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The Doctor, the Prisoner, the Nun and the Hospice Director….. Dr Sheila Cassidy

I'm preparing a course for next year based on James McClendon's Biography as Theology. I read biography as frequently as novels. Indeed a well written biography can have the qualities of a good novel – character, plot, development, and a story that may or may not resolve as expected. Some of the best writing, and most enjoyable reading, can be found in biographies. And biography can be the best kind of story, and a rich source of theology as it has been lived, practised and embodied. And according to McClendon, that's the most important kind of theology, because only embodied theology makes a difference.

In 1976 a young idealistic female doctor went to work amongst the poor in Chile. She treated a young man with a bullet wound in the leg and found herself arrested by the secret police. Her name was Sheila Cassidy. The account of her subsequent interrogation, torture and imprisonment was written as an early autobiography called Audacity to Believe, and tells the story of her struggle to find a faith adequate to her experience. I remember a couple of summer afternoons reading that book, and sensing the thrill of what happens when you have the audacity to believe God isn't on the side of the powerful – and that to our personal cost, God may call us to say so. Cassidy's own sense of vocation to be a nun was tested in the years afterwards but she quickly acknowledged that hers would be a different life and she returned to medicine.

Her subsequent career as a doctor, Director of a Hospice in Plymouth, and Consultant in Palliative Care, enabled her to use her medical skills much more widely, and to explore and expand her Christian vocation. The account of her life, and her passionate commitment to enhancing life and accompanying those late on in their life's journey, provide a study of that practical compassion that draws energy from the love of God. I think the phrase "The love of God" should always be understood as a playfully ambiguous genitive – the love of God (for us) and the love (we have) of God. What we do, we do for the love of God and by the love of God.

One of Cassidy's prayers is one I use often. It sits in my mind alongside Van Gogh's Good Samaritan painting as a description of compassion as action arising from the love of God:

Lord of the Universe
look in love upon your people.
Pour the healing oil of your compassion
on a world that is wounded and dying.
Send us out in search of the lost,
to comfort the afflicted,
to bind up the broken,
and to free those trapped
under the rubble of their fallen dreams.

Sheila Cassidy

22 March 2009
J.W. Turner, Haiku and a Walk by the Firth of Clyde

Yesterday was a beautiful day. We enjoyed the hospitality of
Ardarden Walled Garden Tearoom, and then went further down and walked along the
Firth of Clyde for a while. The hazy Spring sunshine, crisply cold with enough
of a breeze to need the thick fleece, and the play of light on water and mist,
softened all the definitions of the further away scenery. The result was
magical. Tried to capture some of the beauty and mystery in a few Haiku – but
it's a bit like trying to describe a Turner seascape – using only one half of a
keyboard! No substitute for seeing it. Going to have a special day in Edinburgh soon to see the new Turner and Italy Exhibition. In preparation I'm going to
read some John Ruskin whose prose is as luminously vague and suggestively beautiful
to read as the best of Turner's work (which he championed) is to behold.

Walking by the Firth of Clyde

Eye-watering light

forms colour, shape and shadow;

misty, mystic Clyde.

…..

Yellow, white, ecru;

watercolour masterpiece,

nature paints Turner.

…..

Horizonless view,

palimpsest of filtered rays,

coalesce in gold.

…..

In cold light of March,

promised warmth behind the haze,

nature's optimism.

…..

Opaque crystal glass

charged with amber liquid.

God toasts early Spring.

21 March 2009
Janet Soskice Lectures on The Sisters of Sinai

A PUBLIC
LECTURE ON A FASCINATING STORY.

Under the auspices of the Homecoming Scotland 2009
celebrations, the department of Theology and Religious Studies of Glasgow
University is hosting a public lecture to be delivered by Dr Janet Soskice, of
the University of Cambridge at 6.00-7.30pm on Thursday 26 March in Lecture
Theatre 1 of the Boyd Orr Building entitled:

Sisters of
Sinai: or how two Ayrshire ladies, rich and eccentric, in 1892 made a
priceless find in the Sinai desert and, aged over 50, reinvented themselves as
world-class scholars of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts

This lecture is free and open to all, and will be
followed by a wine reception.

The lecture will coincide with the publication of
Janet’s latest book, ‘Sisters of Sinai: How Two lady Adventurers
Found the Hidden Gospels’, which has been chosen as BBC Radio 4 Book of
the Week for Easter and which will also be featured on BBC Radio 4
Woman’s Hour.

