Tuesday 27 December 2016

On 2016

It was the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, a synonym for mass slaughter. World memory of history was so poor that fanatics of all kinds arose, finding advancement and comfort. In 2016, Britain became an island, cut off from the main, although the bells were ringing continually. New epidemics blossomed. Governments were set in place without the consent of the governed. Musicians and actors, carriers of the culture, departed taking with them the genius of their times. Wars and rumours of war produced fleets of refugees.
             In 2016, liberation of the captives: 21 of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by terrorists in 2014 returning home to their families. A few, but to those few everything. Terrorists, in spite of discovering new means of mass murder (especially trucks used in Nice and Berlin) must suffer more failures than success. Recovery of sight to the blind: Fred Hollows Foundation gave more than 890,000 sight-restoring operations, throughout poverty, war, and oppression. Medical miracles appearing. Acts of kindness and bravery. What gets reported is more often of fear than of hope.

Who proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord? We do. You want to find meaning and purpose in life? Get up every day, determining to do as you must to make today an acceptable day of the acceptable year: 2017.

Monday 14 November 2016

On Facts

We live in a post-facts world, so I hear. Certainly facts are widely ignored. Or is that statement actually true? Science has processes for determining facts about nature. Philosophy examines ways to identify facts and verify them. Anti-facts appear, sometimes called lies: statements presented in opposition to objective reality. Subjective reality becomes fact. We see a lot of subjective reality in social and political life.
            Note that subjective reality is subject to proof. The proof is: I say it is so. The proof then becomes the person saying it. The person is thus a fact. Definitions of fact include: something that really happened, a real situation, something we know is actually going on. A lot of facts in politics are anti-facts in science and philosophy.
            We could return to the Latin, where ‘fact’ means ‘deed’. A fact has already been performed. We live in a post-fact world, where the fact (science: climate change) meets the anti-fact (politics: no climate change). We do not live in a post-truth world. For Christians, Jesus Christ is the Truth, where word (already a deed) meets fact: homo factus est. It is therefore deeds of compassion and mercy we must perform, following truth in fact.

Wednesday 2 November 2016

On Internet Dating



When looking for a partner, or even a date, people can search for someone appealing on internet sites: sometimes rewarding; sometimes discouraging. Like the young woman looking for men who are tall, good-looking, good income, good personality. What about honest, intelligent, kind, sincere?
            Looking for a dog is similar. Dog rescue sites, mainly discouraging, I find. There’s an art to responding to rejection, when the only cause is someone else got there first. Not an overwhelming number of homeless dogs around. Lots of actively bored cattle dogs, actively determined huskies, actively mischievous staffies with various crosses of these, but what if something sweet and fluffy would be more suitable? Gone already!
            Or am I like the buyer at the slave market in classical antiquity, ‘I’ve seen enough Caucasians; I’d rather have a Gaul.’    Stereotypes were big in the ancient world (‘all Cretans are liars’) and I’ve just stereotyped a whole set of dogs. Maybe the most charming and desirable dogs rarely find themselves in dog rescue shelters.
            Is the answer to go somewhere and look someone in the eye? Eye to eye can’t be stereotyped. Surely the virtues of patience and resilience are developed on internet searches.

Monday 24 October 2016

On Outside History

The candidates are leaping, twisting, tossing like fish on the line. Welcome to democracy: can it endure? Are we mere players in the fantasies of omnipotent children? Are we outside history?

So many want to become citizens of no mean country. Greatness (nationalism) meets smallness. Does smallness keep you out of trouble? Unlikely. We know how greatness gets you into it. We’re standing waist-deep in history all the time.

Witnesses have been talking: the Russian Revolution, the dregs of the Reformation, the American Civil War. Outside history, we buy and sell, take baby to the doctor, measure up wedding shoes, worry about the body: weight, style, height and class. Jobs, money, travel; housing, transport, votes. Meanwhile, states are overturned, religions change colour, populations flee or are drowned in the sea.

