“You shall not make for yourself an idol, Nor bow down and give them adoration, For I am,” says the Lord, “a jealous God. I am your groom and you, my love, bridal, I honour you with endless devotion And I am,” says the Lord, “a zealous God.” He does not envy what he does not own. He does not desire what is not his. His passion is for us and for our good “We belong together and us alone. My love is life and that is what it is, I share it with you in hope that you would.” Jealousy’s green eye, adjusted looks odd, No longer petty envy but our God.
You all like me expressing my grief In poignant phrase and heartfelt form. I respond by playing my part Feeding my need as I perform The stalwart widow struggling along, Forever trapped, begging for love. Why do I write but to appease The empty void and lack thereof.
Oh no, not lack of love per se But lack of wife who gives me all The time and watches of the night, Who stops me succumbing before I fall Once more in temptation to be That thing I loathe and must escape: To be a desperate mourner still And not seek out a new found shape.
A general sweep of knowledge, The imitations act as homage, Swirling clouds of violet haze, The punctured colour and the greys. Bright daffodils of yellow hues, His face, his eyes of china blue. All these I knew in separate part But never composed the work of art That was his life in palette mixed And was contained in eyes transfixed.
Vincent is captured contrast Painting flowers when downcast, Capturing joy in depths of pain He could not rend the two in twain. In his night the stars shine bright, Despair his darkness, hope his light. There his flowers burn the sky And heaven drops its glory by, His God reaching down to faces unknown, Strangers met by him and honour shown.
You told me once my paranoia was No safeguard that they do not speak my ill. Some people hate me, this is true because I am not them, they are not me and still We can but live in this small world entwined So how to stop the stranger fearing me; The strange for them, to me, myself defined. To take their grievance and to disagree. But then the faceless mob of one mind preys Upon my many failures and my faults Condemns in silent fictions all my ways, And I am without a voice that exalts. I will, at last, alone and undone be, No trial and no justice will I see.
But then arise a visaged bloc to fight On my behalf with unasked truths declare My gift and worth however small or slight. My witnesses and my defence that swear To tell my whole truth and speak nothing but, Still stand unmoved before me in support Despite my failures and my faults that shut Out tributes, unwanted ways to extort. For strange I am but just as strange as them And God is stranger still and shunned me not. Their grievance now unable to condemn, For he agrees that my sins are forgot. Their praises and their quibbles are all one As God looks upon me and sees his son.
The night has passed And the year lies open before me. Late we reflected And early I slipped into apathy. Alone I sobbed To end the year closed behind me And alone I woke To start the year, with hope to blind me.
Open thou my lips, And my mournful mouth shall shew forth thy praise. Join the song thrush When heart and mind are stuck in malaise. Lift the rolling mist That in early morning covers the ground, Release my tongue To speak fresh peace and a new joyful sound.
O, take me back to that old Beth’lem stall When Creator and His creation mesh In fragile form and new born baby fresh To save the world corrupt in greed withal. Take me back to see him three kings enthral And yet a borrowed stable was his creche And simple shepherds first to see the flesh Of God most High in manger, weak and small. History tells of man’s great sin and shame; The darkness spreads through all our vital veins Infecting us with complicity and blame. To us he came, with us to feel our pains To live that perfect life in human frame. Take me back to see when Earth got heaven’s gains.
Angel of Grief, tomb of American sculptor William Wetmore Story and wife Emelyn
How many angels we know not and yet We name a few and tasks are charged to some. Like Gabriel, the messenger who set Young Mary, to carry our Lord to come And Micael, defender and fighter fit Who wars against old Satan in cosmic fray. As for the rest we humbly admit Their mystery is hidden from display. But there is one for whom I pray exists; Azriel, the godly angel of death Who soothes the grief and turmoil that persists In those who mourn and will to final breath. It’s he I want when God’s all needed grace Is far from real and I long for his face.
Written on 1st December 2019 for a ‘Service of Light and Hope’ at Greenhill Methodist Church.
With many of us crying out for an answer to that, seemingly, most significant question of our time, “how did we get into this mess?” it seems right to offer some suggestions as to ‘why we have got into this mess’, which will then lead onto ‘how’. This question, although seemingly unanswerable due to complexity, is actually quite straightforward and is answered by acknowledging our discomfort with our lack of willing to agree with each other’s ‘simple’ answers. Lost, as we are, we are not short of people proposing the route out, but which one has the necessary information and map to be trusted?
Let me begin by asking another question, and one aimed primarily at the British context due to my inhabiting it, but can equally be asked of other nations facing the same issues.
What does it mean to be British?
