Small, step-wise changes

"How do you encourage people to keep their hope," Joan (Kingsolver's friend) asked, "but not their complacency?"She was involved that spring in producing a film about global climate change, and preoccupied with striking this balance. The truth is so horrific: we are marching ourselves to the maw of our own extinction. An audience that doesn't really get that will amble out of the theatre unmoved, go home and change nothing. But an audience that does get it may be so terrified they'll feel doomed already. They might walk out looking paler, but still do nothing. How is it possible to inspire an appropriately repentant attitude towards a planet that is really, really upset? ...

We cherish our fossil-fuel driven conveniences, such as the computer I am using to write these words. We can't exactly name-call this problem, or vote it away. The cure involves reaching down into ourselves and pulling out a new kind of person. The practical problem is, of course, how to do that. It's impossible to become a fuel purist, and it seems like failure to change our ways only halfway, or a pathetic ten per cent. So why even try? When the scope of the problem seems insuperable, isn't it reasonable just to call this one, give up, and get on with life as we know it?

... This is a now or never kind of project. But a project, none-the-less. Global-scale alteration from pollution didn't happen when human societies started using a little bit of fossil fuel. It happened after unrestrained growth, irresponsible management, and a cultural refusal to assign any moral value to excessive consumption. Those habits can be reformed. They have been reformed several times in the past. In the last century we've learned that some of our favourite things like DDT and the propellants in aerosol cans were rapidly unraveling the structure and substance of our biosphere. We gave them up, and reversed the threats. Now the reforms required are more systemic, and nobody seems to want to go first...

I share with almost every adult I know this crazy quilt of optimism and worries, feeling locked into certain habits but keen to change them in the right direction. And the tendency to feel like a jerk for falling short of absolute conversion I'm not sure why. If a friend had a coronary scare and started exercising three times a week, who would hound him about the other four days? These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news... searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or car-pooling or growing a garden, or saving a species or something. Small, step-wise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't, add up to having been the thing that mattered.

Barbara Kingsolver,  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, (London, Faber and Faber Ltd, 2007) pp 345-6.

Waves

Put yourself here... mmmmmmm....

In England today it is zero degrees, grey-skied and snowing. Mid-March!!!! I could do with this beach right now... You can just hear the waves just gently, continuously, ... hissing? sighing? pshhhing? towards you and frothing right over your toes. And the sun feels warm on your face and the sand is warm and the water is deliciously cool...

This Sunday at our church we had quite a special visiting speaker, Guy Chevreau. He is Canadian and his name is pronounced Gee, like ghee. He is a renewal theologian and wrote the first book looking at the theology and context of the Toronto Blessing (as a believer in it), "Catch the Fire." Since then he has written other books and is a well-known speaker. We use his book Turnings, on revivals, in our courses at WTC. And now Dan and I have a signed copy for ourselves!

Guy talked about how God initiates, and how God's grace is like the waves of the sea, rolling in one after another, without ceasing. He referred to John ch 1, where it says, "from his mercy we have all received, grace upon grace." He told us that research has shown that on average, a wave rolls into the beach every eight seconds, and that in 24 hours, about 10,000 waves come in. So God's grace comes to us wave after wave, grace after grace, grace upon grace. So we should be open to receiving the grace, the goodness, and expect it. He said he himself has had a tough four years, but he has a peace that God has tremendous blessings for him. So he doesn't mean that life is good all the time, rather that God is blessing us all the time, if we only knew it.

Another thing, he said that when we stand on the beach and look out to sea, we can only see a certain distance. But beyond where we can see, the waves are still rolling towards us. So, there are waves of grace coming towards us, for the things that we don't even know are going to happen yet.

It was a good message, comforting in the sense of strengthening, and building and reassuring. So I thought I would pass it on to you.

Whatever is the world coming to...?

This morning, drinking coffee and reading in bed, deliciously late in the morning, Dan and I were talking about the movie he went to see last night (I didn't want to go) - Django Unchained, by Quentin Tarantino. We know Tarantino's movies are very violent, always, but some students had seen this one and raved about it, and it won Oscars, so... Dan wanted to see it. He felt that it was a good movie, but, horribly violent, in fact, it got more and more violent as it went along. He commented that it is incredible the level of violence and gore we are used to seeing now on the screen. People no longer complain about it, although not everyone likes it obviously, it is just almost always there.