The Greeks knew how strengths and even more flaws, afflictions of the powerful, cause transformations. The great to be downfallen, the small to be brought high. It can happen in our time. We are careful, and troubled about many things.

Ecclesiastes knows about vain worldly pursuits. Sit under the olive tree while it yet remains; eat good bread; drink fine wine. Fear God: honest fear is wholesome.

Wednesday 14 September 2016

On Concerned Citizens



Loss is felt more keenly than gain. Thus the dragon, confronted with disappearance of the smallest coin from its hoard, is more distracted than by the gain of wagonloads of gold.
            So with intangibles, like respect, admiration, love: the antique idea that all goods (worldly and otherwise) are in limited supply, so that your gain is my loss, is still alive and rhetorical in parliaments today. Concerned citizens complaining.
            Currently we hear of ‘hate speech’. Anyone who disputes my presentation of truth ‘hates’ me and the category to which I belong. ‘Preaching hate’ is the latest manifestation of this cant. One might, for example, belong like some on the Right of politics, to the rich, privileged, or superior category. One might belong like some on the Left to the poor, disadvantaged, or even, God help us, the gay category. Naturally enough, some of the rich are secure enough not to miss a filament of respect; some of the poor leap at the chance to keep bits of respect for themselves alone. As with the dragon, the loss of a fragment of privilege or exclusivity is felt deeply.
            The concepts ‘first’, ‘most excellent’, ‘unique’ are honorifics predicated on exclusivity. What I keep you can’t have.
            Of course, nobody is preaching anything. ‘Preaching’ refers to making known the Gospel, like John the Baptist, who said, ‘He must increase; I must decrease.’ Or as Luke insists in so many ways, the Lord raises the lowly, but casts down the proud.

Friday 2 September 2016

On Knowledge



St. Paul thought very little of those who aspire to all knowledge and all wisdom. So where do I get off expecting to learn five languages ancient and modern when I can hardly keep out of trouble in English? Some knowledge, like the contents of tax papers ten or twenty years old, is obsolete; some, like the essays from five years of theological study, serve only to remind me of my ignorance.
            You see, I’m divesting my house of paper. Those boxes of precious thoughts from years ago, those financial quagmires, old letters, magazines, even some books — quite some books — have done their time in basement, studio, box and shelf. There’s knowledge I have or have not but hugging the dictionaries clings to a distant age.
            Actually, it might be necessary to know less. Why stop at paper? Do I read the news to be acquainted with every atrocity committed in the year, month, or day? Do the insults, offences, machinations of politics and celebrity intrigue, cheer or fascinate? Do I get a drop of peace here?
            Less knowledge might give a space for breath. Or for knowing, as Aquinas says, what can be taught by the senses.

Monday 15 August 2016

On Moderation



Temperance, or moderation, is the virtue that avoids excess, especially of the passions. Many of these lead to crimes: anger to murder, greed to fraud, gluttony to consuming the goods of others, lust to rape and rapine. Looking at that sorry spectacle, the news, I witness failure of moderation in persons and states.
            Making good decisions requires moderation. Wisdom, called prudentia or prudence, foresees the steps that must be taken to result in the good. Justice wills to restore to others what belongs to them and fortitude (courage) moderates both fear and recklessness. There’s a tendency toward a line of calm with the virtues, however stressed the situation.
            Today’s news about child abuse shows passions without moderation or justice, governors without wisdom or courage. News about asylum seekers shows governments without wisdom, courage, moderation or justice. The vices are more practiced than the virtues.
            While Paul states that one of the fruits of the spirit is self-control, we might be complete atheists and still aim for moderation, and avoid crimes of passion. Forgiveness and mercy belong to the wise. Courage faces what has been done, and is being done. We could have an adventure. We could live virtuous lives.