Sisters of Sinai tells an extraordinary
tale of nineteenth century exploration; how two Scottish sisters made one of
the most important manuscript finds of the age. Hidden in a cupboard
beneath the monastic library at St. Catherine’s in the Sinai desert the
twins discovered what looked like a palimpsest: one text written over
another. It was Agnes who recognised the obscured text for what it was
– one of the earliest copies of the Gospels written in ancient Syriac.
Once they had overcome the stubborn reluctance of Cambridge scholars to authenticate
the find and had led an expedition of quarrelsome academics back to Sinai to
copy it, Agnes Gibson and Margaret Lewis – in middle age and without any
university qualifications – embarked on a life of demanding scholarship
and bold travel.

Janet Soskice takes the reader on an astonishing
journey from the Ayrshire of the sisters’ childhood to the lost treasure
trove of the Cairo genizah.
We trace the footsteps of the intrepid pair as they voyage to Egypt, Sinai and
beyond, coping with camels, unscrupulous dragomen and unpredictable
welcomes. We discover the excitement and mystery of the Gospel origins at
a time when Christianity was under attack in Europe. Crucially this is
the story of two remarkable women who were undeterred in their spirit of adventure
and who overcame insuperable odds to become world-class scholars with a place
in history.

20 March 2009
A Ministry of Appreciation – why I believe in it.

Going to see a friend today. I first met him in 1971 when he was asked by our denominational Ministerial Recognition Committee to assess my preaching potential and report back. I was of course very young at the time – honest! No kidding – not yet 21!

In those days references were confidential – but afterwards I was phoned by my assessor and told what he was going to say and given the chance to discuss it with him. It was a fair and encouraging report and spoke of gift and potential, and identified obvious advantages in a full course of training. Anything I've learned about balancing honest assessment of gift and ability with personal encouragement, and about the importance of example and demonstrated support as people struggle to discern their calling, I learned from people like him. Ever since then we have been friends, he has stayed in touch as encourager, and as an example of lifelong ministry in our churches. Long since retired, he remains for me a father figure, a sympathetic critic, an interested friend who prays for my ministry, and one who reluctantly but with transparent gratitude, is acknowledging the constraints that his years now put on his activity.

Today we'll talk about a lot of things – books, people, probably a few moans about what's wrong with the church and how we would fix it (aye right!), reminiscences about people who mattered in our churches, and his plans for the next stage of life. And as always I'll come away from him with a good feeling – about the Church we complain about but love, about a Gospel we still have in common though our theological emphases and insights don't neatly coincide, about pastoral ministry as the high calling of God, as undeserved privilege, and as one of the church's essential life support systems.

And I know before I go, I'll come away feeling good about myself in the light of all of this, because this man I've known for forty years, believes in people – he has a ministry of appreciation, who loves without sentimentality but with shrewd appraisal. He is a man whose estimate of you makes you want to live up to it – which is that rare gift of affirmative affection that makes you believe again in yourself as a work in progress, and the work is God's!

19 March 2009
Dame Cicely Saunders: Advocate for the dying, and for life

In 1975 at the MacRobert Centre in Stirling, I first heard the late Dame Cicely Saunders speak about the nature of hospice care. Amongst the arguments she used was that the humanity of a society can be measured by the way it responds to the needs of the most vulnerable, those whose contribution to society can no longer be measured in cash value terms. By which she meant that the care of the dying human person, and the support and accompaniment of their family should be a priority in any humane society. She spoke as a nurse, a former social worker, a doctor, a Christian and a determined and formidable advocate for dedicated, highly skilled, fully resourced provision for the dying as a right

Ever since, I've been a passionate supporter and strong believer in the role of the hospice in modern health care. A view which, whether or not shared by successive Governments, still seems to fall short of outright approval of adequate funding. And yes – there are hard budget decisions, health care priorities, variations in local provision, a growing gulf between resources and an increasingly elderly and resource expensive population. But for all the dedication, compassion, responsibility and skilled care of nurses in our general hospitals, it isn't possible within that widely demanding context to provide the specialist care and patient specific treatment in palliative medicine and family support, that is possible in the purpose built and resourced hospice.

The very fact we are able to discuss hospice care at all owes much to the vision, determination, courage, and refusal to take no for an answer that was one of Cicely Saunders great spiritual gifts. I've just bought the volume of her letters and will be reading this as part of my Lenten reflections. Not because they are "lenten material" (whatever that might be anyway!), but because she is one of those remarkable Christian women whose life's work was carried out against a strong tide of resistance. Medicine is a profession that during the second half of the 20th Century only slowly, and with some reluctance, welcomed the contribution of women in the higher levels of professional recognition and vocational influence. In my current interest in biography as theology, she is an example both of spiritual journeying and vocational constancy – her practice of the Gospel was embodied in her advocacy for the right of the dying to die with dignity and as much of their humanity intact as modern skill and knowledge allows. As she said often to patients who came under her care, "You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life." That is not a specifically Christian principle, but it was backed by specifically Christian ethical and theological values.

