The River we travel

‘I’ve seen them now, and I will never be the same.’ These are the words of Malcolm Gladwell, a best-selling non-fiction writer based in New York.

Reading about him has focussed my thinking on two events in Inverness – the on-going commemoration of the first visit to the city 250 years ago by the founder of Methodism, John Wesley (he preached in the High Church on Sundday 10th June 1764), and the recent service at the Cathedral where the Bachuil (or crozier) of St Moluag was on display. St Moluag was a contemporary of Columba: like Columba he met King Brude at Inverness and established many monasteries.

The Bachuil in the hands of its current custodian, Niall Livingstone of Bachuil, current Baron of Bachuil

What did Gladwell see which he claims changed his life? It was, he tells us, ‘the weapons of the spirit.’

Born in England, Malcolm Gladwell was raised in Canada where the family joined the Mennonite Christian community. His two brothers retained their Mennonite faith in adulthood, but though Malcolm continued to believe in God and to view Christian faith as logical, he admits ‘what I have had a hard time seeing is God’s power.’

He told an audience in 2009 that he was ‘truly sad’ he didn’t share his parents’ faith. He described a communion service he’d been present at as one of the most beautiful things he’d experienced, and was sad that nothing out-with faith affected him in quite the same way.

John Wesley preaching

And then he began researching his latest book, David and Goliath: underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants. One of its themes is that sometimes people with no material advantage, and indeed with severe disadvantages are much more powerful than they appear. They have an inner strength and resilience which (in a recent article) Gladwell describes as ‘weapons of the spirit.’

The book includes many personal stories, two of which are explicitly faith-driven. There is a Mennonite couple who find a way to forgive and express love to the person responsible for their daughter’s death. There’s the French Alpine community which, led by the local pastor, quietly resisted the Nazis during World War 2 and helped many Jewish people to escape to Switzerland.

Exploring these stories, Gladwell was amazed by the persistent courage people showed.  Their behaviour was, he said in an interview ‘very hard to account for other than by the particular kind of strength you get from faith.’

As a direct result of this evidence for the power of God in human weakness he says ‘I am in the process of recovering my own faith.’

One of the key points he makes in interviews is that the Mennonite tradition of forgiveness helped prompt and shape the bereaved couple’s willingness to forgive. And the history of the Alpine village standing firm in the 17th and 18th centuries s against state oppression of Protestant faith inspired the villagers’ resistance to the Nazis.

Which is why I got thinking of St Moluag and John Wesley – just a couple of the many Christian leaders who have visited the Highland across the centuries. The tradition we inherit in Scotland is a tradition of faith – of mission, of iconoclasts like Wesley challenging the status quo, challenging us when our faith becomes a veneer rather than a soul-deep reality.

Wesley acknowledged the importance of tradition when he noted on 10th Juen 1764 ‘the remarkable behaviour of the whole congregation after service’, their serious reflection on what they had heard. Wesley attributed this to the fact that Inverness has ‘for at least a hundred years had such a succession of pious ministers as very few in Great Britain have known.’

Malcolm Gladwell challenges us. To some the challenge is to understand the tradition before we reject it, to assess with unbiased eyes the evidence of God we see in lives around us. To others the challenge is to live, uncowed by injustice and adversity, lives in which weapons of the spirit are evident, 

To some the challenge is to rediscover in faith the beauty we have found nowhere else. To everyone the challenge is to recognise that ultimate power does not lie in the hands of those who appear most powerful.

I held the 34” long Bachuil of St Moluag that day in the Cathedral. As my hand encircled the fragile wood I sensed a stillness and continuity. It was as though I’d entered a glass-walled, peace-calmed cubicle. We hold to an ancient faith, fragile but resilient.

Yet what matters is not so much what we hold, as who holds us – the God of St Moluag, the God of John Wesley, the God of Christians across the centuries, the God who isn’t a visitor among us, but a perpetual presence, the God who wills us to seek that vision which will so change us that we will ‘never be the same.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 5th June 2014)

At Death Cafe with The Big Yin

I wonder if Inverness and the Highlands are ready for a ‘Death Café’?  The Death Café movement has inspired groups of people elsewhere - not primarily folk who are terminally ill, though they are welcome - to get together for a couple of hours, share coffee and cake, and talk about death and dying. 

Usually at Death Cafés, people share their feelings at the thought of dying, discuss what kind of funeral they’d like, how they’d like to be remembered, what happens when you die – anything those attending want to raise. There is no agenda, and definitely no preaching.

As a society, we’re reticent about discussing death. Do we fear that talk about dying makes us feel, and appear, vulnerable; or somehow bring death closer; or shatter our personal illusion that we will never die? I may acknowledge death in general, while denying the fact that I will die. We Christians may find it especially hard, in the light of other Christians’ apparent confidence, to admit what we’re really thinking.

At the Cafés, there may be as many views about what happens after death as there are people present. We die, and that is the end. We live on as incorporeal spirits. We are reincarnated. We are gifted with a new body, recognisably ours, yet different.