Tuesday 26 July 2016

On Terror and Pity

There’s an effort of will in committing a murder, or mass murders. By beginning with respect for the agency of souls even in the presence of mind-altering drugs whether natural or attained, I perceive that action results in guilt. Guilt is objective; it has nothing to do with feelings or motivations: we bathe in it every day. Hence the world’s redemption, accomplished through a judicial murder, to expiate the guilt of us all.
           Too much terror is about. Too many murders and mass murders: too much guilt. Too much fear for ourselves, for others. Terror creates consequences.Those of good will and sanctity pray for killers as well as victims: that is, the guilty as well as the innocent. ‘Troubled soul’ is the image.
            I’m reminded of Aristotle’s view that tragedy clarifies the emotions through pity and fear. To return ourselves to human scale, the appropriate emotion towards the guilty — whether through circumstance or design — is neither sympathy nor understanding, but pity. These individuals are in the hands of the powers of evil; that’s a deadly place to be; we confront human vulnerability.

            Lead us not into temptation, we pray, sed libera nos a malo. Pity and terror, O Lord.

Monday 18 July 2016

On Visitation



‘One thing only is needful.’ I once knew a saint who died, as all saints do. He appeared to me in dreams, seated before a large book open before him on a table. He was correcting it in pencil, saying, ‘I’m editing the works of the poet here; it’s what I’ve returned to do. But I can’t be turned aside from it, because my time is limited.’
            As with Proust, who thought the world of sleep a separate room, into which we enter from daylight reality to meet another cast of characters, a different script, an altered life, I’m bemused to find the dead moving and speaking in dreams. Surely such visitations have meanings, beyond psychology?
            Do the beloved dead return, giving touches of comfort or understanding unhoped for in waking hours? Can warnings be given, answers to dilemmas, instructions, pleas? What is the one thing needful?
            Hundreds of bodies scattered across the road, in places far distant from one another, maybe. What was the one thing needful? From what must one not be turned aside? Where are the words of the poet, what are we here to do? We are not saints, but sinners, and our time is limited.

Monday 4 July 2016

On Election



We struggle to elect a group of deeply flawed individuals to Parliament, whether of Left or Right: the Right can hardly come by a Leader definite enough to protect from the bath of anxieties wherein their followers float, while the Left may peer through windows of rosy glassiness distorting a landscape littered with dismaying realities. Do we get the politicians we deserve?
            In antiquity, you got the rulers you got. Mad Roman Emperors, corrupt hegemons, warlords, demagogues, ethnic strongmen, ruthless religions, relentless kings, unquiet queens. The word ‘demagogue’ comes from the ancient past, the original democracy.
            Preachers of ethnic election, universalism, internationalism or the narrowest aspirational nationalism: we’re not ruling you, we’re representing you. Many feel misrepresented, unrepresented or overrepresented, with consequent divisions, confusions, compulsions, implosions. The deeply corrupting influence of money lies over most historical events.
            That most idealistic form of governance, the Kingdom of God, was hijacked by the Roman state in the fourth century and has never been the same. It was a time not unlike the present, with massive changes in boundaries, nations, economies, and naturally, rulers. All the nations of the world were shown to Jesus at his Temptation: ‘To you I will give all their glory and all this authority,’ promised the devil, ‘if you will worship me.’ The deal is still the same.

Friday 24 June 2016

On Change.

Change for the better, change for the worse, change for the sake of change. All worldly enterprises are immersed in suffering, say the Buddhists: change, good, bad or indifferent, is suffering. The cause of suffering is also desire, aka greed, even desire for suffering to end.
            How many great historical changes have I seen? Looking back on my years as a history text I see major disruptions, wars, famines, genocides, massive alterations in political maps. Going over the map of Europe from the Roman Empire to the present is like viewing a flickering lantern show, borders floating forward and back across a screen. Walls, such as Hadrian’s Wall, have been built. Walls, like the Berlin Wall, have been destroyed.
            In Rome lies Monte Testaccio, a huge hill of broken pottery, a record of ancient taxes in kind. Money and markets change greatly. Inspired adventures, collapsed economies, magnificent empires, crumbled civilisations: all change. Seeking The Golden Age anywhere in the past ignores the truth of change. 
            Heaven and earth indeed will change, says the Psalmist. They wear out, they are changed like clothing: ‘Thou shalt change them like vesture, and they shall be changed.’ God alone is unchanging. Always only God.

