Disproportionate thoughts

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(Picture: visiting the Rodin museum in Paris last year)

Feelings are a gift. To feel reminds you that you’re human, or at least, a living being. Feelings, along with faith,  are our equipment for the unexpected. 

And we can expect more of that.

Even some of the more questionable feelings, like anger and outrage. It was one of the most smugly quoted verses I encountered early in my faith journey: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” (Ephesians 4:26).

If I can stomach the smugness, it’s good advice.

I remember Fr Gerard Hughes, author of ‘God of Surprises’  talking about the uses of pain. I was sceptical. Though that was a long time ago. He also spoke inspiringly to that group of Iona Volunteers (that included myself) in 1990  about the crucial value of spirituality in sustaining a life of activism without burning out.

Over the last year, I have opened myself as never before to bad news. It drip-feeds into my consciousness every time I open my computer to check my emails. Perhaps I’m grateful it still seems strange to someone who did their growing up in the sixties and seventies. When crassness and (nuclear) despair about ‘no future’ seemed to be something one could dismiss or rise above. 

Those were the circles I moved in, then.

I even, reluctantly accepted the manifest  lies about the ‘need’ for nuclear weapons.

I had quite a few ‘conversion’ experiences ahead of me. And by the grace of God, I also found friends to help me through them. Companions. Angels in disguise? Thank God, anyway.

And I became angry, and afraid, I experienced injustice, and sadness. A year of  inescapable bitterness, being held up for ministry training. And these things  all passed. I married, we had children, my wife became terminally ill, I became exhausted, then  a widower. Feelings were big, crushing at times, but not inappropriate. I didn’t wish them away. They had a logic.

But the question of what to do with the feelings about the climate crisis is still a new one. Nothing has (adequately)  prepared me.  I need a bit more ‘conversion’. I’m still learning.

The Amazon is burning, the Arctic is burning. And yet we’re still here, for now. 

Why?  what have we still to do. ?

Silly question?

Seriously – and maybe surprising, even if it ought not to be surprising – scripture is significantly sustaining.  Matthew chapter 6  helps me each  and every day. Worrying less about tomorrow than I might, even though there is plenty to worry about. And it’s likely that will be the case for the rest of my life and those of my children. And accepting that to be the case, we need a sustainable approach to the gift of  emotions. 

A taller order.  ‘Hope beyond hope’, I think someone called it. Retelling a story ancient even in his own time. 

For now, I’m comfortable, not in immediate danger. Some of my property was stolen, but I was in a position to replace it.  A bit of stress, but Life carried on.

The most irritated I got recently, was when a train which was running in the middle of the night claimed to have no room ,and I knew this was not the case, but an operational fiction. Maybe that’s out of proportion.  But emotional proportionality often eludes me.  

(I was going to say “ eludes us”, but I can’t presume to speak for you.

The political developments of the last few weeks, involving reprehensibly  total indifference to the environmental situation, have been much more problematic. 

The crimes of pig-ignorance…..

The stability I knew growing up, including my delight to be part of a European Community, has made almost every development seem outrageous. It’s been suggested that this is calculated: ‘outrage fatigue’ enables unacceptable things to be slipped in or hidden behind other news, or strategically numbs us.  Better than crushing us?

To sleep, perchance to dream. Or not.

Somehow I need to preserve and give thanks for the feelings which are there for short-term action, without experiencing them all day every day.

 The fight and flight stuff, in reserve, and the keeping going stuff, in balance, denying neither.

Well, maybe  that’s what prayer is for.  And the idea of “sustain” rather than “save” is creeping more into my own.  As well as the acknowledgement  of limits. Transformation, rather than resolution of  conflict.  And the companionship of God, come what may.

This ‘conversion’  malarkey is a lifelong ….thing!  

Being born. 

Again and again and again. 

Ouch.

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” (Ephesians 4:26).

If I can stomach the smugness, it’s good advice, as the sun goes down, and there’s still tomorrow. 

And joy, and laughter as well. 

Just.

