St George and St Gabriel, Stockport

“Your Amazon Prime subscription needs renewing,” said the automated telephone message.  We don’t have Amazon Prime and never have.  “This is the fraud department at your bank.  Two payments have been made from your account…” Which bank is that? 

Someone trying to deceive and take advantage.  Relying on our trust.  Playing on our fears and insecurities and hiding behind their anonymity.  

When we lived in small communities we knew our neighbour.  We knew who to trust.  Connection and cohesion were essential for survival.  Shared values and expectations too. Of course it wasn’t perfect.  There were always those who pushed the boundaries and some stepped outside the community, or were pushed.

Stepping outside the community and breaking trust can happen in a moment, or it can be planned over time.  It can be in response to feeling hurt and rejected, an attempt to gain love and recognition, for personal gain, or even revenge.  Fear too, can play a part.  

We see it all in Holy Week, in Jesus’ tight knit community of disciples and the fickleness of the crowd.  In Pilate’s vacillations Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial.  Yes, these events were on a scale that had world shattering consequences. 

As did Jesus’ response: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Chris Dawson

The holy season of Ramadan has just begun for followers of Islam.  For Christians the  season of Lent is nearing its end as we build up to Holy Week.  Both Ramadan and Lent are best known as seasons of denial, for fasting and giving something up. 

Giving something up alters our rhythm and that offers us an opportunity.  An opportunity to do and see things differently.  Spiritually and practically.  To see the world and ourselves differently.  To examine our relationship with ourselves, with other people and with God. 

“It’s a bit late saying all this now, isn’t it?  Lent is nearly over and I don’t do Ramadan!”

One of the images of Lent that I carry is of the desert, of Lent being a dry time, with a kind of emptiness.  A desert full of scrub and nothing really alive – or so it seems.  Beneath the dry earth, awaiting the rain, are seeds and when that rain comes those seeds respond instantly and the desert blooms.

We can choose a period of Lent at anytime, or one may be thrust upon us.  We may find ourselves in a desert that seems dry and empty.  But when the rain comes, it blooms with new understanding.  A time of denial becomes a place of discovery.

Chris Dawson

“How did we do?”, the survey asks.  Well, he came to the door, handed me the parcel, took a photo.  I said, “thank you”.  He smiled and hurried off down the path to deliver the rest of his 132 parcels.

I was in New York for my godson’s wedding.  It was all very new and exciting and a little disorienting.  I climbed out of the yellow taxi, bag in hand, paid the fare, added a bit for a tip and strode towards the hotel entrance.  Immediately a bell boy grabbed my bag.  I didn’t need his help, but I was expected to accept it and, of course, most important, to tip him. 

I noticed in small print, at the bottom of the Mothering Sunday menu, a note which said that a discretionary 10% service charge would be added to the bill.  I would have preferred to express my thanks for by asking for 10% to be added to the bill.

Some people doing something as part of their paid work look as though they are serving you under sufferance.  You are a means to an end.  Others do it efficiently, but without any sense of connection.  No smile, no passing comment.  And sometimes there is someone who serves you with a relaxed kindness, with grace.  For that moment, they focus on you.  They give you their attention.  Attention is love.  And that is true service.

Chris Dawson

After the war, during the 1950s and 1960s the UK needed workers to rebuild Britain.  Irish workers came. But, as Paul McNamee, editor of the Big Issue  writes, “there was antipathy because they were the outsider, the other, easily cliched as boorish, threatening, rough men who would drink and fight and upset the social order.”

When our world is threatened, it’s easy to resort to stereotypes and cliché.  We pass judgement on the “ne’er do well” scrounging off the state.  We dismiss living in a tent in Cale Green Park as “a lifestyle choice”.  We ask, “Why can’t that Big Issue seller get a proper job?”  All the time judging from external appearances.  A conversation might give us a different perspective.

Rather than thinking “What’s wrong with you?”,  it might be more enlightening to ask, “What happened to you?”.  Just asking that question creates connection, empathy and understanding.  In turn that might lead to compassion – empathy in action.

So many of the Jesus stories are examples of responding compassionately to the outsider.  He was blamed for consorting with sinners and tax collectors.  His most well-known parable has an outsider – the Samaritan- as the “hero”.  His disciples were chosen not from the elite, but from down to earth working men.  Not a bad example to follow.

Chris Dawson

The Jews weren’t keen on the Samaritans in Jesus’ day.

Last Sunday we sang Cwm Rhondda.  That great Welsh hymn tune.  One often sung with great gusto by male voice choirs.  But it’s the first two lines of the words that struck me this time: “Guide me, O thou great Redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land.”

When I think of pilgrims and pilgrimages I first think of the great mix of people in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  Each with a story to tell.  Other people will have fond memories of a personal pilgrimage, say to Iona, Santiago de Compostela, or the Holy Land.

Pilgrimages are journeys with a purpose, to a place we view to be sacred.  Yes, there is a destination, but the travel is equally important.  Indeed it could turn out to be more important.  We may discover more on the journey – about our relationship to ourselves, to others and to God – than at our destination.  Pilgrimage is a process.

We sometimes talk about Lent as a forty day journey.  We could treat it as a pilgrimage towards Easter.  Choosing the stories we read and listen to and the activities we take part in.  Devising our own route and allowing the insights to come. 

Chris Dawson

Yes Lent is a time of repentance, a time when we acknowledge our sinfulness and ask forgiveness for our sins.  It’s also traditionally a time when we “give up” something.  When we deny ourselves a pleasure – and take it up again when Lent has passed.