Tuesday 14 June 2016

ON THE VIOLENT MAN



Composer Benjamin Britten never used the word ‘gay’ of himself, because, he said, it’s not a gay position to be in. For most of his life his relationship with Peter Pears was illegal; he wore insults continually; he was aware of shadows of ruin, blackmail, murder, suicide. Not so gay.
            ‘Preserve me from the violent man,’ says the Psalmist of the Jews. The murder of fifty individuals at the gay nightclub Pulse — their individual deaths — is part of the history of terrorism not least by violent religion’s ability to cloak crimes, and indeed the dregs of religion, both Christian and Muslim, have rejoiced. And America’s infamous availability of military weapons to the unstable is the direct cause. But those who died at Pulse were murdered because they were there, in that specific, gay place, within a straight culture drenched in intolerance and self-congratulation.
            The Psalmist sees the wicked, bending the bow, arrow on string, ready to shoot. ‘Deliver me, O God, out of the hand of the wicked.’ The Psalms never mince words. The wicked are the wicked; the violent man is to be feared.
            Good heart may be taken in the outpouring of grief across the globe, Tel Aviv’s rainbow lights of solidarity, the Muslim Mayor of London in vigil, displays of lights, prayers, ribbons, memes, blogs. Inconceivable in Benjamin Britten’s time.
            It’s not over. Culture is us. I want an apology from hierophants and churches. At the highest level. Lord, let me live so long to see it.

Monday 6 June 2016

On Justice



Justice is the virtue willing to give to others what belongs to them. Where a Stanford student was convicted of three felony counts of sexual assault upon a stranger, the issue isn’t the judge’s sentence (punishment) but the victim’s plea for justice, in a statement read by millions.
What was taken from the victim has three parts: her good name, her bodily integrity, her spiritual and mental wholeness and peace. The moral instability of her attacker compounds with that of his father, who complained his son took only 20 minutes to accomplish the crime, and so shouldn’t suffer. This speaks of a society devoid of justice.
How to restore good name and reputation? Confession clarifies responsibility: someone who admits wrongdoing takes to himself what belongs to him, instead of passing it on to his victim.
Loss of bodily integrity requires purification. In the case of murder, for example, purification is part of the meaning of the funeral. What’s the purification ritual for violated women?
Repentance leads to salvation. Spiritual healing requires it; the victim must observe it. ‘We indeed have been condemned justly,’ says the thief in Luke, ‘but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Repentance is differs from remorse displayed to convince a judge. Repentance stands before God and declares who and what I am.
A prison sentence is merely the currency by which a society measures value. Women are valued less here than elite men, surely. But spiritual harm is lasting. Confession, purification, repentance: a trinity.

Sunday 22 May 2016

On Experiencing Life.



A homeless person does not have a home. You know, like Jesus: ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head.’ A person experiencing homelessness is having an experience. There’s a lot of experience around. I could experience bullying, home violence (often fatal), disability, sickness (physical), illness (mental), addiction, imprisonment, or a range of other misfortunes. I might experience discrimination, racism, or misogyny. Nobody is despised or rejected: Jesus was both.
            I struggle to read the news, comprising the lie direct, indirect, imaginative, rhetorical, masked, theatrical, privileged, or corrupt — typically pronounced by the powerful — and the soup of euphemisms in which the rest of us daily swim. Jesus wasn’t experiencing asylum seeking as he went into Egypt with his family. Herod was experiencing wrath, killing young children right, left and centre: they fled for their lives.
            All worldly enterprises, the Buddha noted, end in sorrow. Sometimes they begin there. In the process of experiencing life, it may be necessary for the sick to seek healing, the despairing comfort, prisoners freedom, the despised and rejected to seek justice. Hear truth: show mercy, do justice.