Conversations about trees: part two:

In January I recalled the tragic poetry of Bertolt Brecht “What times do we live in, when a conversation about trees seems like a crime, because it involves silence about so many horrors?”. (See this archived blog entry) . Just a few months later, in one of so many grim reverses jammed into this ever-concertina-ing age, I find even those thoughts tossed up in the air and shaken to bits.  January has already become “back then”. Spiritually, we are, or ought to be at a tipping point. ‘Business as usual’ is slipping beyond mere obsolescence into toxicity.

Because as if we needed more perspective, the Amazon and the Arctic, those areas perhaps so like the wilderness in which Christ was prepared for his ministry, – and this precisely because ‘wilderness’ was presented in the New Testament as the place impervious to the shaping influence of “civilised” humanity – these holy places of God’s encounter are ablaze.

Out of the end-of-the-world atmosphere of Nazi Germany, just heading into War on the back of Fascist racist populism, Brecht lamented the tragedy that soft and beautiful things like “a conversation about trees” seemed to provide “the opium/anaesthetic of the people”. Getting them through a dark day without the engagement that was called for. I saw today  that even in defiance of the recommendations of a right-wing think-tank, the naked  bribe of reduced fuel duty -and thus encouragement to burn more with impunity –   may be  dangled before voters. You couldn’t make it up!

Never mind religion or opium: try  “The petrol of the people!”

Today, if I were to approach the desperation of Brecht, I might suggest that it has finally become a crime to *avoid* conversations about trees: even that to worship God or indeed, to pursue social justice without acknowledgement of the deep spiritual challenge of global momentum to catastrophe, will ring hollow because it ignores the overarching context of our day.

Though, in the meantime, I also do continue to be comforted by the experience of the “bells that can ring” as the creation-connectedness even of regular worship comes to light: the treasures of our faith, hidden in plain sight.

Is it enough to draw attention, rather than waiting on transformation?

The vitriol of Amos 5 is nonetheless lurking in the wings. How dearly we always hoped that referred to someone else,  conveniently distant in time and space.

This is a blog, not a sermon. It is an exploration of thoughts. Sermons have to be pastoral.  And not only my various audiences, but I myself need God’s help with stomaching the bitter pills cascading down our throats ..of scientific findings and news of real events and damage that won’t be undone.

Am I realising that to describe myself too, in all this, as a ‘sinner’, or in Brecht’s terms ‘a criminal’ is not to be condemned , but to be blessed to claim a starting point for hope?  The obsession with tidiness and perfection strangles more than it encourages.

This, then,  is truly raising the bar: To do the little I can do, and offer the rest to God.

For now the daily and weekly devotions of Christian communities, like conversations about trees, do comfort and sustain.  That must not be diminished. The  indefinable goodness  that sometimes indwells  becomes daily more valuable. It can be more so.

Though  I heard of a Christian leader of a local congregation who demanded  that worship should be kept free of  “all that tree-hugging nonsense “.  “Which Bible“, as Desmond Tutu used to say, more or less, “is he reading?”. How I would love to be incredulous at that report.

The ecological conversion of the spirituality and liturgy of the churches, let alone their institutional frameworks,  takes time that we do not have. But that need not disable us.  No matter: the Spirit prays where we are incompetent, Christ is with us, when our footsteps falter.

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So we give thanks for any and every step nonetheless. Every spark of hope.

Even our own small encouragements, actions, and conversations.

Help us not to under-value the small things God can use.

And allow that  God’s people will find the reward of joy and even laughter on the way.

For  meaning, and relevance of the quest for Good News and the Kindom of God,

is calling our bluff, right here in front of us.

God, help us sing, and give us hope.

Even on days where Christ himself seems the only reason remaining.

And may we always,

when we turn to you,

speak of trees.