17 March 2009
“Libraries at War” from U A Fanthorpe, Collected Poems 1978-2003

One of the presents given for my birthday was the Collected Poems 1978-2003 of U A Fanthorpe. Not reading it through though, at least not yet. In any case it's a good book to have on the desk for those moments when you want a poem – in the same way that sometimes you want a coffee. And such an occasional but regular use of a book of poems takes it no less seriously than going to put on the kettle. Poetry on demand is no bad thing, and this book has seldom disappointed. The poem "Libraries at War", about the civilising and humanising activity of reading as a form of resistance to war reminded me of how J B philips translated the New Testament into modern english – while taking shelter in the London underground during the blitz. As the bombs fell, ancient texts first written on papyrus, translated into spiritual truth more accessible to a modern world needing to hear again the message of reconciliation. Fanthorpe's poem celebrates that persistent enjoyment of beauty, truth and goodness that lies at the heart of human creativity, and hope for a human future.

Libraries at War

The more you destroy them, the louder we call for books.
The war-weary read and read, fed by a Library
Service for Air-raid Shelters and Emergency Teams.

We can still come across them, the pinched economy
Utility war-time things, their coarse paper, their frail covers.
Such brightness in the dark: Finnegan's Wake,

The Grapes of Wrath, The Last Tycoon, Four Quartets,
Put out More Flags . On benches, underground,
In Plymouth, Southampton, Gateshead, Glasgow, in the Moscow Metro
They sit, wearing a scatter of clothing, caught off-guard,

The readers reading, needing it, while terror
Mobilizes in sound-waves overhead,
Lost in the latest. Something long. Or funny.

Fire, fear, dictators all have it in for books.
The more you destroy them, the louder we call.

When the last book's returned, there is nothing but the dark.

U A Fanthorpe, Collected Poems, 1978-2003, page 468.

16 March 2009
Daily Bread and The Lord’s Prayer.

Daily Bread.

Bread!

Give?

This
day!

Hunger's name?

Daily
breadlessness.

“Give
us this day our daily bread.”

Breadless
mothers starve, yet feed the child their life-blood milk.

Fathers
whose potency once was gift of life, blinded through tears of impotent despair.

“Our
Father, who art in heaven”, for these our brothers and sisters on earth, “Give
[them] this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses…..”

15 March 2009
The beautiful game illustrated

The picture was sent as a gift from Joanna, a small friend. Good eh?
Suggests that one of the ways Aberdeen could win a game is to play with three balls and shoot both ways. No more puzzling than some of Jimmy Calderwood's other tactical decisions. Also shows great imagination cos the footballers are smiling as if what they were playing was a game. Which it is! Thanks Joanna.
PS.9.00pm: Her dad is now smiling cos Liverpool wiped the smile of Manchester United faces

14 March 2009
Finally Comes the Poet: Brueggemann on Job

One of the long term benefits of conversation with Walter Brueggemann is the familiarity of surprise. That isn't an oxymoron. It's a promise. Those who read Brueggemann will find that his take on a text can seem at first odd and off centre – surprisingly so. And then you realise that the text he is exploring is itself odd and off-centre. Indeed texts that deal with God, human longing, a broken, angry or frightened world, are likely to be texts that don't easily fit our conceptual comfort zones.

Take for example the two or three pages on Job, when Brueggemann is dealing with God's response to the insistent human voice of faith. Last autumn I read the superb commentary on Job by Samuel Balentine – that was an education in exegesis, pastoral theology and literature-enriched reflection on human life as free and constrained, as tragedy and praise, as faith at the wild extremes of created experience. That great nugget masterpiece Job, attracts some of the most creative theological minds and sympathetic textual interpreters – including Brueggemann.

Amongst the comments of Brueggemann on Job, (I so wish he would write a commentary on that book), are several paragraphs where his concern is to point to an honest preaching of texts whose oddity defies neat categories, and whose purpose is to embrace the strangeness of texts which deal with the ultimacy of God for human life. So here is some of Brueggemann on Job (illustrated by one of William Blake's paintings – themselves eerie and profound commentary on Job):

"Job pushes his attack on God as far as a voice in israel dare push. In chapter 9 Job asserts not only that God is unrelaible, but is in fact a liar (20-22). Job never pushes to God's nonexistence, for then he would quit speaking and be reduced to silence. Muteness is practical atheism. Job keeps believing and speaking; he lives for the dispute. Likely that is why in ancient israel there are no atheists. The conversation of faith is the best action in town. Job is characteristic of Jewishness that finds dispute a viable, crucial form of faith. Job delineates his experience of negation, of God's absence and silence, of God's refusal to deal with his issues. Job yearns most for an anaswer, any answer, because he prefers harsh dialogue to an empty monologue.

