Living Wittily

Category: Current Affairs

  • Why the Daily Mail should be read – with critical scrutiny and moral vigilance

    Images It all depends on the words you use. And the words you use betrays your attitude. And attitudes expose ethical convictions, our view of what's right or wrong. And of course there are always different perspectives, contested worldviews, and varied ways of thinking about the other human beings who inhabit our planet.

    So yesterday the daily Mail once more showed it ethical (sic) convictions, betrayed its attitudes and used words intended to persuade us to think like its editor and writers. Not a chance.

    The headline was UK DOLES OUT MORE AID THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.

    The problem is with the word "dole". Used in Daily Mail discourse it means handout, soft indulgent and spineless philanthropy ( a word that means love of human beings).

    Smile3t Now what difference would it make to the moral meaning and ethical purpose of the fact that Britain gives more to aid for development than any other country, if we said the same thing but changed the wording to reflect a different attitude and an alternative set of ethical convictions.

    Suppose the headline had read UK IS MORE GENEROUS TO OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.

    That's more like it – and nearer the truth.

  • Bob Dylan – the latter day Ecclesiastes?

    Dylan One of the signs of age is when you see Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in concert in the 1960's and remember the excitement and passion of discovering they sang about things you cared about as a teenager. Last night on BBC4 I watched the first part of Arena: No Direction Home, a biography of Dylan's early years. The footage of him singing Blowing in the Wind, evoked more than nostalgia – a kind of pride that my generation used music as a medium of political protest, moral exhortation and ethcial censure of cynical power structures. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Peace movement and CND, the ruthless greed of corporate business, the unequal  lives of the powerless poor and the powerful rich – these were issues of critical importance for humanity, and they were being sung with rhetorical power, or iconoclastic sarcasm, or blunt poltical incorrectness long before politcally correct means what it now means.

    And Pete Seeger all but in tears remembering how it felt to know a singer as genuinely committed to political protest had taken up his torch, and Joan Baez reminiscing about the discovery of Dylan the soon to be phenomenon and prophet for his generation – these were significant moments of cultural history. Dylan is both perplexing and fascinating, complex and enigmatic, passionately humane and incapable of indifference, deeply religious but despising religiosity.

    170px-Paparazzo_Presents_Bob_Dylan_ What was evident in last night's programme is the power of a life story to shape and direct the way others live their lives. It's going too far to talk of Dylan having disciples – but there are millions who now span at least two generations, for whom Bob Dylan has articulated what we want to say about the world, our joys and fears and loves, to tell of the things that outrage us, to sing the causes that matter because they are about human flourishing – both what hinders and helps human beings live in peace and freedom. It takes a troubled soul who looks unflinchingly at trouble to interpret what troubles, or ought to trouble, each generation. In that sense, Dylan is a prophet – flawed, enigmatic, sometimes wrong, quite often right in the diagnosis of the self-inflicted wounds of our humanity.

    "Human beings are born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward…" "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, says the Preacher". "Let justice roll down like waters…." "Now abides faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these…." Job, The Preacher, the Prophet, the Apostle – in secular terms Dylan weaves those strands of human experience (the tragic, the skeptic, the ethical and the romantic), into a corpus of music that is profoundly spiritual, and which for 50 years has resonated with those who question the status quo, who are restless for change, and who are looking for an exegete of their own lives' experience. It's only a thought – but if the preacher of Ecclesiastes had been looking for a way to communicate with the Western World of the 1960's, he could have done worse than being a singer song-writer who composed Blowing in the Wind….

    As a coincidence of serendiptious proportions – the picture of the young Dylan above, which I saved to my picture file, is next to a photo of David Cameron used in an earleir post. Now there's a conversation I'd like to overhear – Dylan and Cameron, on the things that matter most!

  • Dr Garrett Fitzgerald and the Jigsaw of Peace

    Fitzgerald The words "rest in peace" (RIP) are part of a familiar tradition of respect and remembrance when someone dies. Few deserve such respect, admiration and remembering as much as Dr Garrett Fitzgerald whose death is announced. Head of the Irish Government for two terms during the 1980's he was a profoundly influential presence in the peace process, a trusted voice on both sides of the divide, and a politician who gives politicians a good name. The current Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny has expressed very well the moral and political significance of a leader for whom humanity and peaceableness were moral imperatives – and for whom indeed peace is the categorical political imperative.

    "Garret FitzGerald was a remarkable man who made a remarkable contribution to Irish life," he said.

    "His towering intellect, his enthusiasm for life, his optimism for politics was always balanced by his humility, his warmth, his bringing to public life of a real sense of dignity and integrity, and his interest being focused entirely on his people and on the country."