The fact that asking this question already fills me with dread of reactive charges against me of ‘nationalism’, ‘racism’, etc. betrays the very heart of my point but I am jumping the gun…
Identity of any kind requires definition. In order to be something you must, by logic, not be something else. If one chooses to not be defined then they are opting for a life with less identity; in fact they are opting for their lack of definition to be their sole identifying quality. Without definition one cannot then make any demands to be treated in any particular way as the treatment of things/persons rely on a distinction as to what ethical treatment is required for definable things/persons.
We do not treat everything/everyone the same. We do not treat the original manuscript of a Shakespeare play the same as a reprinted copy of the same text. We do not treat victims the same as perpetrators. Ethics is based on definitions between things and to eradicate or confuse definitions is to make the efficacy of ethics problematic. This means that if we are unclear as to what makes something that thing, we are also unclear as to how we are to treat such a thing.
So, in order to make wise and ethical actions on the political level we must begin by defining between things/persons. To begin with let us return to my question, ‘what does it mean to be British?’ This is not to add a quantifiable or qualitative value to being British; it is merely to understand what we, as a nation, understand ourselves to be in distinction to other nations (if at all.) If we are to exist as a distinctive nation, able to demand of others that we are treated in certain way and to act in certain way then we must be clear as to what our qualities are.
Gone are the days when citizenship to most nations is based on inherited bloodlines, or racial genetics; and I am grateful for that. This shift, however, means that cultural history, mythology and belief is at higher risk of disappearing. Our immigration issue is not unique in our new globalised world as people move from one nation to another and seek to reside amongst strangers and make them their new home. What makes someone decide to stay in a strange land? Is it not that there is some appreciation for the cultural narrative of that particular people that they desire to share? Is it not a particularity of practice that means that they can benefit from residing there as opposed to somewhere else?
Democracy is often used as a primary characteristic of our nation. We are democratic. The problem with this aspect is that there a multiple subcategories, e.g. ‘parliamentary democracy’, ‘direct democracy’, ‘presidential democracy’ and so forth. Part of our issues at present is that we are ill informed as to the nature of our democracy and its distinctive qualities compared with different forms of democracy exercised around the world. This ignorance has been to our detriment and has eroded, in part, the social fabric that holds us together.
Tolerance is another definable quality desired by us. How are we tolerant and why? What purpose do we imagine tolerance has to bring peace and stability? Tolerance is the willingness to not impinge on another’s rights to be different. Tolerance rules that one cannot demand another acts in a certain way unless there has been expressed commitment that a shared behaviour has been made. To be a tolerant nation is to allow behaviour and actions that we disagree and dislike to be done. It is true, historically, that Britain, due, in part, being an island nation, have preferred an ‘isolated’ cultural personality; ‘we stick to ourselves.’ We are kings in our own domain and rule our houses like castles. This has been seen by other cultures as tolerance, but this is not the whole story. We do seethe, privately and internally, at others’ behaviours. We do judge injustices when it effects our lives. We do believe in standing up and fighting for ourselves. We are tribal, due to the size of our tiny island, compared to our genetic siblings over in the sprawling Scandinavia. Our silence to certain actions is not a toleration, it is suppressing politeness.
I heard a radio programme about immigration in Britain where two German women were speaking about their experience of moving to Britain. They spoke about how welcomed they felt and how accepting we were as a nation. They used an example of putting rubbish out on Sundays. In Germany this is frowned upon and if people break this cultural rule they are confronted, in person, by an angry neighbour. In Britain, however, anyone can do anything without any sense of judgement. One of the women, however, jokingly suggested that it is possible that British people actually detest that behaviour but wouldn’t come and talk to you about it. That is more the truth, is it not? We want to be tolerant but most of us suppress our natural inclination fight against imposition. We are all Basil Fawlty.
Tolerance connects with a deeper identity, which is ‘liberalism’. This is the strangest of qualities ascribed to us. Historically we are economically liberal, certainly since the Magna Carta, but socially we are quite conservative. That is why in times of pressure, crisis and challenge we tend to vote for the conservative party to govern. We desire stability, strength, endurance. We were the nation who modernised without the revolutions of the rest of Europe. We were the nation that stood firm against the chaotic destruction of the Nazis. We are the nation that is looked at equally with mocking disdain and strange admiration for our archaic traditions and historic consistency. The same questions of social liberalism are to be asked as though about our actual value put on tolerance.
What does it mean to be British, then? If it is not about your family heritage of some Anglo-Saxon hybrid then it means that we must rely on agreed upon quality, characteristics, and values to define us. Interestingly ‘British Values’ has only really been discussed and debated in the latter part of the 20th century. Up until that point there was a general acceptance of what it meant to be British, that is, of course, before the growth of multiculturalism and pluralism in public life including the political rise of secularism that has promoted an individualised understanding of selfhood in order to ensure the progress of market capitalism.
