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Category - "Life’s lessons":

Moliere To Vicky Walker: “No, My Dear, Age Brings Everything!”

My favourite Molière play is ‘Le Misanthrope’, which I read at the age of 16 and was entranced by the wit of Célimène, the beautiful young Vicky Walker of her day, in response to the prudish old trout, Arsinoë, who is a terrible warning to all middle-aged women.

The plot reflects events at the court of Moliere’s contemporary, Louis XIV, who had had a succession of mistresses, including the delectable Madame de Montespan (left). In old age, however, he ended up with Madame de Maintenon (or ‘Madame de Maintenant‘ as she was dubbed).

Célimène is a flirt. Arsinoë, the older woman, is jealous but explains this, even to herself , as the promptings of her duty to warn Célimène of her immoral behaviour. The text is set out below, but for the faint-hearted, the gist is this:

Arsinoë  says she has come to offer advice: Célimène must cease courting the attentions of young men, for people are talking about her.

“Not that I believe that decency is in any way outraged,” she says. “Heaven forbid that I should harbour such a thought! But the world is so ready to give credit to the faintest shadow of a crime. . .”

Célimène thanks her for the advice, saying that, far from being offended she will return the favour by passing on what people are saying about Arsinoë’s “prudishness and too fervent zeal . . . your eternal conversations on wisdom and honour, your mincings and mouthings at the slightest shadows of indecency . . . that lofty esteem in which you hold yourself, and those pitying glances which you cast upon all” . The people concluded that Arsinoë should pay less attention to the actions of others and more to her own.

She continues (passage in bold)

Madame, I think one can praise or blame everything.
And everyone is right, according to their age or taste.
There is a season for gallantry.
There is one also for prudery.
One may, for policy reasons, take the latter part
When the bloom of our youth has faded
That certainly serves to cover one’s lack of charms.
I do not say one day I will not follow you.
Age brings everything, and it is not the time,
Madame, as is well known, to be a prude at twenty.

l’ âge amènera tout, et ce n’ est pas le temps,
madame, comme on sait, d’ être prude à vingt ans.


ACTE III , SCENE IV .

