Papa Don't Preach ... or maybe do ... really I'm not sure.

I am not sure what to think about the Pope's latest comments. What about you?

Usually I blog here with fully formed opinions or at least considered reflections ...

now I only have a bunch of questions.

As an clearly intended attack on the equality legislation that seeks to bring much needed justice for gay and lesbian people in many places in this country, I am not happy with what the Pope has said. Such equality is long overdue. I make no comment here on whether it should apply directly to Church except to say as someone who does not like the state interfering with religious liberty I kind of understand where the Pope is coming from as well. I value the freedom of conscience that I, my congregation and others in my denomination enjoy. There is a self determiantion (albeit a covenantal one) that has long stood up for its convicitons. But historically the Papal position has always been tied to the Power and Authority of Christendom and to the conflicts and / or alliances within that structure that can be made with the Secular Powers nad legislature. And that's where we part company. My tradition (at its best) has been ever been a dissenting or confessing one, we have historically has come under persecution from such powers adn authorities, religious and/ or state, and many followers have paid the price of their convictions.

And so I suppose I think that if the law of the land demands of me something which i believe to be unconscionable and a fundamental point of my essential confession of Christ as Lord then for sure I will protest the law in its making but if it then is passed, then there seems no alternative but to break it and suffer the consequences. I am not so sure that this is the case for me in this surrounding debate although it may yet prove to be so for my denomination. And I'm not so sure that the Pope is advocating large-scale Catholic civil disobedience here either. Although I will confess that prospect is appealing to me not least for the precedent it might set for other matters and the shift that it might herald in how the Church behaves.

Either way it does look like the forthcoming Papal visit will draw people, their energy and resources into choosing one side or another, pitting them against each other, which is the thing that saddens me most when there is so much good that might be done in the world if we learnt to work together.

Money money money

The world's leading bankers have arrived again at Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They are there to argue the case that what they call heavy handed financial reforms will delay or even hamper the green shoots of global economic recovery.

In 2009 not so many of them made the trip: maybe they felt chastened by the fact that we the public of many different countries round the world had had to bail their business out with public finance that might otherwise have gone on healthcare or education or reducing climate change. (or perhaps it was because their expenses had been capped)

But with governments declaring that "we want our money back" and threatening to do so through curbs on trading, taxing bonuses and in other ways clipping the risky wings of banking, the bankers have turned out in strength to say 'touch us and it all comes down around you', or words to that effect.

I don't claim to understand this all (but they do and look where that has got us). I have enough trouble keeping track of the twenty pounds I got out yesterday from the ATM. But I have two words of caution ringing in my ears as the bankers seem to think that their world should stay they way it is.

The first is from George MacLeod in 1968:

Something needs to be done about the money boys who run our world. It is urgent that the whole issue of international monetary finance be reviewed.
Have you ever queried the bankers? I have. Try the lower echelon of banker, and most of them will say, ‘These things are too high for us, we cannot attain unto them.’ But a small minority will whisper, ‘You’ve got something there boy; isn’t it exceptionally cold weather for so late in the month of May?’

Try the upper echelon of banker. I have. I wrote to the top man of a London bank, a charming man, asking his comments on a similar document to the Haslemere Declaration. He replied that the figures were inaccurate. I immediately asked which figures but had no reply.

They are in training for the job of international bankers. They know what is good for us. Don’t consult us, the paltry crowd. But do they know what is good for us ... Or are they sowing the seeds of the next war?

The others words come from Alice Walker and a poem that in some ways sadly didn't make the final edit of my thoughts on BBC Wales this morning:

We alone can devalue Gold
But not caring
If it falls or rises
In the market place.
Wherever there is golf
There is a chain you know,
And if your chain
Is gold
So much the worse
For you.

Feathers, shells
And sea shaped stones
Are all as rare.
This could be our revolution:
To love what is plentiful
As much as
What’s scarce.

Reverse Course

My thoughts on BBC Radio Wales this morning went something like this:

Good morning: I was about eleven when a group of us spent a day learning to canoe. By the evening we were sure that we had mastered it and we were bold enough to think we’d not get caught, if later on, we sneaked down to the lake and had another go. Well we made it to the jetty undetected and I was daft enough to climb in first. I’d only got one foot in the boat when my comrades had the bright idea of pushing it into the lake.

The problem was my other foot still planted on the shore. As my right leg travelled onto deeper water and my left leg tried to remain just where it was, the distance uncomfortably increased. Decisive action was needed. I lunged toward the shore and caught hold of the jetty. But to my horror the canoe maintained its course. I ended up horizontal to the water, stretched out like the Severn Bridge, but with no such means of support. An inevitable disaster ensued.

I thought of that this week when I heard how the gap between the richest and poorest people in Britain has increased again. This has been going on for forty years and so I wondered just how long can those with plenty, distance themselves from those in need. How long before society is simply stretched too far?