….Faith if it is to survive knowingly and honestly, must live in an unjust world….Job learns that while the world may not be to his liking, the world will hold at its centre because it is God's world. The world does not rest in Job's virtue. In the end Job is released for yielding and submission, for trust and praise, and finally he is released for freedom to live."
(Finally Comes the Poet, 61, 62)

13 March 2009
Prayer for Marilyn Monroe, Jade Goody, and for ourselves

A long time ago I came across a prayer for Marilyn Monroe, written by Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan Catholic poet-politician. It is a careful account of what happens to a woman who becomes iconic, and whose value and identity are conferred on her by public attention and media hype. Marilyn Monroe the celebrity was created by a culture hungry for glamour, eager for scandal, and addicted to vicarious experience. Vicarious experience is when we can observe from a safe distance other people living the life we wish we could but never will, or in which their hurt and brokenness becomes a spectacle, a performance which we watch without ever encountering the painful reality.

When I say the prayer for Marilyn Monroe is a "careful account", I mean the account was full of that kind of care that begins with compassion, moves to anger and ends with a prayer for her peace, and for our forgiveness for reducing a human being to the level of our personal entertainment.

I am feeling something similar about the coverage of Jade Goody's illness. I've accompanied enough people through this later stage of a life journey to respect vulnerability, revere human courage, recognise the beauty and poignancy of our very human desire to live the gift of life fully. To do this in the public eye, with privacy auctioned to Digital TV and tabloid papers, and for the entire process to be orchestrated by a publicist, indicates a culture in which ethical norms and respect for human dignity have encountered their own credit crunch. We have become voyeurs of grief, trying to make death a virtual reality.

The good that is done in publicising the need for vigilance and research funding for this kind of cancer; the earning of enough money to ensure financial security for her children; even the strength Jade herself generates through turning her last weeks into a reality TV performance; each of these can be defended as reasons why Jade is doing this.

And I have no criticism whatsoever for her. My sadness and outrage come from somewhere else. Jade Goody's life story is one in which some of the most serious deficiencies in our social care of children and vulnerable young people are exposed. Since her career was launched through Big Brother she has endured adulation and opprobrium, that see-saw of love and hate the media revels in all the way to the bank, but which is lethally corrosive of a person's identity and self-worth. Our fascination with celebrity culture over mere humanity, our preference for reality TV instead of reality, our capacity through media coverage to make and break our gods (lower case intended), and the huge financial power of fame and infamy as vehicles for public entertainment; these have created a culture in which the celebrity is no longer considered a human person, and the first stone always lies nearby, ready to be thrown. There can be few more damning illustrations of our society's lost values than our endorsing of a process which puts entertainment value on a young woman's dying. I think what I find most distressing in this is the default selfishness of a culture where tears, sympathy and even grief are dissolved into the acid of reality TV and celebrity public self-exposure.

All of this arises out of praying the Lord's Prayer. How? Because that clause about being forgiven as we forgive those who sin against us, raised for me the old question about the sinner and the sinned against. Is Jade Goody sinner or sinned against? In one sense we all are – sinner and sinned against. But in some lives the damage sustained in growing up and trying to make a way in life seems disproportionate. And it can decisively shape who we are.

But this I believe. Whoever Jade Goody really is, God knows. I mean it. God does know. And the love and assurance, the security and the peace, the acceptance and healing of soul that we all long for, Jade included, depend on the truth of that central affirmation of Christian faith, that in Jesus, the friend of sinners, we are shown that God is love – and what kind of love God is. Jade and her children have been christened – I've no idea what all that was about other than this. In God's eyes Jade Goody is not and never has been, the composite cipher of a media circus. She is a daughter, a woman, a mother, a person with a name, and she is known to God. And the God whose love is seen in Jesus will treat her with a compassion and love infinitely more redemptive and non-judgmental than the celebrity culture that thinks it created her. Jesus doesn't throw stones.

Jade Goody hasn't tried too hard to conform to the expectations of "respectable society" – like other in your face celebrities she's been exploited by her public. In fact she reminds me more of those less reputable women whose names Jesus knew. Those women who found that when it comes to knowing who they are, and being gifted with a deeper sense of their value and loveability, it isn't the media machine, or the all consuming audience that matter. It's the One who knows and speaks their true name, and who knows more deeply than any other, that there are those who love much because they have been forgiven much (the name of the Dali painting above).

And so I pray. ….."Our Father, ….forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us". Sinner and sinned against – hard to separate, hard to know. God knows though. And that's enough – for Jade and for us, and for Jade as included in us fallible, wounded, wondering and loved sinners that we all are.

Lord have mercy.

                  Christ have mercy.

                                               Lord have mercy

11 March 2009