St George and St Gabriel, Stockport

A single statement can be very powerful.  It can set us on a path of discussion, debate and reflection.  It can lead to our seeing things differently, to a change of heart and to action.

I recently came across some postcards I’d kept from the 1980s, with quotations on them.  One quotation, by Dom Helder Camara, read: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.  When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”  I wasn’t sure who Camara was, but clearly some people saw him as a threat.

It turns out that he was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in the north east of Brazil.  A country then ruled by a military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985.  For those 21 years Camara led the church in that area.  He was an outspoken critic of the government and worked politically and socially for the poor, for human rights and for democracy.

Helder Camara was an advocate for Liberation Theology, a theology of action, which has at its heart, a concern for the poor and the liberation of oppressed peoples.  It’s also necessarily about human rights and human dignity and sets out to address inequalities and discrimination.  I think Jesus might have identified with that.  In fact, in various ways, isn’t all Christian theology a Liberation Theology?

Camara certainly upset people.  The old cliché goes that religion and politics don’t mix.  Don’t mix church and state.  Traditionalist Catholics urged the military government to arrest Camara for his support of land reform.  It’s easy to forget the Gospel when it threatens our interests.

Chris Dawson

“Is it an animal?  Is it a vegetable?  Is it a mineral?”  Those were three of the questions asked by the Twenty Questions panel on a quiz programme broadcast on the old Home Service.  They were trying to guess the name of an object which had been secretly told to the listening audience.  Often the item fell into more than one category.

We like things in categories.  We prefer something to be “either this, or that”, rather than “both this and that”.  It makes life easier.  We know where we stand.

Until the late nineteenth century, lichens were seen as individual organisms.  Under a microscope it soon became clear that a lichen was not one thing.  It was a partnership between a fungus and an alga.  Here was not competition and the survival of the fittest, but cooperation and partnership.  Today we know that lichens have a third partner, yeast, and some even incorporate bacteria, viruses and amoebas.

As human beings we are often torn between co-operation and competition.  We have a tendency to see ourselves as separate from the rest of creation.  Separateness can give us a sense of identity, but it can also give us a sense of superiority and an excuse to exploit rather than co-operate and act as part of the whole.

It was in our Contentious Christianity discussion about whether pets go to heaven that I remembered that, as humans, 60% of our genetic material, our DNA, is identical to that of a banana.  We share 50% with plants and animals in general and 84% with our dogs and 90% with our cats.  So why should they not go to heaven?  But then, is heaven a place, a state, or a relationship with God?  Or all three?

Chris Dawson

I have never understood why the CEO of a large international company needs a bonus on top of his (or her) very large salary.  Is the job not rewarding enough for them to do their best to help the organisation to flourish?

I can understand the need to offer an incentive to people working, say, in a call centre, expected to stick to exactly the same script on every call they make.  And where they even need permission for a toilet break.  No wonder the average yearly turnover of staff is 30% and in some cases, 100%.

We all need to feel acknowledged and valued. Money may give us recognition.  Recognition for the time and effort and skill we have put into the job.  But it does not  appreciate us as a person.  It does not remind us that we are of infinite value and worth just as we are.

Tolulope Ilesanmi left banking in Nigeria and went to Montreal, where he did his Masters in Business Administration (MBA).  Than he started a company, Zenith Cleaning.  Tolu considered everything about that company a mystery, something sacred – its people, its practices, its purpose. 

Tolu cleaned kitchens, bathrooms and offices and this is how he saw cleaning: “Cleaning is the process of removing dirt from any space, surface, object or subject, thereby exposing beauty, potential, truth and sacredness”.  Benedictine monk Laurence Freeman says something similar: “Ordinary things done with other-centred attention become not less than divine.”

Chris Dawson

I like the Greek word Metanoia.  Say it out loud and you can stretch the sound, especially of the last two syllables.  It also has an expansive meaning.  In fact it has several meanings, depending on context.  There’s even a pop group called Metanoia. 

In a religious context, Metanoia means a transformative change of heart and mind.  It means considering something and coming to see things differently.  It means coming to new understandings, taking action and making changes.  A rethink.  A form of repentance.