Sunday 15 May 2016

On Finding the Niche

This Pentecost, I went down the street, looking for a niche. I found the niche where the homeless fellow slept on the pavement in the alcove of the grand hotel. I found the niche jacket in the window niche in isolated splendour watched by the old man leaning on his stick.
            The Holy Spirit being colourless, Whitsun was celebrated as white, (confused with wise), though now it’s red as fire. Would Whitsun be the ultimate niche experience, since no matter how niche your language, you can still expect to hear something to your benefit?
            I know many who seek their niche. Something that fits like a glove. Many there are, also, who want to fill a niche with some enterprise. Or some thing. Or some one. Can we have a niche salvation? Everyone to be saved in a singular way?
            Every religion seems split into fragments, factions, ever finer niche expressions. Perhaps these are niches in one grand cathedral.
            On the pavement where Pilate pronounced his judgements, in the day of isolated splendour, then, as it was not possible he should be holden of death, we received one salvation. Because you cannot be saved in your own little niche, alone.

Tuesday 3 May 2016

On the Weight of the World

History is. We live in it. Black Death: yesterday; ice winter, when the Thames froze solid, a few hours past. Now we live in transforming times, so mutable. Do we carry the world’s weight in a declining era? Or is it building out of sight?
            Buddha said: suffering is. St. Paul said: this mutable must put on unchangingness. Eternity is. So heavy, the world.
            Methods of carrying the world and its griefs: you can be angry at yourself (so weak), or angry at the cause (those people), or angry at the sufferers (why are you suffering in my face? And why so many?) You can have fear. You can cultivate fear. From there but a close step to hatred, the devil’s treasure.
            ‘Have mercy on me,’ said blind Bartimaeus.
            ‘What do you want me to do?’ said Jesus.
            ‘Let me see again.’
            Good question. Good answer. The labour of building; the ease of destruction. Ways in, out, over, through? Learn to ask: ‘What do you want me to do?’
            ‘Be of good comfort,’ they said, ‘rise, he calleth thee.’
            Anger doesn’t bear the world’s weight; fear doesn’t bear it.

            Lord, that I might receive my sight.

Monday 25 April 2016

On Being on Time

Waiting at lights, swearing at traffic while trying to get to appointments on time, gives time to reflect on the uses of time. Time takes up space. Time past, time future, time present take different meanings from the space they fill.
            Ancient Romans liked time past. It’s filled with deeds. Time past could take up a lot of space, because the ancestors lived there. Modern Americans like time future. That’s where deeds reside. For ancients, though, the future belonged to the gods. It might be better not to allow it too much space. Time could be juggled, through lucky and unlucky days, festival time, calendar time that continually lost time, water clocks and shady sundials. Now we have digital clocks and atomic time.
            Time for some is eternal present. Therefore don’t swear at the traffic: this too is living. Time is also status. One who waits is lowly. In some cultures, a couple of hours late is good to impress high status. The space in time a person takes up is the right of a social position. Impatience from a waiter would be folly.
            The time of the Eucharist is triple time: past, present and future brought together. A Trinity.

Wednesday 13 April 2016

On Intercultural Gayness



Studying intercultural communication, its difficulties and rewards, I learned that culture determines all things; cultures have one right way of doing things. Culture shock can be disorienting, or distressing, because everything you thought you knew is different here.
            Imagine, then, a situation where you seem not to belong to your natal culture. Finding that the one right way of doing things is foreign to you. Permanently uneasy, sometimes distressed, feeling yourself in an exposed, possibly even unique position of adjustment. Tell me this is not still the position of many gay and transgendered individuals and I must point to the suicide and mental health statistics that shame our governments, religions, and indeed cultures.
            How did Jesus deal with intercultural communication? The Samaritan woman at the well in Sychar spoke from one culture, Jesus from another. She is sexually different: she has had five husbands, but now lives with another man. She speaks of the still water in the ground; Jesus speaks of the living water becoming a spring of eternal life. This communication leads her to become an apostle to her city, carrying the word that God is a spirit. Worship is not of culture, but of spirit and truth.