The government’s definition of impoverishment is a relative one: where we draw the poverty-line is dependant on the average income of our nation. As that changes so does our understanding of who is poor. So, poverty in Britain looks different to somewhere else like Haiti, even before the earthquake. But how we care for those with little, wherever they may be, ultimately defines who we are. And nothing is more suggestive of a dangerous malaise than the simple truth that the rich are continuing to get disproportionately wealthier.

The bible recognises that taking care of the least of us is not just a matter of political expediency. It’s not even about economic justice, important as that is. Closing the gap between the haves and have-nots is about our spirituality. Because it is not money, but the love of it that can corrupt our living, whether we are rich or poor. It’s the misplaced adoration of pounds and pence that can make us indifferent to the plight of others, trapping our Spirit within a poverty of heart that becomes the root of all our problems.

Something must change:

not just in government or banking

but in us and what we value

if we’re ever to close the gap and change the course of what we have become

I'm (not) walking in the snow

It's been a while since i blogged, something to do with spare time going on a catalogue of things that broke down, inc: my desktop PC, the washing machine, tumble drier (I know its bad for the planet) the car (also bad) the electrics dying in the house, and then a leak in our kitchen ceiling this week. But all that is over now (i hope) and we had a great walk round the Museum of Welsh Life on Saturday, where there was still snow piled up high and out of the way. It reminded us of all the fun we'd had with snow over the festive period.

I remember the first time my daughter really encountered snow.

‘Oh … wow’, she said and then, proud of some recently acquired knowledge, she pointed a finger and proclaimed with certainty, ‘White!’ Snow was a wondrously strange new object to behold, a fresh mystery to be embraced, one that made her shiver for an instant and then ran between her tiny fingers. I was just happy to see her sense of wonder in God’s creation.

The next time Niamh saw snow outside her window we were impressed that she remembered what it was called. This time the conversation went:

‘Oh … wow! … Snow … White.’

Apart from making me look for seven dwarves, I was again impressed with the wonderment she offered to the falling flakes of white that gathered on the ground. While grown-ups were worrying about journey times to work and if the Gritters had been out, (and I know these are legitimate concerns) she was more than happy to welcome this occasional but spectacular visitor back into her life.

Snow fell again just before Christmas in 2009 and it was half-way through January before the thaw set in round here. During that time Niamh went walking in the snow, slipped and slid across the snow, threw balls of snow and built men of snow and eventually … she kind of became bored with it. Snow became a part of every day, taken for granted, no longer greeted with cries of ‘wow!’

Sadly, many of us do the same, and not just with the snow. We loose a sense of wonder with the world that God created. We hurry past sunsets and primroses, and forget the excitement we once enjoyed by chasing squirrels. The world becomes, as some say, dull as ditchwater; though as any naturalist will tell you, that too is teeming with exciting life. Some of us loose our sense of wonder with the church, this wonderful family that God has called us to be part of and which He’ has chosen to show the world His love. And some of us loose our sense of wonder with other human beings: equally made in the Image of God, we quickly reduce them into ‘interesting or boring’, ‘beneficial to my purpose’ or a ‘hindrance on the way’. And so we easily forget that every person whom we meet carries in their living something of God’s glory and reveals Christ to us.

As the days go by we need to keep alive our sense of wonder. I am reminded of the poet John O’Donohue who once said:

I would love to live

As a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

It's a season not a day.

For a couple of years now I've been going on about (some might say moaning about) how Christmas is a season ... not just one expectation laden day. In a December post I mentioned how our Renovare group had had some conversation on how to make this actually happen.

Well as so often in my life, it was my wife that made it happen.

On Christmas Day I received twelve envelops, one to be opened on the appropriately allocated day of the festive season. Each gift referenced the spiritual meaning behind the original Catechismic Twelve Days Poem and also managed to incorporate one of the 6 streams of Spirituality that feature within Renovare (http://www.renovare.info/streams) ... so on one day I got a new bible, on another I got 50 trees in a threatened area of forest, then there were the onion bulbs, the fairtrade chocolate bar and who could forget the pan pipes. Most of this unfolded on the beautiful, if snowy, Isle of Bute (plus a quick trip to Colintrive for festive jazz) and amounted to a wonderful Christmas Season.

Only 350 days before we get to do it all again!

More Big Bangs

I was using my exploding crackers story (last post) as an illustration in last night's carol service ... how the glory of the lord shining all around the shepherds is anything but quiet and peaceful when all of a sudden our occasionally visiting teenagers slipped round the side of the church and kicked the emergency exit door an almighty Whack! The huge noise it made came just as I said 'angels are loud and scary" and before the next line in the sermon went: 'That's why God reminds us over and over, not to be Afraid!

I was going to reference Ireneaus, 'the glory of God is a human fully alive' and how sometimes our greatest fears are about being fully alive to who we are' but we had to give it a minute for the shock to die down. Funnily enough there were some seasoned church folk who were wondering if I'd actually planned it to happen. Wish I had now!

Have an explosive Christmas

The other day I wanted to give out Christmas Crackers as part of the responses in a worship time. I went to the local supermarket to purchase the crackers and seeing the large queue took the self service option for payment. The machine scanned in the boxes but refused to let me pay, it said 'Assistance Required!'

So I sought assistance and it came from a young man who with due respect to him looked about twelve years old. He told me that he had to confirm my age to make the purchase, as i was buying a potentially explosive product.

So having looked me up and down and coming to conclusion that my 18th birthday had indeed been and gone some years ago he presented me with my ticking Yule Tide time bomb. I have no intention of terrorising anyone this Christmas but it did remind me that so many people in the story were terrified ... Mary, Joseph, Zechariah and the Shepherds all at some time had to reminded: Do not be afraid!

So however it is God wishes to explode his glory in us or through us this Christmas may none of us be afraid.

12 Days of Christmas

There's a lot of talk (and rightly so) about what Christians might do through Advent to make Christmas more meaningful, closer to the purpose of celebrating incarnation etc. But at a recent Renovare gathering we began to think about how we might reclaim something of the truths of Christmas by taking seriously the twelve days of the season and sharing through them some common acts of discipleship and mission. We haven't come up with a plan just yet but I wonder what others would do / or are planning to do this year?

In the meantime the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy has a new poem on the 12 days which is worth the reading ... it is published in the Christmas Radio Times... verse twelve (usually the 12 drummers drumming) reads:

Did they hear the drums in Copenhagen

banging out their warning

On the twelth day in Copenhagen

was global warming stopped in its tracks

By Brown and Barak and Hu Jintao

by Meles Zenawi and Al Sabban

by Yvo de Boer and Hedegaard

Did they strike a match

or strike a bargain

the politicos in Copenhagen

Did they twiddle their thumbs

Or hear the drums

and hear the drums

and hear the drums?

The Earth remains our mother

These were my thoughts on radio Wales this afternoon.

My two year old daughter has reached another milestone in her life. She's sorted out the walking and kind of got to grips with talking, so we reckon that she's ready for the next big challenge:

it's time for potty training.

But if that's a daunting prospect for my household it's nothing to what the Davies family from North Wales have had to cope with on the BBC One programme, Changing Lives.

For those who may have missed it this family of four are part of the Green Wales project, an initiative that's tested the nation to see how environmentally sustainable our lifestyles are. I now that Roy (Noble) and other presenters at the BBC have been doing their bit for this, but as world leaders gather in Copenhagen to discuss the changes in our global climate, it's been the eco-skeptical Davies folk that I have warmed to, swapping their energy guzzling home to live amongst a green community in Powys. There they're learning to generate their own energy, recycle everything and live off the land. Recycling everything has included the challenge of re-using the very stuff my daughter is leaving in her potty.

Meredith and I once spent a week living with twenty other people on a similar project in Scotland. The toilets there were composted too ... the food was mostly home grown and the power sources mainly were sustainable. After seven days there was just one bag of rubbish to remove. On the wall there hung an ancient Celtic prayer reminding us that the whole earth proclaims God's glory ... that there's nothing in the sea, the air, the land that doesn't' contain and reveal God's goodness.

That is not reducing God to nothing more than nature, but it is acknowledging that traces of the Creator can be found in every part of the Creation. It's recognising as St Paul once said, that all things hold together in Christ. And that must means that every thing we see and touch is connected to God, each part deserves our respect, our care and our devotion.

The old prayer on the wall reminded me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who once commented

The earth remains our mother just as God remains our father

and our mother only lays in the father's arms

those who remain true to her

Whether we are leaders of the world in Copenhagen

or families in Wales hoping there's a future for our kids

remaining true to the earth is a challenge none of us can avoid.

Fasting and Feasting in Advent

There will (I hope) be plenty of feasting tor me to enjoy this Christmas, but what about this Advent time, this space for preparation, ought I to be fasting now in anticipation of what is to come?

I'm thinking about this as I prepare a series on fasting for the New Year (or maybe Lent 2010) I've been reading, among others, Scot McKnight's new book 'Fasting', where he speaks of fasting as a whole body response to a 'serious or grievous sacred moment in life.' This is not fasting to cajole something out of God but as a response to something in life that iwe perceive to be amiss, some moment or period of what Walter Brueggemann would call our 'disorientation.'

In the midst of the reading comes a quotation that seemed so right for Advent: its from Thomas Ryan's book The Sacred Art of Fasting.

Fasting is one of the ways the servants of Jesus keep themselves alert in this future-orientated waiting until the bridegroom returns. To what could you liken their discreet, mysterious joy as they wait? you could say it is like the quiet humming or whistling of a choir member earlier in the day of a concert. it's like a mother and father cleaning the house and making up the beds in anticipation of the kids coming home home at Thanksgiving or Christmas, it's like standing at the airport terminal or train station, waiting for your loved one to appear. its' like a fiancee patiently addressing the wedding invitations. The long awaited event is not here yet, but it will come, and this is necessary preparation, In each case the energy is upbeat, forward looking and marked by the quiet joy of anticipation.