Repentance is, of course, one of the themes of Lent.  As is giving something up, denying ourselves some pleasure for the forty days.  Often something quite trivial, which, come Easter, we can indulge in again.   But repentance and self-denial could lead to something more profound.

“Giving up” something for Lent holds great possibilities.  It could be about giving up our stance on anything.  We could ask ourselves what areas of our life could do with a re-think, a letting go, a renewal.  The answer may not come straight away.  Just sitting with the question is powerful in itself.

Lent has so often come to be associated with a time of restriction rather than growth and expansion.  But that is not its origin. It comes from the Old English word “lencten”, with its obvious connection with “lengthen”.  And so it means Spring, a time of lengthening days and more light.  A time of renewal.  A time for Metanoia.

Chris Dawson

It must be hard to be shut into a small, bare space.  Deprived of your liberty.  During the Covid pandemic we all had some experience of what that might be like.

Sorting through papers recently, I came across the programme for the Journey Into Light  exhibition held at St. George’s back in December 2019.  A display of art works created by people in prison.  An exploration and an expression of identity, by people forced to be with themselves in a confined space.

At the service to mark the completion of the exhibition’s journey, we sang these words from Jan Berry’s hymn:  “When life’s chances lead to prison and the key turns in the lock……..People lose their sense of meaning, known by number, not by name.  But the common spark of living lies beneath the guilt and blame.”  

Shaka Senghor was convicted of murder at the age of nineteen.  He served nineteen years in prison, including a total of seven years in solitary confinement.  At the beginning of his sentence Shaka was angry and violent.  But after six years something shifted.  Locked in his five feet by seven feet cell, he began meditating, reading, writing a journal and what would eventually become his bestselling memoir, Writing My Wrongs.

His son had written him a letter:  “Dear Dad.  My mother told me you was in prison for murder.  Dear Dad, don’t murder anymore.  Jesus watches what you do.  Pray to him and he’ll forgive your sins.”

“That was the moment that I decided that I would never go back to the darkness and that I had to find my light.  And that I owed it to him to find my light.”

Chris Dawson

The archetypal refugees for Christians are, of course, the Holy Family: “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.”  So says the angel to Joseph.  Like most refugees today, they fled to a neighbouring country. 

One third of all refugees come from Syria and they flee next door to Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.  According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Turkey hosts more refugees than anyone else in the world (2.8million) and Lebanon (hosting 1 million) comes after Pakistan (1.6 million).  Jordan is in the top ten.  In proportion to its population, the UK, one of the top six wealthiest economies, comes fourteenth in Europe  for asylum applications.

But refugees are “out there” for most of us – unless you live on the south coast, I guess.   If you know someone, the perspective tends to change.  You realise that they are people like us. People with hopes and fears, needing safety, and willing to come to a new country and contribute. (Check who developed the anti Covid vaccine in Germany.)

They are not “swarms” and “invasions”.  Though we do label some groups as such.  Most of those crossing the Channel are people fleeing war-torn or oppressive countries, where no safe and formal routes, such as refugee visas, exist for making an asylum claim.  They are labelled “illegal”.  In contrast, more than 200,000 visas have been issued to those escaping the war in Ukraine.  We make choices.

“I am part and parcel of the whole and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity.”  Mahatma Gandhi.

Chris Dawson

I wonder what Jesus did for entertainment.  We know that he conversed with his disciples, that he visited friends’ houses and ate with them.  We also know that he needed a break sometimes and would to go into the wilderness for prayer, reflection and quiet time. 

At Tatton Park there is a replica Medieval hall.  It’s one big living space.  In the middle is a flagstone for the fire and, above it, a hole open to the sky to let out the smoke.  Everyone in the household would have lived, eaten and slept in this hall. They lived cheek by jowl, in community.

In Medieval times holidays were of saints days and holy days – lots of them.  Days that gave them time off work, time to eat, drink and celebrate – after they had been to church, no doubt.  On some of those days they held fairs and festivities, enjoying themselves together. Disputes and rivalries no doubt existed, but so did friendships and support.

It would be easy to sentimentalise an existence that was for many, in the words of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short”, but one of their strengths was that people belonged and communicated.  They were connected.