Friday 25 March 2016

On Tenebrae: Darkness

Tenebrae means darkness. Light by light is extinguished in this service, the first of Holy Saturday, as Jeremiah predicts ruined cities, violated women, starving children. How long will ye blaspheme mine honour? cries the Lord.
            Many years ago, I heard the prophecy of a student cadet: In the wars of the future, there will be no such thing as a civilian. The war will be everywhere.The German army, shooting thousands of civilians, women and children on the Eastern Front in WW II, appealed to the government: You are destroying our young men.
            The Nazis then trained specialists to see to these killings, persons specially corrupted for that work, as is happening today.
            What did the Lord say to those at the foot of the cross? They know not what they do. But their officer was not completely corrupted. He saw, and said: Truly this was an innocent man.

Wednesday 2 March 2016

On Vanishing

Today I had a dismaying event; I accidentally deleted all the pictures on a digital camera. There were some good shots there, too. I wouldn’t think I’m the only person ever to do this, so I have to chalk it up to experience. But I can see those lost images in my mind’s eye.
            Fortunately, last night I was at a lecture on Rilke. Rilke, like Dante, saw that loss creates memory. Now my pictures vanished into complete nothingness, and nobody but me will ever see them. You can’t remember the present, because it’s still in progress. The past must then be loss, even if only lost time.
            There were other losses and vanishings. A child knocked on my door in tears to tell me her dog had died. A woman spontaneously said her young niece had just suddenly died. And it happened to be the anniversary of a tragic family death that travels with me as a faithful guest present or hidden: a vanishing.
            Deaths flow through the underground channels of our memories, where vanished things go. Consciously or no, they remain as companions. God also is present in the underground channels. Here in Lent, we prepare to meet the death that refused to vanish.

Tuesday 9 February 2016

On Peace: Ash Wednesday



‘My peace I give to you,’ said Jesus. A friend asked, ‘What does it mean? I pray all the time for world peace, but it has no effect. Can it mean peace of mind? I feel so responsible.’ Well, partly.
            Ancient writers viewed peace as cessation of war, with two faces: victory, defeat; triumph, submission. Conquest. Does the greeting ‘peace be with you’ honour the host, or the guest?
            In John’s Gospel, the world is a place of conflict and opposition. The peace of Jesus confronts world strife. Viewing streams of world-contending persons ascending Parliament Station, ready with earplugs, earmuffs, backpacks full of every possible necessity, and most unsuitable shoes, I saw how few accepted the cross of ashes and blessing of the day. Men particularly, with set eyes, seemed to think contesting the world their singular responsibility. Sometimes women with sidelong glances looked for a way out. Men and women at war with the world: all travelling together, though often alone, to the same destination.
            And the glow of those who allowed themselves to be blessed.
            The peace of Jesus is based on a victory: cessation of a war that ended in triumph. Therefore let not your hearts be troubled, although you are dust, and to dust you will return.

Sunday 24 January 2016

On National Days



National Days commemorate change: events that shaped the nation’s identity. What defining moments do nations select?

            Russia Day: declaration of sovereignty (not independence) of the Russian Federation from the Soviet Union in 1992. Independence Day, July 4, l776, Declaration of Independence from Great Britain by American colonies now the United States. St. Patrick’s Day, symbolic of conversion of Ireland to Christian faith. Bastille Day, destruction of the fortress prison in Paris: symbolic of the monarchy’s downfall, releasing the only seven prisoners within, four of them counterfeiters.
             