AMEN

Passionately caring

I sent this in as a response to the recent article in the Church of Scotland’s magazine on the reasons for the decision of that denomination to continue to invest in those fossil fuel companies that are not convincingly and transparently making plans to comply in the whole of their operations with the targets of the Paris Agreement.  The deadline for letters was approaching, so I sent it in, and there’s no guarantee it will be used. Editors have their job to do. The point here is to challenge, but in love. In the debate on what churches are doing with their money on public, there’s no doubt that all involved are trying to act for the best, for the common good. But we are now in a completely different and more unstable world situation even than just a few years ago. This does call for a different approach to mission, and in all organised churches. We need to stand up to the idea that those who look for the end of fossil fuel exploration do not care for those involved in it: just as we know those who protest with integrity for the end of war care desperately for the welfare of soldiers and those caught up in it. The website description of our movement is of those who care passionately for Creation, which of course includes our neighbours, however employed. Tonight I’m at an ecumenical conference, listening to a talk by Lord John McFall, introducing the idea of ‘Good Disagreement’ . Perhaps that might be one of the possible roles for Eco Congregation Scotland. And yes, we are likely to encounter intimidation in this respect: the call to shame that we might suggest such a thing: the insistence that, because of our detachment and ignorance, we should keep silent. But please, friends, do not be seduced into the situation of accepting the role of enemies to those whom we love, and the planet we share.

Letters to magazines are necessarily short and incomplete . But everything I write in this role is public. The blog gives me a chance to add context.
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Response to the second article on Disinvestment, September Life & Work

What is the Church – any church – for? Should churches hold to Jesus’ strategic priority of the kingdom of God, or allow over-riding ‘prudent’ considerations to dictate policy? In time of Climate Crisis, these questions become more acute, visible and difficult.

The false alternative of “engagement versus disinvestment” in dealing with corporations, which consciously, cleverly and intentionally evade compliance with Paris targets, gets us nowhere fast, but we have long since run out of time. We can engage -as churches – without playing the part of shareholders, but in wholehearted solidarity with those employed in these industries, as we energetically advocate a “just transition” towards a carbon-neutral economy.

The idea of “forcing” transformations in corporate behaviour” is, one churches should abandon. Christian mission cannot be of coercion, only persuasion. Freed from the aspiration to dictate, our witness gains power and momentum to touch hearts and change minds. Nor can we wait until we ourselves are perfect before we take the relatively easy first steps of reshuffling money. However strange and counter-cultural that might seem, public witness will continue to be compromised when mouths appear to be where money is, or where hearts appear to be where treasure is. To wait, shoots mission in the foot.

Brian Duffin mentions injustice “to those companies” making cosmetic changes towards compliance. What of the manifest climate injustice, long highlighted by Christian Aid and others, of devastation of crops and inundation of homelands? And if you wish to reward those companies that really are changing, switch investment to those primarily engaged in sustainable energy. The location of investments is ultimately a moral, rather than a financial decision. That was the journey that led to a unanimous decision of the United Reformed Church to disinvest, (and switch) with ripples beyond their expected financial clout. It also led to a recognition that conscientious financial and other advisors can be reconciled with those who have seemed to be opposing them. This isn’t about victory or defeat. It’s the hard lesson, for churches, of responsiveness in faith, to the signs of the times.

All Together Urgent

Summer reading! Summer rambling!

 
Note: in the Creation Time resource for Week 4 written by our friend Rev Dr Tamás Kodácsy  of the Hungarian Eco-Congregation ( Ökogyülekezet )you will find a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reminding us powerfully that human relationships can be a “Yes to the Earth”.

 There are many ways in which you can use the material we have gathered and presented: for personal devotion, small group work, and to enrich congregational life and worship.

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Summer reading….sort of. 

In line with my belief that it is in our reading of mainstream Christianity that the most compelling environmental arguments will be found, I’m trying to look at some few  things which might have been referred to in theology books and courses, but which I otherwise never got round to inspecting first hand in the whirl of everyday ministry, or the unseemly haste of university study. 

A case in point are the “Prison Letters” of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who,  as a ‘martyr’ pastor of the Confessing Church in Hitler’s Third Reich, is almost always referred to in hushed tones. The translations we have ‘grown up with’ of course, like the Bibles we live with, reflect the times in which they were made. 

So, for instance, Bonhoeffer’s scathing attacks on, lukewarm and pliable ‘religion’ (= lacking in integrity, and more concerned with heaven than love for the Earth) which were used  in the sixties to support a damaging attack on spirituality altogether in (British) churches, really don’t  seem to  lend themselves to this use.  The (mixed)  comfort he found in the resources of traditional devotionalism is also instructive.