But how much do we want to focus on denial and on being “a miserable sinner”?  How useful is it?  After all we confess our sins every week and are re-assured that we are absolved of them.  Repentance – literally “re-thinking” – is about letting go and renewing ourselves.

The word Lent also refers to the lengthening of the days and, by implication, to Spring.  To changes in the light, to a time of growth and renewal.  So could we think of “observing” Lent rather than “keeping” it?  Making it a time to stand back a little.  To observe, to notice ourselves, our behaviours and our relationships.  To re-think and renew ourselves.

Growth, renewal and change  are challenging.  They raise questions and sometimes these questions don’t have easy answers.  As we proceed through Lent, could we be content just to let these questions arise and to be with them?  Answers often come from the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways.

“The first challenge of Lent is to open ourselves to life.”  Laurence Freeman, OSB.

Chris Dawson

It’s hard to know how I would respond if a member of my family were murdered.  I say “respond” because I’m sure that my initial “reaction” would be one of shock and disbelief that this had happened, followed by grief and anger and “if only…”

Last week the family of a murder victim were upset and angry.  The person who killed their daughter had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.     Suffering from mental illness, he was committed to a secure hospital for a sentence of more than twenty years.  They didn’t think that this was punishment enough, that justice had been done.

At least one person on the panel of Radio 4’s The Moral Maze discussing this dilemma, was of the same opinion.  For him – a professing Christian – punishment and justice came before any mitigating circumstances. 

But will my pain be relieved by the punishment of another – my loss restored?  It’s not easy to follow Jesus’ teaching to move from “an eye for an eye” to compassion and forgiveness. 

Back in 2019 we performed A Mass for Peace and Reconciliation.  Alongside it we had an exhibition from the Forgiveness Project.  Each day this past week on Radio 4, Marina Cantacuzino, founder of the Forgiveness Project, has been introducing Forgiveness Stories from the Front Line.  They are worth catching up with on BBC Sounds.

Chris Dawson

“I have a lot of commitments this week”, is a phrase we use when we are facing a busy week.   It says, “I am really busy, so I have little time for anything else.  My time is taken up with things I have committed to.”  But is it about “busyness” or “commitment”?

I found myself thinking about the nature of “commitment”, and what I am committed to and why, when I read an extract from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr.  It’s in his powerful, challenging, rhetorical style.  This is what he said:

“I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.  I’d like somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King tried to love somebody.  I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question.  I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry…I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

“Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness…I just want to leave a committed life behind.”

Chris Dawson

I like the concept of “lovingkindness” – yes it’s joined up like that in the Authorised Version of the Bible.  I think of it as compassion in action. Compassion arising from empathy, that ability to see and feel the world from another’s perspective, to identify with another’s suffering.

Compassion takes us a step beyond identifying with another’s suffering, because merely identifying with that suffering can leave us feeling anxious and helpless. Showing compassion involves a commitment to act, to do something to relieve that suffering, to support and to be alongside.

Christopher Germer, who with Kristin Neff, has done much to explore and spread the practice of compassion, describes compassion as:”When love meets suffering and stays loving, then we have compassion.”

This can definitely be a challenge, particularly if that suffering is at a distance from us and on a massive scale – Gaza, Ukraine, …  So where do we begin?

I think we can begin with ourselves, with self-compassion.  With practising lovingkindness on ourselves.  Everyone gains when we take care of ourselves.  After all, we are commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves.  So where better to start?

Chris Dawson

“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’”

So said the author Aldous Huxley.  He sounds a little apologetic.  I don’t think he need be.  When he refers to “the human problem” I guess he’s thinking about how we relate to one another.  I suggest that kindness is more than a good start.

Kindness comes from attention, attention to another.  A smile of welcome, a simple word, a note, a touch of a hand, a gesture of generosity.  All of these actions show kindness and  attention.  And attention is love.

Love and kindness come together frequently in the Psalms.  What is referred to in the RSV as “steadfast love” is called “lovingkindness” in the Authorised Version. The Psalmist refers to God’s “lovingkindness” more than a dozen times.  Jeremiah, Hosea and Isaiah too. 

“…Thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes.” (Psalm 26:3). “How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God”.  (Psalm 36:7).  “I am the Lord which exercises lovingkindness, judgment and righteousness.” (Jeremiah 9:24)

So, we could say that, through simple acts of kindness we are not only connecting with each other, but with the source of all kindness. 

Chris Dawson

c“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’”

So said the author Aldous Huxley.  He sounds a little apologetic.  I don’t think he need be.  When he refers to “the human problem” I guess he’s thinking about how we relate to one another.  I suggest that kindness is more than a good start.

Kindness comes from attention, attention to another.  A smile of welcome, a simple word, a note, a touch of a hand, a gesture of generosity.  All of these actions show kindness and  attention.  And attention is love.

Love and kindness come together frequently in the Psalms.  What is referred to in the RSV as “steadfast love” is called “lovingkindness” in the Authorised Version. The Psalmist refers to God’s “lovingkindness” more than a dozen times.  Jeremiah, Hosea and Isaiah too. 

“…Thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes.” (Psalm 26:3). “How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God”.  (Psalm 36:7).  “I am the Lord which exercises lovingkindness, judgment and righteousness.” (Jeremiah 9:24)

So, we could say that, through simple acts of kindness we are not only connecting with each other, but with the source of all kindness. 

Chris Dawson