The Beast and Aslan

‘Aslan is on the move,’ said Hector Morrison, Principal of the Highland Theological College. He was stirred by the sight of students from across Scotland packed into the conference room at the college last week, come to study and grow in faith.

The quotation is from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first-published of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia chronicles. The land of Narnia is in the frozen grip of the White Witch’s winter, but when Beaver tells the children that ‘Aslan is on the move’ – the first mention of the great Lion – there seems to be in that name a sweet magic. ‘The moment the Beaver had said these words, everyone felt quite different.’

Another place. The ravaged land of Syria.  Last year, The Times’ perceptive war correspondent Anthony Loyd was kidnapped and wounded by Syrian rebels before ultimately being released. Recently, he was back in Syria, reporting from the front line.

We see the conflict through his sensitive eyes. ‘Sometimes it is a struggle even to describe the killing there as part of “war”. Certainly true is that a dark, consuming force has been unleashed, invading not just places but men themselves; extinguishing goodness, exalting in cruelty. Evil is a word best held back. But it sits well in Syria, with godliness in such abatement and the souls of men so lost to the night.’

It seems that in Syria, Aslan is not on the move. ‘Does the devil ride out on Syrian sands?’ Loyd muses.

He visits a church to interview refugees, a safe, unthreatening place, he reckons. Then he is shocked when a pro-regime Christian combatant produces a photograph of comrades with the severed heads of ISIS fighters. This beheading was ‘not a good thing’ the combatant said. But ‘we are taking our revenge.’

Loyd remembers standing in a village church in England, exactly eight years previously exchanging wedding vows with his wife, a place symbolising goodness and truth, love and hope. And then he looks again the photo of severed heads and lifeless eyes and ‘the triumph in the face of the head-holder.’

‘A nauseous sense of intrusion assailed me,’ he confesses. ‘Sanctuary was compromised: the beast was over the wire.’

It does indeed seem from the extreme and horrific cruelty in Syria and elsewhere that a beast is on the loose. We manage, most of times to keep our minds off this anguish in safe, secure Scotland, until we’re arrested by a poignant image or an intense eyewitness account.

Yet we are no strangers to the destructive darkness of cruelty, despair, addiction, broken relationships, callousness, tears – even sometimes in our churches. We cannot say that the beast which is ravaging Syria is powerless in our midst.

But, said Hector, ‘Aslan is on the move.’ Aslan whose breath melted the Narnian ice, restoring light and joy and hope. Aslan, who symbolises Jesus Christ.

Aslan on the move? Some of us don’t believe it. ‘Aslan only lives as long as he is believed in, and belief is dying,’ we protest, mistaken on both counts.

Aslan is on the move. It’s estimated that 80,000 people become his followers every day, 34,000 of them in Africa. More than half the Christians who have ever lived are alive today. There are more Christians in China than there are members of the Communist Party. There are many similar statistics.

How can we, in sophisticated, intellectual Europe, be so sure we are right, so blind to our need of God? The beast is rampant, but Aslan is in the move. I often hear of Scottish people, liberated and uplifted as they choose Aslan’s way of light and life: blessed, inspired, transformed, challenged, empowered.

I hear of Christ working sometimes dramatically, often more gently. My friend Iain Macritchie shared this last Sunday:

‘The places where I am bowled over by God's activity are in the unspeakable ordinariness of a cirrus cloud on the evening sky, or the dark, ripe brambles in the hedgerows, or the sound of my son speaking in character voices.  And it's in all the things I can't actually say - in the wordless wonder which, if I tried to articulate, would renders it out of my hands by the very act of trying to hold it.  Tender, broken, beckoning, compassionate vignettes whisper of God's activity.’

Aslan is on the move. The beast will not, in the end, triumph. The power of light and love – and all light and love is God’s light and live, embodied in Jesus Christ – will, we are convinced, set our Narnian world free from the icy grip of death.

Our great Aslan invites us to find sanctuary in his love. ‘Oh Aslan, be on the move in and through my life, and Scotland’s life today and forever.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 17th September 2015)

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)