateful for the first, and understanding of the second. 

The disappearance of this little girl, the unending anguish of her parents, the investigations and accusations, our own sense of helplessness in this highly publicised tragedy, and one year on, no answers. No shortage of uninformed or mischievous speculation; as the world watches, the parents live through the occasional raised hopes but the much more frequent desolating disappointment of yet another closed door; and the criticism of Madeleine’s parents, which at best is unkind, at times is irresponsible, but in any case lacks the foundational human and humanising response of compassion as they try to live their lives around the heartbreaking reality of their daughter’s absence.

In Hosea, the soliloquy of God has the Eternal One saying, ‘How can I give you up, O Ephraim…? It is the cry of every parent facing the loss of their child, for whatever reason.

Zechariah’s vision of a city filled with the noise of children playing safely, is one of the longed for visions of a world where too many children are not safe.

Jesus’ warning about how God views the violation of a child’s trust, about millstones hung round necks and the long deep plunge into an ocean of judgement, brings an essential note of divine outrage to our far too this worldly view of the moral and eternal consequences of child exploitation. Child protection is not simply a modern legislative reaction – it is an essential human concern rooted in biblical principles and in the very nature of the God whose love is imaged, however faintly, in the creative consummate love of parents for their child. 

Kirie eleison
Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison.
Amen

The immediacy and constancy of 24 hour news carries an inevitable and negative consequence that at times triggers within me, a deep uneasiness about contemporary obsession with ‘as it happens’ news. The past few days the story of the disappearance of a mother, and her son with severe learning and other complex difficulties, has been told in a series of slow release revelations. Now we know that both are dead, at least one suspected murdered, and two men are being questioned, one the partner of the dead woman. Speculation is inevitable when such a story is ongoing and the facts still only selectively known; but along with that natural speculative searching around in our minds for explanations, hoping that tragic as any such explanation must now inevitably be, we hope against hope that when the story is told it will not confirm and realise our worst fears.

It is that agonising tension between our need to know and our not wanting to know the worst, that exposes both our human compassion and our human curiosity – and how a voracious curiosity can displace that essential human response to other people’s tragedy – compassionate reserve. I mean by that phrase, enough imagination to guage that the scale of suffering and loss is incalculable and calls forth a communal human sorrow for others, but with a built in limiter that recognises a person’s murder, and the surrounding fear and loss to others, are not mere stories for public consumption or private rumination. In one of her characteristic touches of genuine psychological insight P D James has Inspector Adam Dalgleish reflect that a person’s death is an act of such final intimate privacy there is something dehumanising even in investigating to discover the perpetrator. But such investigation serves the process of justice, not the appetite for violating the privacy of the corpse, which retains the right to that respect and dignity afforded that which we with determined moral wilfulness, call human.

The inescapability of stories told through the all pervasive, ever present news, delivered with metronomic regularity hour by hour, exposes I think both the profound ethical and disquieting human questions raised by our belief in the sovereign priority of the news story. However this story turns out, a mother and son are dead, people close to them are being questioned by police, and we are all the poorer for such things happening in communities not much different from our own.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy