The Selfless Giant

Giants! Over the holidays there was a picture in the press of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby with the cast of Jack and the Beanstalk which he and his family had just enjoyed at a theatre in Kent.

Jack, of course, was a giant-killer, and Justin Welby will be aware of the traditional Christian concept of overcoming dragons such as pride, greed and injustice in our personal lives and in society.

Last week I went to see The Selfish Giant at Eden Court. This stunning film, directed by Clio Barnard is inspired by an Oscar Wilde fable about a giant who drives from his extensive garden the children who have found delight in playing there in his absence. He builds a high wall to exclude them, but he suffers as much as the children as inside the wall it is forever hail-battered winter, never gentle spring.

Barnard’s film is only tenuously connected with this original. It tells a dark story, set on the edge of Bradford about two 13-year-old boys, Arbor and Swifty, excluded from school, with chaotic homes and dysfunctional fathers. They meet Kitten, a fearsome scrapyard owner who is involved in illegal on-road horse and buggy racing. Kitten both gives them opportunity, and exploits them.

Who, we wonder, is the giant in the film? Kitten, in his high-fenced scrapyard? Arbor, whose obsession with finding ever more scrap to sell leads to tragedy? Or a whole political system which excludes the vulnerable and under-privilege and offers them (at least as Clio Barnard portrays it) little support.

The film prompts questions. What are the selfish giants in our lives, in our political, economic and commercial structures? Am I a selfish giant in my relationships with family, friends, neighbours, colleagues?

Oscar Wilde’s fable is at heart Christian. The children find their way back into the garden through a hole in the wall and climb the trees, their joy awakening the wintering branches which erupt into blossom. His heart melting, the giant helps a small boy into a tree at the bottom of the orchard, and at his touch its branches awaken too. The giant demolishes the wall, and his garden becomes a paradise of joy.

In the story’s rather sentimental ending when the giant is very old, the small boy returns, his hands and feet bearing the marks of Christ’s crucifixion, and welcomes the giant into the paradise beyond death. Wilde’s fable deals with redemption through Christ’s sacrifice, with a love whose wounds brings home the excluded.

Clio Barnard’s film takes a non-religious perspective and invites us to consider if redemption is possible in a culture when many have ceased to believe in God.

There are redemptive moment of light in the film: long, still pauses for breath when Barnard focuses on the beauty of the sky, the fields at the city’s back door, the pylons wreathed in mist; the healing relationship between Swifty, and later Arbor, and Diesel the horse, whose calm eyes are big, trusting, unblinking; the close bond between the two boys, brilliantly conveyed by the young actors; the love of mothers struggling in impossible circumstances.

There are these glimmers of redemption, but is the light is powerful enough to overcome such great darkness?

Some selfish giants must be overcome; others have hearts which can melt and heal. But there are still other giants, giants in goodness who inspire us.

One such giant is Pope Francis, whose recent ‘exhortation’ The Joy of the Gospel I have been reading. Pope Francis is no stranger to darkness and hardship, but he believes in a God who is active in the world, present in the darkness, reaching out in every moment of redemption whether or not we acknowledge it.

‘Every human being,’ he insists, ‘is the object of God’s infinite tenderness, and he himself is present in their lives.’ He says ‘The resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of history for Jesus did not rise in vain.’ The light and hope which break upon us in darkness are fruits of the presence of the living Jesus.

We fully enter into that resurrection when, as Pope Francis says ‘we take a step towards Jesus’ and ‘realise that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms.’

As Christians, we are called upon to be a redemptive presence in dark place. In the Pope’s view the church should be ‘bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out in the street.’ ‘Arm in arm with others,’ he says, ‘we are committed to building a new world.’ Christians are light-bearers, giant-slayers, sustained by Jesus the Selfless Giant.

Says Francis, in words which resonate powerfully with Oscar Wilde’s story: ‘We achieve fulfilment when we break down walls and our heart is filled with faces and names.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 9th January 2014)