There were many ideas in Billy Connolly’s recent two-part documentary on death, The Big Send Off – a mixture of personal pieces to camera, interviews, and film of Connolly with people engaging in fascinating death-related customs.

I wondered what I’d say if I were in a Death Café with the Big Yin. I’d be listening carefully to see what I could learn from what was being said, how other views challenged mine. The discussion would turn to beliefs about what happens after death.

Billy Connolly says, as he did to camera ‘The conclusion I have come to is: I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea, but I’m completely open. There may be some grand plan but I have no idea what it is or whose plan it is.’

And I say something like ‘Billy, I’ve thought about this too, and I believe that the plan is God’s plan (although it’s a very flexible plan, inviting our co-operation.)  I believe God has self-revealed, giving us tantalising glimpses of God, the timeless Rock of Love in whom we are invited to trust.’

When someone else says (as one of Connolly’s interviewees did) ‘I believe in everything: that way I can’t be wrong.’ I’d say ‘Well I believe that in Jesus the Rock of Love came among us. There’s a strong case supporting the view that Jesus is unique. I am convinced that he died and resurrected, and that because of his death and resurrection he is the one-and-only life giver. In the face of death, I entrust myself to him.’

And when Billy Connolly says (as he did in the documentary to a Muslim man who told him that what counted was being a good person and doing everything right in life) ‘I think that’s what worries me most’. I’d say ‘Well, I think none of us matches that standard. But I’m convinced God forgives us if we seek forgiveness. Loved and forgiven we need not fear.’

You see I’d have to work hard not to preach! I wonder if some of us don’t want the Christian faith to be true, are so committed to it being false that we are in denial about the power of the Christian story and the evidence in its support.

Billy Connolly described those he’s sat with as they died. ‘Even people who were in pain some time before,’ he said, ‘when it came to the time of dying there was an acceptance, and they just slipped off.’ There is a time to stop raging against the dying of the light, a time to let a greater light embrace you.

But what of people who have not specifically placed their trust in Jesus? Those who have never heard of Jesus, or never encountered the real Jesus, as opposed to a caricature? I believe in the love of God and the sufficiency of what Jesus did in dying for the world. And I believe that beyond death when our lives are reviewed, if we have on balance chosen light and love over darkness and hatred, God will say ‘Welcome in the name of Jesus!’

Death Cafés exist to bring death into the open, so that those attending can live to the full. Churches invite us to take an unflinching look at ourselves and at death, and then realise that we are loved, accepted, forgiven, and that the life we will fully enter beyond death begins now. In fact churches at their best are Life Cafés.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 22nd May 2014.)

A week to change the world

It’s Christian Aid Week from 11th-17th May when 20,000 churches across the UK and Ireland will be raising funds for rom 11th-17th May the charity. Christian Aid works with partners around the world, taking action against poverty and the causes of poverty, empowering people to develop sustainable lifestyles.

This year’s Christian Aid Week focusses on work with some of the 42 million people globally who have been driven from their homes by war, supporting them through the immediate trauma, and helping them get their lives together again. Last year, the Week raised £12 million. It’s a week to make a difference, a week to bring light into dark places, a week to change the world.

Last week Steve Jones, a Professor of Genetics at University College, London aired his view that poverty and religion go hand in hand. Looking across the world, and back through history, he argues that ‘there is a precise fit between social unfairness and the power of the priesthood.’ He continues ‘In countries whose governments are fair and effective the influence of the clergy fades.’

As examples of religion flourishing in unequal societies he points to the continent of Africa, and to the rise of mega-churches in the USA, concluding that ‘the most devout nations’ are those with the most social problems, and that ‘Chaos and credulity go together.’

One wonders why a genetics expert feels able to pronounce with such confidence on a subject not his own. Does Professor Jones seriously think all religious belief is the result of unquestioning credulity? Has he never met any deep-thinking religious people who have struggled with faith and the many questions it gives rise to, and have concluded that there is good cause to believe in a God beyond all our imagining?

Steve Jones seems unable to distinguish between true devotion to God, and toxic religion. It’s the latter he’s criticising. And people of good-will, whatever their religion, join him in condemning religious leaders who seek to control and manipulate others, to enrich themselves, to build power-bases while turning their backs on what Jesus called ‘the kingdom of heaven.’

Toxic religion is one of the many darknesses currently overshadowing the world. And the same controlling toxicity found in extremist Islamist groups is not unknown, although to a lesser degree, in some Christian churches.

True Christianity, on the other hand, empowers and liberates. True Christian leaders are servants, love-driven, expressing the peace and justice of God, bearing light into dark places.

This is what Christian Aid stands for, and we are reminded this week that we are called to join in God’s world-transforming project. We play our part, not just by praying and making donations to charities, but by being light-bearers, breathing peace and love into every situation we find ourselves in, every conversation, every relationship.

We may think that a small loving act is of little global significance, but just as small donations to Christian Aid this week are both valuable in themselves and contribute to a large total, so our small acts of love are precious in their own right, and contribute to the bright shining of God’s kingdom of love.

The Professor’s views remind me that although chaos in our lives and communities can lead us into the grip of toxic religion, it can also, if we seek discerningly, lead us into the arms of God.