Why are we in this mess?
We are in this mess because none of us has any sense of shared identity. There is no set of values that could be espoused that would be agreed upon by the ‘British people’. We cannot, like our American allies, stand up and accept the explicit values as expressed in founding documents. The historic precedents that hold us together are based on implicitly accepted characteristics which, in the global multiculturalism, no longer are explicitly desired. We are ill-informed of what makes us a nation and what, therefore, keeps us together and gives us direction. We have sold our shared identities in favour of our own short term individual gains and pleasure. When those are challenged or the cost of such choices are charged to us we fight for our right to make our own destiny. We are a nation lost without any agreed upon map.
In this environment, democratic politics is not possible and we descend into tyranny where no one has any training in discipline and we exist in chaos. From this chaos rises, usually, a man who possess potent, charismatic power to control the chaos and those poor and without power, in desperation for protection turn to them for safety and security. Tyranny is seen as a constant battle of power and people wrestle, abuse and manipulate the eroding systems and structures in order to gain that power to shape the world in order to benefit. The map is rewritten by unmerited authorities and untested principles. Truth is hard to discern and trust, therefore, is blind.
This is where we are.
One of the dismissed qualities of the British identity is our religious heritage. Indeed, it was this Christian character that caused the rise of liberalism/tolerance and the secular state that is now undermining the Church. It is ironic that it was because of our Christian faith that the diminishing of that faith in public life has been allowed to occur. It is, of course, perfectly reasonable, to see how living in Christ’s kenotic expression of power will inevitably lead to being abused and sacrificed in favour of human desire to be like gods. It is, however, this very identity which I think must now be fully lived out and articulated publicly if our nation is to sustain itself beyond the chaos we continue to exist within.
What do we do now?
It is the failure of the Church in England, Christians of the Kingdom of God who are invested in our nation as home, to properly understand the divinely ordained use of power and authority. It is to us the blame for the current state of Britain should land. We, who believe that God created human beings to live in a particular way together under the Sovereignty of God, have allowed those who do not submit to that higher authority to be authorities over us. We have encouraged and endorsed powerful people to lead us into a way of life that is not towards the Kingdom of God and its values but rather to adopt the values of this world and human folly as that which God desires. We have allowed the twisting of our Scriptures and the person of Christ to be someone other than Him to whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. To allow ourselves to be shaped by the pluralistic belief that he is but one of many authorities on the way of life has meant that we have lost a sense of his unique voice.
We have removed the limitations of our definitions and have blurred the lines of holiness and particularity on our Christian identity and have sold the right to establish security for our brothers and sisters of this nation. The defining of a nation enables hospitality of the stranger and the alien to happen. One can not welcome in a person to their home if their home has no walls or roof. If we do not want walls then we have no right to welcome in and therefore we must accept the other to come and take possession of our imagined home and direct it as they see fit.
Who, other than we who know the counterintuitive delight in obedience and service, will speak up for the hope of the nations? Who, other than we who are custodians of the authority of Christ the Son, invested in us by the Father of all by means of his Holy Spirit, can hold diversity in unity? Who, other than the Body of Christ, the physical embodiment of the Spirit of God which called forth from chaos, life, can lead and steward this creation into its fulfilment and natural state?
But we have failed. We have allowed temptation of personal gain and vain conceit to riddle the Body of Christ with disobedience, ignorance and cause division after division. We have taken the individualised notions of sin and enabled them to be the defining characteristics of our identity. Sin has, once again, blinded us to will of God and therefore we do not deserve his name or his benefits.
Repent, O Church of Christ. Repent of our weakness and laxity to hold onto our divinely ordained holiness. Repent of our denigration of the vows we made at our baptism to be a holy people. Repent of our abuses of the Apostolic tradition and teaching. Repent, turn back, call back to the Good Shepherd who will lead us out of our lostness and find us in his grace. But beware that when we hear the voice of that Good Shepherd we will have the humility to follow, for it will sound foreign to us so unpracticed as we are to discerning his voice amongst the shouts of the world. So uncomfortable will the freedom be that it will feel like chains of great constriction.
If we are to bring our nation out of confusion and distress, we must turn to the authority under which our nation and all nations will sit; Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, in whose Body we are called to have life and to minister redemption and salvation for this world. It is the authority of God which was given to Jesus and he passed on to us. Are we surprised that in dismissing and distrusting that authority we are now floundering in subjugation to the divisive politics of our day? Are we truly bemused by the lack of interest in the Church who has been shaped by the culture either in a social justice without merciful repentance of sin, or by proclamation of forgiveness without any transformation of life? Why would anyone listen to the Church when say nothing different from any of the competing voices of power?