Célimène.
Ah ! Quel heureux sort en ce lieu vous amène ?
Madame, sans mentir, j’ étois de vous en peine.
Arsinoé.
Je viens pour quelque avis que j’ ai cru vous devoir.
Célimène.
Ah, mon Dieu ! Que je suis contente de vous voir !
Arsinoé.
Leur départ ne pouvoit plus à propos se faire.
Célimène.
Voulons-nous nous asseoir ?
Arsinoé.
Il n’ est pas nécessaire,
madame. L’ amitié doit surtout éclater
aux choses qui le plus nous peuvent importer ;
et comme il n’ en est point de plus grande importance
que celles de l’ honneur et de la bienséance,
je viens, par un avis qui touche votre honneur,
témoigner l’ amitié que pour vous a mon coeur.
Hier j’ étois chez des gens de vertu singulière,
où sur vous du discours on tourna la matière ;
et là, votre conduite, avec ses grands éclats,
madame, eut le malheur qu’ on ne la loua pas.
Cette foule de gens dont vous souffrez visite,
votre galanterie, et les bruits qu’ elle excite
trouvèrent des censeurs plus qu’ il n’ auroit fallu,
et bien plus rigoureux que je n’ eusse voulu.
Vous pouvez bien penser quel parti je sus prendre :
je fis ce que je pus pour vous pouvoir défendre,
je vous excusai fort sur votre intention,
et voulus de votre âme être la caution.
Mais vous savez qu’ il est des choses dans la vie
qu’ on ne peut excuser, quoiqu’ on en ait envie ;
et je me vis contrainte à demeurer d’ accord
que l’ air dont vous viviez vous faisoit un peu tort,
qu’ il prenoit dans le monde une méchante face,
qu’ il n’ est conte fâcheux que partout on n’ en fasse,
et que, si vous vouliez, tous vos déportements
pourroient moins donner prise aux mauvais jugements.
Non que j’ y croie, au fond, l’ honnêteté blessée :
me préserve le ciel d’ en avoir la pensée !
Mais aux ombres du crime on prête aisément foi,
et ce n’ est pas assez de bien vivre pour soi.
Madame, je vous crois l’ âme trop raisonnable,
pour ne pas prendre bien cet avis profitable,
et pour l’ attribuer qu’ aux mouvements secrets
d’ un zèle qui m’ attache à tous vos intérêts.
Célimène.
Madame, j’ ai beaucoup de grâces à vous rendre :
un tel avis m’ oblige, et loin de le mal prendre,
j’ en prétends reconnoître, à l’ instant, la faveur,
par un avis aussi qui touche votre honneur ;
et comme je vous vois vous montrer mon amie
en m’ apprenant les bruits que de moi l’ on publie,
je veux suivre, à mon tour, un exemple si doux,
en vous avertissant de ce qu’ on dit de vous.
En un lieu, l’ autre jour, où je faisois visite,
je trouvai quelques gens d’ un très-rare mérite,
qui, parlant des vrais soins d’ une âme qui vit bien,
firent tomber sur vous, madame, l’ entretien.
Là, votre pruderie et vos éclats de zèle
ne furent pas cités comme un fort bon modèle :
cette affectation d’ un grave extérieur,
vos discours éternels de sagesse et d’ honneur,
vos mines et vos cris aux ombres d’ indécence
que d’ un mot ambigu peut avoir l’ innocence,
cette hauteur d’ estime où vous êtes de vous,
et ces yeux de pitié que vous jetez sur tous,
vos fréquentes leçons, et vos aigres censures
sur des choses qui sont innocentes et pures,
tout cela, si je puis vous parler franchement,
madame, fut blâmé d’ un commun sentiment.
à quoi bon, disoient-ils, cette mine modeste,
et ce sage dehors que dément tout le reste ?
Elle est à bien prier exacte au dernier point ;
mais elle bat ses gens, et ne les paye point.
Dans tous les lieux dévots elle étale un grand zèle ;
mais elle met du blanc et veut paroître belle.
Elle fait des tableaux couvrir les nudités ;
mais elle a de l’ amour pour les réalités.
Pour moi, contre chacun je pris votre défense,
et leur assurai fort que c’ étoit médisance ;
mais tous les sentiments combattirent le mien ;
et leur conclusion fut que vous feriez bien
de prendre moins de soin des actions des autres,
et de vous mettre un peu plus en peine des vôtres ;
qu’ on doit se regarder soi-même un fort long temps,
avant que de songer à condamner les gens ;
qu’ il faut mettre le poids d’ une vie exemplaire
dans les corrections qu’ aux autres on veut faire ;
et qu’ encor vaut-il mieux s’ en remettre, au besoin,
à ceux à qui le ciel en a commis le soin.
Madame, je vous crois aussi trop raisonnable,
pour ne pas prendre bien cet avis profitable,
et pour l’ attribuer qu’ aux mouvements secrets
d’ un zèle qui m’ attache à tous vos intérêts.
Arsinoé.
à quoi qu’ en reprenant on soit assujettie,
je ne m’ attendois pas à cette repartie,
madame, et je vois bien, par ce qu’ elle a d’ aigreur,
que mon sincère avis vous a blessée au coeur.
Célimène.
Au contraire, madame ; et si l’ on étoit sage,
ces avis mutuels seroient mis en usage :
on détruiroit par là, traitant de bonne foi,
ce grand aveuglement où chacun est pour soi.
Il ne tiendra qu’ à vous qu’ avec le même zèle
nous ne continuions cet office fidèle,
et ne prenions grand soin de nous dire, entre nous,
ce que nous entendrons, vous de moi, moi de vous.
Arsinoé.
Ah ! Madame, de vous je ne puis rien entendre :
c’ est en moi que l’ on peut trouver fort à reprendre.
Célimène.
Madame, on peut, je crois, louer et blâmer tout,
et chacun a raison suivant l’ âge ou le goût.
Il est une saison pour la galanterie ;
il en est une aussi propre à la pruderie.
On peut, par politique, en prendre le parti,
quand de nos jeunes ans l’ éclat est amorti :
cela sert à couvrir de fâcheuses disgrâces.
Je ne dis pas qu’ un jour je ne suive vos traces :
l’ âge amènera tout, et ce n’ est pas le temps,
madame, comme on sait, d’ être prude à vingt ans.
Arsinoé.
Certes, vous vous targuez d’ un bien foible avantage,
et vous faites sonner terriblement votre âge.
Ce que de plus que vous on en pourroit avoir
n’ est pas un si grand cas pour s’ en tant prévaloir ;
et je ne sais pourquoi votre âme ainsi s’ emporte,
madame, à me pousser de cette étrange sorte.
Célimène.
Et moi, je ne sais pas, madame, aussi pourquoi
on vous voit, en tous lieux, vous déchaîner sur moi.
Faut-il de vos chagrins, sans cesse, à moi vous prendre ?
Et puis-je mais des soins qu’ on ne va pas vous rendre ?
Si ma personne aux gens inspire de l’ amour,
et si l’ on continue à m’ offrir chaque jour
des voeux que votre coeur peut souhaiter qu’ on m’ ôte,
je n’ y saurois que faire, et ce n’ est pas ma faute :
vous avez le champ libre, et je n’ empêche pas
que pour les attirer vous n’ ayez des appas.
Arsinoé.
Hélas ! Et croyez-vous que l’ on se mette en peine
de ce nombre d’ amants dont vous faites la vaine,
et qu’ il ne nous soit pas fort aisé de juger
à quel prix aujourd’ hui l’ on peut les engager ?
Pensez-vous faire croire, à voir comme tout roule,
que votre seul mérite attire cette foule ?
Qu’ ils ne brûlent pour vous que d’ un honnête amour,
et que pour vos vertus ils vous font tous la cour ?
On ne s’ aveugle point par de vaines défaites,
le monde n’ est point dupe ; et j’ en vois qui son faites
à pouvoir inspirer de tendres sentiments,
qui chez elles pourtant ne fixent point d’ amants ;
et de là nous pouvons tirer des conséquences,
qu’ on n’ acquiert point leurs coeurs sans de grandes avances,
qu’ aucun pour nos beaux yeux n’ est notre soupirant,
et qu’ il faut acheter tous les soins qu’ on nous rend.
Ne vous enflez donc point d’ une si grande gloire
pour les petits brillants d’ une foible victoire ;
et corrigez un peu l’ orgueil de vos appas,
de traiter pour cela les gens de haut en bas.
Si nos yeux envioient les conquêtes des vôtres,
je pense qu’ on pourroit faire comme les autres,
ne se point ménager, et vous faire bien voir
que l’ on a des amants quand on en veut avoir.