            The archetypal National Day is known to the prophets as The Day of the Lord (or sometimes, That Day), when all the shonky politicians, unjust judges, greedy rulers, corrupt enforcers, negligent bosses and violent thugs will meet their God and become acquainted with a new nation and a new creation. In the second book of Isaiah comes a vision of the nations streaming up to the mountain of the Lord, destroying their weapons of destruction, and ‘neither shall they learn war any more.’

            Jesus reads Isaiah in Nazareth, his own place, the vision of enlightenment given to the blind, deliverance to the captives, liberty to the oppressed: the declaration of the acceptable year of the Lord. There are plenty of unacceptable years. What do nations select to commemorate? How will the nations stand on the Day of the Lord?

Wednesday 20 January 2016

On the Marriage



My friend shows me his wedding ring, recently removed from right hand to left. A trip to the British Consulate, signing of papers, presentation of a Marriage Certificate: actually those Civil Partnerships were really weddings of same-sex couples. My friend’s husband is a British citizen: he’s entitled to the protection of his government.
            Marriage is associated with matters of procreation, inheritance and authenticity. Biblical references narrate such questions as adoption (beloved by St. Paul), surrogacy (can a slave produce a legitimate heir?), adultery (alienation of rights), divorce (severance of contracts involving families, clans or nations) and possession (specifically of land). Marriage in antiquity carries heavy symbolism.
            Mme. de Sevigné writes that her daughter’s bridegroom has the desired qualities of wealth, birth, and high position (as well as other ‘good qualities’) so without question they (her family) trust in the two families who were connected to M. de Grignan through his marriages to his earlier wives who have died. Marriages unite families. Marriages tell you who is family.
            At the wedding in Cana, Christ transmuted water into wine. The water involved is ritual water; the wine is the most honourable. Marriage symbolises integrity, devotion, love, and respect. Therefore same-sex couples should be married:  for the sake of the family.

Sunday 10 January 2016

Holy Innocents: A Curious Baptism



John came preaching a baptism of repentance. For the forgiveness of sins. Repentance needs to be deeply understood.
            Christmas passed, and the Holy Innocents were slaughtered. Or should we say, they continue to be killed. In home, street and playing field and over, or in the water. There have been several cases where the bodies of young children have found their way into the water.
            A curious baptism. Admittedly, this Christmas other children have been killed in other ways, in addition to those in the water. Domestic violence can be fatal, but is it a fate? Every day and every week, the holy innocents die. Sometimes this occurs in connection with a suicide.
             Is there a relationship of suicide to repentance, a reverse logic? Can someone become so dismayed by actions, thoughts, behaviours that repentance takes the form of self-destruction? Is it possible for a person to be worthless? No. God’s mercy is unending. Repentance is for forgiveness, not punishment of sins. God’s holy mad were once considered saints: holy innocents. The troubled mind is someone for whom Christ died.
            It needs to be spoken. Speak your trouble. Speak your concern. Speak now.


A good resource for help is https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/suicide

Sunday 3 January 2016

On Gold: Epiphany

There are always three of them, bringing their gold past Herod: three in old masters, predellas, and presepios, with their peregrine cultures, evidence of a new world.
            How much gold? How much gold dust, how many gold bars? How many slaves and attendants to carry it; how did these men become kings?
            Kings travel with retinues. Courtiers like the Medici, kneeling in Renaissance Adorations, bankers to princes, handlers of gold. Patrons of the poor?
            Frankincense, myrrh, more valuable than gold: treasures of Arabia, or sometimes Africa.
            Herod has gold. He’s the richest ruler after the Emperor. He doesn’t need to imprison the slaves or war in distant places for gold alone. Like any ruler, he wants power. His spies are everywhere. Death is everywhere. Innocents dying while Herod tries to find something out. The merest infant could be a threat.
            We Three Kings have more sense than returning via Herod, empty of gold. Joseph packs up his household and flees. The gold is now travelling in a different direction.
            There are three wise kings, getting themselves out of the middle east, and one King, who is also three, on the road with gold, frankincense and myrrh. Somebody new to look after it.