    Mr Kenny also said his former Fine Gael party leader would have been happy to hear the Queen address Ireland on Wednesday night as part of her state visit.

    "To see the work that he had done over very many years, and indeed his father (Desmond) before him, have played their part in putting the jigsaw of peace together."

    Mr Cameron, who attended the Queen's speech at a state dinner in Dublin Castle, said he watched Dr FitzGerald when he was a student of politics, rather than someone involved in politics.

    "He always struck me as someone who was a statesman, as well as a politician, someone who was in politics for all the right reasons and someone who made a huge contribution to the peace process and bringing reconciliation for all that had happened in the past,"

    No wonder political friends and foes alike referred to him as Garrett the Good. May his tribe increase, and may this patient peacemaker rest in peace

  • Seve Ballesteros: One of Golf”s Shining Ambassadors

    Seve-210x300 I am not a regular or skilful golfer. I can hit a golf ball, and sometimes a fair distance and occasionally in the right direction.  My putting is seriously challenged by the Himalyas putting course at St Andrews and my short game is hit and miss, in about equal proportions.

    And I only occasionally watch golf on TV, and even when I do I still puzzle over the camera following a white dot in the sky until it lands in grass some hundred yards away.

    But I remember the year Seve Ballesteros won the British Open and that wonderful image of him punching the air, pumping up his adrenaline and grinning with such joy because that small pimpled white sphere had rolled into a metal cup having been tapped with the smooth precision of the practiced genius. The flair and fun and colour he brought to golf made him an exemplar of the entertaining sportsman.

    The news that Seve has died leaves the world of sport without one of its courteous enthusiasts and one of the most likeable people who remained unspoilt by fame, celebrity status and sporting success. The word ambassador shouldn't be used indiscriminately, but reserved for those who represent and embody what is best in a sport. Seve was an ambassador for golf, and a fine human being whose struggle these past three years have shown the same qualities of courage, dignity and purposefulness, that made him a great in his sport.  

  • Rangers and Celtic – what has sectarian hatred to do with Jesus?

    Oops! I came away from College without my copy of Seeds of Contemplation – so the second part of the quote on Trinitarian Spirituality will have to wait – it will come though.

    On another subject entirely. The decision of UEFA to fine Rangers Football Club, and ban fans from an away match, is another embarrassment for Scottish football, Scottish Government and the Scottish people. The truth is those songs are sung week in and week out in Scottish football grounds, and there seem to be no effective sanctions available to stop the chanting of such hate liturgies. Several years ago when Rangers were playing Liverpool in the Champion's League a number of English newspapers wrote articles about the bemused, bewildered Liverpool fans wondering what a local skirmish in Ireland over 300 years ago had to do with 21st century European football. Well may they wonder.

    I've recently been reading up on social capital, those cultural and social values and norms that give a society its stability, its value systems, and its patterns of ethical and social behaviour, those ligaments and tendons that enable a community's ability to grow, mature, and function in ways that are healthy. Sectarianism is a toxin in the bloodstream of Scottish culture. "Scotland's shame" is merely a phrase that describes our embarrassment – but sectarian attitudes, instilled from birth, absorbed through exclusive sub-cultures, nourished by ludicrous mythologies of conspiracies, battles and demonising of the other. This is not only a cause of shame – it is a lethal virus that replicates itself best in hosts prone to hate, and in whom insecurity mutates into collective hostility against whatever is different. And it seems we lack the social capital to deal with it.

    That there are religious mythologies and loyalties on both sides of the sectarian divide makes the whole phenomenon more dangerous, more visceral and more resistant to reason. Religion adds its own distorted legitimation to naming the other as enemy, and raises the stakes by co-opting God to the cause. That people whose occupation is to manage and train others to play a game should have parcel bombs sent to them in the name of some mad cause tainted by toxic religion is a sinister escalation of tolerated hatred into intolerable violence. The truth is sectarian hostility and hate are themselves intolerable, and their presence in the Scottish psyche, spewing out of Scottish minds and mouths, is now seen and known, named and shamed, across Europe.

    CStJotCross_VL The answer? Even Ally McCoist sounded depressed and at his wits end when asked that question – don't know if Ally is up on the current interest in social capital – but the deficit of available human funds is at least as dangerous as the fiscal one the Government is so worried about. Government cannot gag mouths, but they can educate, they can legislate, and they can show a moral determination and social imagination by making sectarian liturgical hate chants, from Ibrox or Parkhead, as open to prosecution as other forms of inflammatory, discriminatory language aimed at inciting hate, fear and violence. And the spurious linkages to any expression of Christian faith need to be demythologised. The idea that Jesus of Nazareth can be aligned with such dangerous, irrational behaviour is clear evidence that the sectarian mindset thrives on unreason and is fertilised by all those toxic attitudes that lead to good people being crucified.

