Light in the clearing

I admire my younger daughter Bethany’s committed vegetarianism.

This week, I was reading Pope Francis’ new encyclical, Laudato Si’ (‘Praise be to you my Lord’) on the care of the planet and the interdependent web of creation. The Pope reminds us of the words of St Francis: when we worship, we do so in union with Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire.

The encyclical addresses the ravages of pollution, water shortage, the loss of biodiversity which sees 1000s of species of plants and animals disappearing every year, and the scandal of global inequality. The Pope’s vision is that care for the planet and care for the disadvantaged are two aspects of the one Christian ministry.

He reminds us of the madness of pursuing ever-increasing consumption and economic growth which Earth can’t sustain.

We need an awakening, a breaking-away from the group-think which blinds us to the necessity for urgent action. But often it’s hard in the middle of busy lives to remember the bigger picture.

Which is why Bethany’s vegetarianism inspires me.

On that issue, I don’t think you can make a strong case for vegetarianism from the Bible’s teaching. Christians emphasise the uniqueness of human beings, distinct from animals though part of the one family of living creatures. There seems to be a general biblical understanding that God intends us to be meat-eaters. Jesus ate certainly fish, and probably meat as well.

But you can make a robust defence of vegetarianism on grounds of compassion and kindness to living creatures, and I am drawn to Bethany’s principled stance.

But the Bible doesn’t primarily present theological and ethical ideas – rather it captivates us with story and poem through which we see reality more clearly than in our struggling attempts at doing theology.

This week, a story and a poem have helped me in my reflections, both shared by my friend Iain Macritchie. Iain is a hospital chaplain, Practice Education Lead for Spiritual Care for NHS Scotland and priest at St Andrews Cathedral Inverness.

He told me about his grandfather, a crofter on the Isle of Lewis. This man knew intimately the sheep in his flock, knew them by name, knew the genetic characteristics of each. When he approached the common grazing and called his own sheep, they raised their heads and came to him.

When the time came to kill a sheep for the family table, he would take it apart from the others, and give it a quiet space in the byre. He would feed it well – not just to enrich the meat, but as an expression of gratitude to the beast. When the time came, he would look it in the eye and say in Gaelic, ever so gently ‘Thank you,’ and then quickly take its life.

If we are to eat the flesh of living creatures, then surely this models the respect and gentleness with which we should treat these fellow-members of God’s creation? Today, factory farming methods condemn many beasts to lives of discomfort and misery. How can that sit easily on our consciences as Christians?

And then Iain shared a fine poem he had written, A walk in the woods. (I have posted it here: http://hiltonchurch.org.uk/a-walk-in-the-woods/) Like all fine writing it gives to each of us according to what we bring to it.

It’s about reaching a dark place in life, and the slow-awakening realisation that there is purpose, meaning, playfulness and joy; that nothing is wasted, nothing forgotten. Sunlight shafts into the clearing, and finally ‘knowing blazes out and you find yourself lost, and lose yourself found in Love.’

As we struggle to make a difference in the wounded dark forest of our world Love is with us. And Iain has made a difference in the creative act of writing these lines, blessing those of us who read them. He has made a difference by being himself, by doing what comes naturally to him, using the gifts and insights he has been given.

And it is when we do what we do best in all the ordinary conversations and actions of life, as well as our creative interventions that we make a difference. My small voice joins the voices of Papa Francis and Saint Francis and Bethany’s and Iain’s and billions of other voices celebrating God’s gifts and protesting against their misuse, mouthpieces all of us for the one great Love.

We realise as Pope Francis prays that ‘We are profoundly united with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light.’

And we believe that the time will come when, in the walk of creation through the dark thickets of history Iain’s prophetic words will speak of the cosmos of a whole: ‘you find yourself lost and lose yourself found in Love.’

(Christan Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 1st July 2015)

Cathedral Oasis

The first thing I noticed when I read the summer issue of the Inverness Cathedral Messenger was the news that the Provost, Alex Gordon has been invited to be the next Chaplain of Holy Trinity Church in Geneva and will leave Inverness at the end of September.

I’m very grateful to Alex – I went to talk to him some years ago when I was unsure whether I would ever attend a church again, and was greeted with warmth, empathy, wisdom and theological insight – and a welcoming mug of coffee. When I began regularly to experience the weekday Eucharist at the Cathedral, it was Alex who led the worship. I also enjoyed the spiritual and intellectual stimulation of the weekly discussions Alex organised throughout Lent.

John Dempster and Provost Alex Gordon

 In The Messenger, Alex emphasises the importance of keeping the Cathedral ‘open and accessible’ through the day, ‘an oasis of peace for prayerful encounter with God.’ I have certainly found the building to be this. Often there will be people sitting quietly, letting the peace embrace them, deep in reflection.

The Messenger also outlines minor adjustments it’s planned to make to the Cathedral lay-out to bring the physical structure into line with current convictions about worship.

For the way we design our churches reflects our beliefs about what is involved in worshipping God, and what is happening when we worship. 

Worship at the Cathedral follows a formal liturgy, with a sense of order and tradition, an awareness of the place of beauty in worship, and a humbling recognition of the holiness of God. Other churches meet in houses or (by necessity) school halls – expressing the conviction that God is present everywhere and can be worshipped everywhere, and that it is possible to revere God in a fairly informal setting.

Hilton Church which I attend on Sundays was built in the 1950s – there’s a long auditorium, and the intention was that the minister would lead from the front.  But now Duncan Macpherson stands at a simple lectern in the centre of one of the long walls, on the same level as those who have come to worship, leading from the centre.

Two changes are planned in the Cathedral. At present between the nave and the choir there stands a richly-carved wooden screen, a memorial erected in the 1920s to those who died in the Great War. It’s planned to move this to a position where it will be seen clearly to be a War Memorial. This move will have the added benefit of removing the barrier between the congregation and those leading the service emphasising that we come to God as one people.

When the Cathedral was designed in the 1860s, the layout reflected the tradition that in celebrating Communion the priest would stand before the Altar at the East Wall, back to the congregation, which might have encouraged the misunderstanding that what the priest was doing was somehow appeasing an angry God. The second proposed change is to create a new altar in the centre of the nave

In fact most of the Cathedral Eucharists are led from existing side-altars where the priest stands in front of people, an approach which emphasises that the Eucharist is a family meal, focusing on God’s love for us and God’s provision for our needs in Jesus Christ. 

Some churches where communion is celebrated very simply may regard Cathedral worship with some suspicion. But having experienced both it seems to me that both approaches to Communion  aim to make the once-for-all-time death of Jesus real to us in the present, as real to us as if it were happening now,  so that we can experience afresh what Christ has done for us, and the new life he shares with us. We respond in ‘thanksgiving’ – which is what ‘Eucharist’ means.

At the heart of the oasis is set a family table to which all who seek God through Jesus Christ, however feeble our faith, are welcomed in love. This is at the core of Christian worship, and if anything in our way of doing church is diluting the power of it, then we need to be prepared to make changes as the Cathedral is doing.

But oases for the soul are not only to be found in peaceful, consecrated buildings and in worship services. My visit to Alex Gordon’s study that day was, to me, an oasis. And in a profounder sense, the Christ whom we encounter in our hearts is a perpetual oasis within us.

Alex Gordon leaves us for the oasis that is Holy Trinity Church, Geneva. But there, as here, he will through his living faith be himself an oasis. We are each called to be an oasis wherever we are so that others, stopping by for a while, will find peace.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 7th August 2014)