Reading in German, I’m finding a picture of a deeply conventional citizen and committed, even patriotic German Christian under impossible, intractable pressure and threat, confronted by his own flaws (not least, a somewhat belligerent nature). 

It’s comparable, in that sense, to the wilder apocalyptic literature of the New Testament: what happens to your faith when the pips squeak?  What of hope, when each day brings reason to abandon it?  Though hope is more meaningful when your faith is characterised by “this-sidedness” [Diesseitigkeit] rather than an anaesthetic longing for the Other Side/World Beyond, which to the great credit of Bonhoeffer, he sees as appropriate, if at all, only to the moment of death.

Like  some Christian writers of our day, reflecting on a damaged climate, Bonhoeffer is drawn to a more radical incarnationalism, an appreciation of the underlying reality of the goodness of Creation and the relationships it offers, which are to be savoured and celebrated.

““dass ein Mensch in den Armen seiner Frau sich nach dem Jenseits sehnen soll, das ist, milde gesagt eine Geschmacklosigkeit und jedenfalls nicht Gottes Wille”

[The idea that someone might, in the loving arms of their [partner] be longing instead for the World Beyond, is, to put it mildly, lacking in taste, and in any case, not the ‘Will of God’]

Thus, the value of the letters from prison, remembering too, the letter of Paul from prison (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon) is as a window onto faith under  desperate pressure. More pressure, admittedly, than pressures under which I labour, though in some ways, well-nigh as ‘global’ in their impact on everyday life.

So given the threats we (and the world)  face, which few of us can fully take in, then, in order to act and pray appropriately what can we really learn from such Writings of Crisis?

In one letter to a theological soul-friend, Bonhoeffer raises the squeamishly uncomfortable subject of ‘pudenda’ : the parts of what we are that we tend, for decency’s sake, to cover up. He suggests that fear may have become part of this: we are ashamed of our fears, as if they were in some sense an improper reaction to threat. 

As I’ve noted before, fear is a gift: there are times when it’s right to be afraid, even if only because it opens our ears to the angelic message not to be!

We should probably also understand, in perspective, Bonhoeffer’s tendency to be comforted by a hierarchy of suffering, which disrupts many of our own discussions of sensitive issues. 

People who are ‘up against it’ may well see everything more sharply, though, first of all, that doesn’t actually make them right. (And I realise I’m stepping outside some over-easy conventional wisdom in saying this.)  

The  folk reading of the ‘IHS’ on the pulpit drop as “I have suffered” does not necessarily lend authority. Suffering may lead to bitterness, vengefulness and damaged ability to make decisions – as well as insights not previously accessible. But you can understand how Bonhoeffer felt that 

“Nur, wenn Man das Leben und die Erde so liebt, dass mit ihr alles verloren und zu ende zu sein scheint, darf man an die Auferstehung der Toten und eine neue Welt glauben”

[“Only if you have come to love both life and the Earth [as you know it]  to such an extent, that with their passing, everything seems lost and at an end, are you permitted to believe in the Resurrection of the Dead and a New [Heaven and Earth]]

…but I beg to differ. Christian faith is not restricted to the pioneers of suffering.  The hierarchical exclusivity of suffering should be resisted, even as its insights are respected. Because, secondly, even if they are right, the gift of their witness may need the spiritual interpretation (strengthening as well as, more usually, softening) of a community’s contextual interpretation. This was understood in the congregations of the Earliest Church. (cf 1 John: 4). 

How, though, do we, like the prosperous status quo of Nineveh, (cf Book of Jonah)  act right now on the warnings of the  climate  prophets and suffering sisters and brothers  of our day; how do we act on the prophetic messages  of the Earth itself , before they reach disastrous fulfilment?

Green Christian  concern is not a minority  or marginal calling, nor one to be shuffled off onto the annoying enthusiast in the congregation with an environmental conscience. On the contrary, look with genuine pride on your own  fellowship if they find room for such a  Green Thorn in the side of church life. And if you’re the thorn yourself, remember you have grown from the stem.