    And if the communities of Christ in Scotland are still wondering what their mission is then there are few more contextually urgent matters in contemporary Scotland requiring the intervention of communities who live by a Gospel of reconciliation, whose Lord calls them to be peacemakers, and whose reason for existing at all is to embody the justice, righteousness, forgiveness and peaceableness of God. What have the churches in Scotland to say about sectarianism – let the politicians, social commentators, local authority councillors, football boards of directors talk out the practical steps needed – the churches ask different questions and offer more and deeper responses – what does the Gosepl of Jesus demand and command of Christians who live in a culture with such a lethal sectarian fault line running through its social fabric?

    I have been convinced for years now that the christian doctrine of reconciliation, lies at the heart of contemporary mission. And the church is called to be agents of reconciliation, peace activists in the name of the Prince of Peace, PR agents for a gospel of forgiveness, communities who make credible another way of seeing those who hate and foment hatred. Loving the enemy is the polar opposite of sectarian attitudes – and perhaps to use old fashioned language – judgement begins at the house of God. Put at its simplest – I can't hear Jesus sing about the River Boyne – Jordan maybe; nor can I imagine the one who was crucified on a green hill, outside a city wall, singing about the walls of Derry. More likely to look on our sectarian addictions and say once more, "Father forgive them; they know not what they do."

  • Martin Buber, Friendship and Some Limits of Social Networking

    Osho-on-Martin-Buber It was Martin Buber who called attention to the life-giving distinction we all must make if we are to value, respect, care for and take responsibility towards, each other. From the deep wells of Hebraic experience of God and community, Buber distinguished between relating to that which is beyond ourselves as "It" and relating to the Other who is beyond ourselves as "Thou". Only as I address the other person as "Thou" do I acknowledge the full dignity of their personhood.

    And when that relationship of "I and Thou" takes root in the heart and in the will, then deeply human ties of respect, affection and shared commitments grow into committed and close relationships with those we call our closest friends. And within such friendship deeply human responses begin to be naturally expressed in trustful conversation, playful enjoyment of the other's presence, an inward orientation of care and commitment, and an investment of time and energy that is incalculable because unselfconscious, unreflective generous gift, the response of person to person and heart to heart. Friendship is not therefore a duty or a task, but the name we give to those few "I and Thou" relationships that not only enrich us but slowly and gently over time begin to define us by their very nature as gift and grace.

    Reading Buber again for quite other reasons, I've been reminded of how profoundly relevant his view of the world is, in a world which is increasingly enmeshed in the endlessly trivial and restlessly fascinating web spinnings of social networking. It may be that Buber's passionate advocacy of personhood as that in the Other which we address as Thou, offers a way of putting social networking in its place. Facebook, Twitter, even this blog, can never be a substitute for person to person address, an intentional relationship of I and Thou.

    At its best social networking supplements, informs, communicates and provides fuel and energy for existing relationships. Friendships as personal exchange and attentive address are nourished by such communication. In social networking stories are not only told but written in the fragments of exchange, and changed as they are responded to in the writing. But there are essential and defining qualities of human relating that cannot be replicated in social networking – they are what Buber means with his distinction between subject and object, Thou and It, – a vital life-enhancing distinction between that which I use as an "It" for my own ends, and this person whom I address as an end in herself or himself.

    Here's vintage Buber – I and Thou take their stand not merely in relation, but also in the give and take of talk…Here what confonts us has blossomed into the full reality of the Thou. Here alone then, [in human friendship] as reality that cannot be lost, are gazing and being gazed upon, knowing and being known, loving and being loved.

    The interactive gaze of two people, the knowing and being known, the loving and being loved, talking and listening, laughing and crying, supporting and being supported, these and much more that is of the extraordinary ordinariness of human friendship, are only visible expressions and signals of that address that in the presence of the other always, and faithfully, says "Thou". That is why the conversation of friends is such a great sacrament, the grace of words and silence, both alike interpreting and articulating the shared experience of the mystery and mercy of the life that is ours to live, and to share. 

  • Many a truth is told in gaffe

    Driving south around 7.45 and listening to radio 4.

    Big discussion about the the Big Society idea.

    Seems it might be in trouble as a major plank in the social platform.

    David Cameron to speak about it today to rescue the credibility of the idea.

    Enter Radio 4 Presenter and I quote:

    "David Cameron will nail his colours to the mask."

    Just a slip – but then……..