When our lives are in chaos we look for answers, and question everything we’ve built our lives on hitherto. Our desperation may open our eyes to the reality behind what we once dismissed as foolish credulity. And thus in recent months both people whose lives have been thrown into financial turmoil by the recession and affluent professionals facing personal crisis have found that it is when we come to an end of ourselves that we discover the one who is our beginning.

The possibility of toxic religion means that as well as expressing love, and modelling the faith which heals we will as appropriate point to the source of our love, to Jesus Christ, the source of all love, who models genuine faith.

This Jesus, far from building personal power structures, became the servant of humanity, allowed poverty and injustice to embrace him, and came to an end of himself to give us a new beginning.

And so the first Easter week was the week that changed the world. Christ’s death for us and return to life was an explosion of love which sends powerful ripples through the whole of history, bringing peace, reconciliation and freedom from fear. None of us are untouched by these ripples: Christian Aid Week reminds us of our moment-by-moment challenge to carry them forward, as empowered by Christ’s presence they grow not weaker, but stronger until the day God’s kingdom comes.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 15th May 2014)

On the right track

The film Railway Man is out on DVD this week. I missed it at the cinema, and having read the autobiography by Eric Lomax on which the movie is based, I’m looking forward to catching up with it.

Lomax (1919-2012) was brought up near Edinburgh, and developed a passion for railway engines as a teenager. With the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined the Army as a Signals Officer. Taken prisoner when the Japanese captured Singapore, he was compelled (with cruel irony) to service the rolling stock used in building the ‘Death railway’ between Thailand and Burma, a brutal project leading to the deaths of 12,399 prisoners of war.

Having been caught building a radio receiver in the POW camp, Lomax and others were mercilessly beaten, waterboarded, held captive in coffin-sized cages, subjected to gruelling interrogations (‘You will be killed shortly,’said the interpreter, mercilessly) and finally imprisoned in ‘a place in which the living were turned into ghosts.’ Lomax survived the years of anguish, and returned post-war to an uncomprehending world. 

As a young man, he had come to Christian faith, joined an evangelical church in Edinburgh, attracted by their ‘fellowship and certainty’, and believed as they believed. He left for war engaged to a young woman in the church, Nan (who isn’t named in the book.) His faith and evangelical certainties sustained him during his time in captivity.

Returning from war, carrying profound psychic wounds, he married his fiancée to discover that neither she, nor the church, nor anyone else understood what he had been through or appreciated the nightmares and daylight agonies he was enduring. He tried to talk, was not heard, and clammed up for many years.

Lomax is very critical of the church, over-critical, I think in describing them as, for example, ‘certainly above compassion.’ But there are lessons for us. Lomax criticises ‘Petty divisions, petty anger, small minds.’ Does that ring true to our church experience? Are we inward-focussed, trivial, while the world aches for compassion?

How good are we at hearing people in pain, providing safe spaces when they can be open? How good are we at travelling with those whose circumstances have prompted deep questions about faith which we may never have asked? And how do we handle the questions which rise up in our own minds about, for example suffering, God, justice, the reliability of the Bible? Do we, as it seems the folk in Eric Lomax’s church did, bury them, rather than working through them? Is exploring, questioning, journeying actively encouraged in our church?

After many years, Lomax’s marriage finally disintegrated. Not just he, but his wife and daughters were victims of what had happened in Thailand. And then (on a train!) he met Patti who became his wife in 1983. Understanding of post-traumatic stress was growing, and Patti saw the pain he was bearing. 

In time found a measure of healing through counselling. But he retained a deep hatred of Japanese people. His future was still a ‘nursery of revenge.’ Then he discovered that the interpreter on whom his hatred was particularly focussed had a name – Nagase Takashi -  was still alive, had devoted his life to charity in an attempt to atone for his part in war-time atrocities, and had written a book in which he recalled, and deplored how Lomax had been treated. A Buddhist, he described a spiritual experience in which he had a sense of being ‘pardoned.’ Patti felt that he had found pardon too easily.

In the end, Lomax and Nagase met in the mid-1990s, the former still simmering with revenge. But he realised that ‘It was surely worth salvaging as much as we could from the damage to both our lives’ and so forgave Nagase. ‘Sometime the hating has to stop.’

Lomax doesn’t describe his spiritual beliefs at this time, but in offering forgiveness he demonstrates profoundly the very heart of Christian faith. The conviction that none of us is beyond redemption, that if we are humble, repentant, open to change we receive God’s forgiveness as a free gift made possible by the willing death of Jesus.

All this prompts deep questions. Is there someone I should be exploring the possibility of forgiving? Do I need to learn to accept another’s forgiveness, to forgive myself? Have I, in self-revulsion been repelling God’s freely-offered forgiveness?

Briefly in Kashmir en route to Singapore, Lomax described it as ‘the most beautiful place in the world.’ This vision he said later ‘went some way to keeping me whole. If I had had no idea of perfection, I don’t know if I would have come through.’ 

It seems to me that Christians are given glimpses of the perfection of God’s coming kingdom, glimpses which keep us on track through our dark days.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 8th May 2014)