In passing, this is a story I hear very frequently, and not just in churches:  the burden of ostracism (whether overt or unspoken) carried by those who insist on talking about climate issues on “inappropriate” occasions (Christmas, family parties etc). I usually congratulate such offenders. We should also congratulate the churches that, even if they don’t move ‘fast enough’, find room for, or even welcome these irritating people.

In the Early Church, ‘awkward bastards’ were known as ‘prophets’. Respected advocates  of change for the benefit of others. Though not ruling out their own welfare: we are all of us enmeshed in communities of one sort or another. The possibility, that helping others helps you, is no cause to hesitate.  We’re back with the inhibiting force of inappropriate shame here:

Theres’s always a danger  that promoting something, that might benefit you personally, undermines what you’re about. This goes back a long way, not least to the document known as the ‘Didache’ or ‘the teaching of the Apostles’, 

Chapter 11:9

“no prophet who orders a meal in a spirit shall eat of it: otherwise he is a false prophet. 

12 …. whosoever shall say in a spirit `Give me money, or something else,’ you shall not listen to him; but if he tell you to give on behalf of others in want, let none judge him.

The Didache comes from the first century, earlier than some parts of the Bible.

This was a time when the emerging  culture of the church, a grudgingly tolerated and sometimes persecuted faith group,  liked to welcome visiting ‘prophets’ who came with a touch of spiritual theatre about them, perhaps comparable to the “hwyl” of a Welsh preacher, getting carried away. 

Not just the preacher, of course: congregations  are allowed to be passionate. When I preached in Jamaica some years ago, it was amazingly affirming to hear ‘amen’s and the odd ‘hallelujah!’ coming from the congregation. 

Passionate spiritual enthusiasm, however expressed, (and there are infinite varieties of expression)  is a life-saving expression of a church with an awareness ( or a remembered tradition) – or a myth – of threat.  From which might follow  a questioning of the  calm acceptance of the status quo (which is now, de facto, a slippery slope to climate catastrophe).

But passion and enthusiasm too, suffer under the barrier of shame.

How did I arrive at these thoughts? 

 I attended the Climate Challenge Fund’s  Transport Gathering, and, to get there, travelled the narrow canal toe-path cycle route.  It’s lovely, though when it gets busy, you’re in some danger of ending up in the canal. I could not but be impressed at how it is taken for granted that passive (conventional motor vehicle) rather than “active transport”  (walking, cycling, public transport) has dominated most of our lifetime decisions about infrastructure, and indeed finance.  The cycle route is hidden away, shoved in a second-hand space, or acknowledge with an intermittent white line.  I recall one in North Wales which was barely the length of a bus.  

The “real road”  is still the one for cars. It’s a mindset in stone, asphalt steel and space. Anything else is a ‘less worthy member’.  Clear, in a language we understand, even if unstated in words.

And it isn’t just infrastructure. Throughout the whole of my ministry, the expenses acknowledgment of cycle mileage  has been exactly the same, whilst car claims have risen.  Brake-pads, tyres, chains, gears are a cost that cyclists have, on the whole, gladly carried.  

What if churches and businesses could offer the same mileage for bikes as for cars (which might actually be realistic, for quality or e-bikes).  And yes though , I’d benefit from that myself. (£4 from yesterday’s outing) would that be another aspect of the change of mind we need to embrace, the shame we need to put behind us?  The HMRC hasn’t got there yet, so employers can  still shift the blame. 

To conclude.

There was more carrot-rather-than stick wisdom too at the gathering:  from those working with hard-pressed communities whose immediate and over-riding concern is to feed their families: you don’t start your conversation with climate change and carbon footprint, but rather with the tangible benefits of the small changes that  EcoCongregation Scotland also encourages:   saving money, feeling cosy in your home, and so on. 

On a broader scale, remember, if you’re feeling prophetic, the real good-life  benefits of cleaner air, exercise, more jobs for a given investment. In the midst of all the bad news, remember the good. 

That’s the way God made it.