The graphic-ness is partly because special effects have developed so much, that anything can be portrayed realistically, even disembowellings, burnings at the stake, and decapitations.  And then apparently there is the director's urge always to push the boundary, and do the next thing, the next most horrifying, bloodthirsty thing, just because, you can. And it is for the sake of "art", after all. Um, no, I don't think so. I think it is for the sake of being "daring," and shocking.

At the same time, we have been watching a TV series we missed while away, "The Tudors" (which I do not recommend as you will understand in a minute.) Along with many I have a fascination for the Tudor period, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and all that. I enjoy reading novels set in that time. But it was also by all accounts a frightening, violent time to be alive. Then, people went to watch in the flesh the beheadings and burnings, and shouted along. So, maybe I shouldn't feel so concerned... But again, I have been shocked in another way watching this series, about the graphic sex that is shown. Bar actual genitalia, you see ev-er-y-thing. It is strange really, how the most private activities are now acted out, not briefly, not just above the neck, not with one foot on the floor, not with even a scrap of sheet or hair discreetly positioned. This is in a show that would have been aired late evening, and on national TV, not rated as pornography, just, a "historical drama." You have to wonder about the actors - they are basically acting out porn, and, did they really sign up for that? It has changed so much in the course of my adult life, that I am sure older actors must wonder why and how they have ended up stripping off quite so much. I mean, would you do it?

So is it in there for the sake of art? Sometimes they say it is essential to the story - but usually, it isn't. The implication would be enough. Have we have become so used to seeing it that we don't question it? Or, am I really that much more squeamish about both violence and sex than most people - even than most other missionaries?!

When I was first a short-term missionary in Zambia, there was a lovely older American missionary lady, who loved reading, and often lent out her books to both other missionaries and Zambian friends. So, she had gone through all her books and used a black sharpie to blot out all the swear words in her books! And really, there weren't that many! Now, she would have to blot out a good proportion of every book.  Although I laughed about that, I do warn friends when I lend them books about the "rude bits."

Oh dear, what is the world coming to?

The archbishops and me...

If you can't name-drop in your own blog... where can you???

Today Dan and I went to the Trustees meeting for the UCU UK Partners, which was held this time at Cuddesdon Theological College, just outside Oxford. We had a really good productive meeting, which was good. Also, it was lovely to visit Cuddesdon, which is in a beautiful rural location, amongst rolling fields and sheep. I don't know how the students concentrate, with such lovely wide views outside the windows...

It happens that Cuddesdon is near the village where my parents lived when I was born, and they went to the church there. And it happened that Robert Runcie was the vicar and principal of Cuddesdon at that time - he later became the Archbishop of Canterbury. Since it was my parents' church, I was baptised there, by Robert Runcie - my Dad remembers how he lifted me up afterwards, right up in the air, facing the congregation, and said, "We welcome you" and I looked out at everyone. I don't remember a thing, of course... But today we called into the church to see it, as I had never been back since we moved away when I was six months old. It is a beautiful, wonky, unspoiled old church, parts dating back to 1124 AD! The side bits  were added in the 1200s, and not much has been done to it since. Amazing.

But I must add here that Robert Runcie is not the only A of C I have had dealings with. Donald Coggin, who was archbishop in the 1970s, came to preach at my university college in 1987, and I sat beside him at chapel breakfast - he tried talking to me in Hebrew but it didn't work and we ate our fried eggs together. George Carey invited me to tea at Lambeth Palace, as an Anglican mission partner - there were a few others there, I might add... We did meet him again later in Harare at the WCC, and in Mukono as a visitor to UCU - he didn't remember me on any occasion... And then Rowan Williams, was my Early Church tutor in Cambridge, and I had tutorials in his college rooms. He made me tea with sour milk that had sat on his outside window-sill (as all the tutors did). I liked him a lot.

So you can understand I am a bit miffed that the new Archbishop, Justin Welby, I have never met, and I do not know him from Adam. Well. Perhaps something should be done about this.