We have gone beyond party politics now and we must rip all such infection from the Bride of Christ. We must say, ‘A plague on all your houses’ and fall down on our knees in repentance and prayer, to commit again to the obedience to the Gospel which states that it is the sick that need a Saviour, and we are all sick. To deny that we are a nation lost, is to reject the need of being found and taken home; a home defined by the holiness of the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier of humanity.
Written and performed as part of Psephizo’s Third Festival of Theology on Tuesday 8th October 2019
What were you expecting to see?
A reed bending in the wind?
What were you expecting to see?
A man dressed in soft robes? They are found in seats of power.
So, what were you expecting to see?
A prophet? Yes and more than a prophet. The one about whom it is written,
“See I am sending a messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”
What are you expecting to see?
A person who will blow in the wind of fashion; keeping up with the latest fads and cultural references?
A person who will affirm you in your theology, your philosophy, your political ideology?
A person who will bend; bend over backwards to be relevant to you and who will affirm you in your own self-built mythology?
What are you expecting to see?
Someone dressed to impress? Who conforms to the image of our time in clothes seen on the silver screen, the red carpet and the glossy magazines?
A celebrity? An icon? An image of an image to learn from and plagarise?
What are you expecting to see?
A prophet? More than a prophet?
A messenger? A messenger who will clear the way before us and prepare us for a future encounter with the Living God?
What are we expecting to see?
The latest expression of a fleeting thought? An impression of acceptable identity?
Relevance. Acceptance. Perception. A poor copy of the rich and famous?
An image. A prop. A visual aid and a comic joke that lulls us back into sleep?
You will find that in Rich Theatre that stands for the commercial and the popular.
Consumers seek out comfort and acceptance; an identity that will be tolerated and they place it on them as a mask, like a figurative fig leaf.
Or are we expecting, wanting, no, needing a person; raw and unmasked?
“stripped of all that is not essential to it” discovering “the deep riches which lie in the very nature of the human experience”?
A prophet.
A preacher, like the theatre, who aims to, “peel off the life-mask. And with full-fleshed perceptivity, be a moment of provocation… enabling us to give ourselves nakedly to something which is impossible to define.”
A priest? Who, like Christ, the only fully human, enfleshed nature, will sacrifice themselves on the altar of our time, revealing its transience and weakness?
A public death of ego and image.
What are we expecting to see?
A living sacrifice of perceived identities, bearing their true nature, vulnerable and real, in the presence, and for the benefit of another.
Popular culture is about image, spectacle, aesthetic trappings to dazzle and entertain at the safe distance between viewer and viewed.
Should we not expect, as we gather as community, to encounter the presence of the real; an incarnated embrace of relationship in all its risk and vibrancy?
Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre sought to eliminate all that blocked a communion between the actor and the audience.
Theatre was not about teaching; passing on information or knowledge. It was about an encounter which would inspire one to change, not the way they think but the way they lived.
An actor would enhance what was real and sought to strip off all that was fantasy and imposed.
In his concept, of ‘poor theatre’, Grotowski used the language of priesthood as the actor entered into the sanctity of the performance space and birthed a holy relationship between themselves and the gathered community by sacrificing their masks and revealing, as much as they could, their true nature.
Scars.
Scars.
All the scars.
Scars are beautiful.
Scars speak of healed wounds, of past pain and of future hope.
My scars of disappointment speak of new vision of grace and love.
My scars of abuse speak of new sources of justice and peace.
My scars of loss and grief, of my loved one missed, speak of new depths of hope and light.
Scars are not wounds.
Wounds infect and get infected.
Wounds are half stories yet to be finished.
Scars are beautiful
They are expressions of survived encounters with the real, present pain of others.
Scars are glimpses of the future for those who still need healing.
Salvation.
This is the Word of God.
This is the Gospel of the Lord.
The healing for the nations.
In the tenderness of his scars, Christ reaches out and touches us.
Through his scarred Body, He speaks to us of resurrection hope.
Wounded healer?
Scarred healer.
For this is not about wounds. We don’t want any more unhealed wounders.
This is about scars.
Undeniable, real, authentic, vulnerable, tender scars inviting us to receive what has been poured out.
What are we expecting to see when we gather?
What are we expecting the preacher to deliver?
A sermon that attempts to appease?
What are we expecting to see?
Clever rhetoric and impassioned speech?
What are we expecting?
A prophet, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
And not some third rate image of a waterfall, or of a future harvest but a stripping away, a sacrifice of life masks and a revealing of present reality.
The real presence of a real person scarred by the real journey of real faith witnessing to the real power and very real hope of the living, breathing, real presence of the Word of God, the incarnated hypostatic union of God and humanity: Jesus Christ our scarred and unmasked Lord and Saviour.