In terms of affluence, health and life-expectancy we are miles ahead of our Medieval forbears.  We don’t need a fair for entertainment.  We don’t need to go into the wilderness to get away from it all.  We can be entertained instantly at any time of the day or night at the press of a button. And each of us can be entertained in any way that we choose, without involving anyone else…… But at a price.

Chris Dawson

I think it was in Progressive Voices, the magazine of the Progressive Christianity Network, that I read an article in which the writer was expressing concern about taking bits of the Bible literally.  He recounted how a bishop had said to him, “It’s poetry, dear boy”!

I was reminded of this during our recent Baptism and Confirmation service.  Candidates are asked to, “ Fight valiantly…. against sin, the world and the devil” and later to “persevere in resisting evil”.  More metaphor and poetry?

St. Augustine developed the doctrine of “original sin”, illustrated Biblically by the story of Adam and Eve.  But, how about about the idea of “original goodness” – “created in God’s image”? A goodness that is always there, but which can become distorted by the way we are treated and by a desire to survive, which makes us prone to sin.

‘Sin’ encompasses thoughts, words and actions devoid of love and compassion and thereby damaging to ourselves and other people.  Or, as Father Laurence, my favourite Benedictine monk says, “Sin is not the breaking of rules, but the fracturing of relationships”. 

And where does the Devil come into this?  I find it helpful to see the Devil as a metaphor for a distorted and unrestrained ego. The ego is that part of us that encourages us to become a separate being.  A necessary process enabling us to grow, explore and make choices.

Ideally we come to have a balance between feeling both separate, connected and loved.  If we have a bruised and damaged ego and thereby feel separate, disconnected and unloved, we may be tempted to show the world that we are somebody and just how powerful we are.  Not everyone says, “Get thee behind me Satan” and that can have disastrous consequences.

Chris Dawson                             

The novelist Aldous Huxley wrote, somewhat apologetically,“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.’” 

Jeremy Clarkson’s article about Meghan Markle, evoked from him a kind of apology – after the largest protest to the Independent Press Standards Organisation since its inception in 2014.  He said that he had “put his foot in it”.  A  phrase we usually use when we have unintentionally made a faux pas.  I guess he would have thought a true apology to be a sign of weakness. The editor of the Sun must also originally have thought it was worth publishing it.

Kindness clearly isn’t seen to sell newspapers.  Being unkind, sensational and vitriolic, it seems, does.  But what encourages someone to write a piece for publication in which they say that they hate someone “on a cellular level”, or they’d like to see them “parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, ‘Shame’”?

We know that “hurt people hurt”.  We know it from our own experience.  When we feel hurt, our instinct can be to hurt back.  A much bullied Jeremy Clarkson was deeply unhappy at his boarding school.  Ultimately he was expelled for “drinking, smoking and generally making a nuisance of himself.” He seems to have continued to act out that persona.   He’s made a lot of money, but on the whole that approach doesn’t make for good relationships.

I’d rather go with the Dalai Lama: “Be kind whenever possible.  It is always possible.”

Chris Dawson

At the start of a new year we have often set ourselves challenges.  We’ve decided that there are  things we can do better, changes to be made and new things to achieve.  We are full of good intentions.

About now we may be telling ourselves what a failure we are, because we have already failed to meet the challenge.  We may not even have started.  I read somewhere that some 80% of those who sign up to a gym in January haven’t got there by February!

We could review, amend our goals and start again.  We could even decide that it wasn’t a realistic idea in the first place.  However, in our disappointment we often translate this “failure” into, “I am a failure”.  Repeated often enough this affirmation can come to be how we see ourselves and the basis on which we act and relate to others.

The Japanese art of Kintsugi is the art of taking the pieces of a broken pot and carefully putting them back together again.  To do so the artist uses a mixture of resin and powdered gold.  The restored pot is deemed to be worth more than the original unbroken pot.

In Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus heals a paralysed man, he says to him, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.”  To a woman who has been suffering from a haemorrhage for twelve years he says, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”  “Take heart “ could be good words to start our own positive affirmation.

Chris Dawson