     

     

  • Intercessions for Egypt and peace in the Middle East

    Egypt-flag
    The following prayer was written and offered at worship where I was preaching this morning. Members of the congregation have friends and work colleagues currently living in Cairo. 

    Prayer for Egypt

     Creator God, by whose love everything exists,

    Gracious God by whose mercy we live and move and have our being,

    God of Israel, Egypt and the nations,

    Hear our prayers for our troubled world.

     

    For two weeks we have watched events in Cairo,

    Watching thousands of people crying out for change,

    Faces anxious, angry, pleading for support;

    faces bruised and bleeding,

    voices crying out their aspirations for freedom,

    their hunger for a more just society,

    Some words are too easily take for granted,

    living in the relative security of this country –

    Justice, freedom, peace, safety;

    and there are those experiences that demonstrate

    the dangers of their opposites –

    injustice, oppression, conflict, violence.

     

    Lord in your world, amongst the nations,

    Let justice roll down like waters,

    And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

     

    Sung Response

    From dark despair to hope,

       from fear to trust in God,

    from hate to love, from war to peace,

       still lead us on dear Lord.

     …

     

    Creator God, Gracious God,

    God of Israel and the nations;

    We pray for the kind of peace

    which is not the capitulation of peoples hopes,

    nor the silencing of freedom’s cries.

    When the nations are in tumult

    our prayers can too easily become our asking you

    to bless our amateur political solutions,

    as if you act within the tiny parameters of our wisdom.

    God of peace who brought again the Lord Jesus from the dead,

    into this situation of anger and violence,

    move by your Spirit in peace and reconciliation;

    restrain the forces of evil,

    may military force protect rather than attack the people,

    and bring forth peace, justice freedom

    and the birth of new hopes,

    not only for Egypt but for all the peoples of the Middle East.

     

    Lord in your world, amongst the nations,

    Let justice roll down like waters,

    And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

     

    Sung Response

    From dark despair to hope,

       from fear to trust in God,

    from hate to love, from war to peace,

       still lead us on dear Lord.

  • Praying for the peace of Cairo

    An-anti-government-protes-007 The news and images coming out of Egypt are unmistakably ominous. Political forces are being unleashed that are near impossible to control and are impossible to predict. And when such a powerful player in the Arab world is destabilised the entire region becomes vulnerable. Israel's southern border is less secure, the populations of other autocratic Arab States watch closely, and the world becomes anxious as the major oil source of the Middle East is thrown into unceretainty.

    But for me its the people who show us what's at stake. Faces anxious, angry, pleading for support; faces bruised and bleeding, voices crying out their aspirations for freedom, their hunger for a more just society, and whose demand for more influence through democratic processes and structures will not be easily or cheaply silenced. And which have already ended in death. 

    Picasso So today I pray for the kind of peace which is not the capitulation of peoples hopes to violent forces and the manipulative ugliness of a dying regime. When the nations are in tumult prayer can too easily become an asking of God to bless my amateur political solutions and act within the tiny paramaters of any wisdom I might conceivably have. I don't know how this will all end – but the God of peace who brought again the Lord Jesus from the dead is the God I believe is on the side of life, freedom, peace and reconciliation. How that might happen I don't know. So my prayers become an imaginative identification with other human beings' demands for righteousness and justice to flow, instead of tanks rolling. My prayer is that the military presence will remain a barrier to the uncontained violence that might erupt, and that the presence of tanks and guns will provide the kind of restraint that allows a just peacemaking to happen.

    Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

  • The Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds

    Ancientorderofshepherds Driving along Hutcheon Street in Aberdeen, Sheila looked up and saw a carved crest on a building and we spent the time sitting at the lights trying to decipher it. Eventually we got it between us. The Loyal order of Ancient Shepherds. Never heard of it. So like a good research student I made a note to google it. Here's what I found

    "Shepherds Friendly started life as a sickness and benefits society, Ashton Unity, which was formed in Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire on Christmas Day in 1826. It was later renamed as the Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds, "loyal" referring to the Crown and "shepherds" to the Nativity of Jesus. Its objects were "to relieve the sick, bury the dead, and assist each other in all cases of unavoidable distress, so far as in our power lies, and for the promotion of peace and goodwill towards the human race".

    Now what interests me is the mission statement as expressed with the quotes at the end there. As a description of how a humane society looks out for each other it isn't bad, and it was written prior to the Victorian age. The last couple of clauses would be good filters for current Government policies and cuts and excuses and evasions and all other manner of rationalised inhumanity in the name of economics and the new God on the block who has to be served and to whom sacrifice is to be made, Deo Deficit!