“Do I Have To Be Good All The Time?”: Vicky Walker

‘Do I have to be good all the time? And other awkward questions’ – Vicky Walker

I was, by all accounts, old enough to know better, and yet…I seemed to find myself in the same tricky situations on repeat. Situations that didn’t feature in the Bible and weren’t really mentioned in church. Situations no-one else seemed to have experienced or at least admitted to – settled, domestically content and often married, as they were – and I, so clearly, was not.

And so I found myself with questions. Questions about how life should be lived as a Christian woman, but one who didn’t tick many Proverbs 31 boxes. I travelled the world, worked in decidedly non-vocational industries in glamorous places with people utterly uninterested in spiritual matters. I didn’t have a home, in the proper sense, nor a husband, nor children, and I had never knowingly sought wool and flax. I had only risen when it was still night if I had a plane to catch. My life had very little in common with the ladies celebrated in the Bible, and around the same amount as the women I knew at church. So, I was confused.  How should I be living? What about these tricky people and scenarios I had no way of avoiding? Would anyone even mind if I was getting into mischief? Was God watching, keeping count? Did I really have to be good all the time?

Minimal reflection on past misdemeanours was needed to see the evidence was not mounting up in my favour. I had an impressive knack for foolhardiness and misplaced certainty. I had crossed lines I hadn’t known were there, and plenty I had decided to ignore. ‘Flee temptation. Don’t take it on holiday to a romantic honeymoon destination and hope for the best’ was the first line I wrote, the re-telling of a situation I had ploughed into headlong and emerged blinking at the other end. One of the many lessons I had learned the hard way. And I suspected there were many more like me out there. Women whose lives crossed over messily between church and life. Whose work didn’t involve changing the world, helping orphans or raising children. Who had to navigate men, managers and misconceptions on a daily basis. Who didn’t fit neatly into church or the world.  And so I wrote about pride, control, friendship, love, romance, relationships and why it probably isn’t a good idea to start a fight with a man who has ‘Cut Here’ tattooed around his neck. Not to give stern advice or answers, but just to ask the questions out loud. To tell other people – because it’s clear from the people who get in touch, that it’s not just girls going through these things – that they’re not the only one who has wondered how it all fits together and what it’s all about. That it’s probably going to be at least a little bit easier if we work it out together.

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Vicky Walker is a writer, among other things. Her first book ‘Do I have to be good all the time?’   is available here and at www.vickywalker.info. She has worked in fashion PR, retail, design, events management, charity and somehow found a way to travel the world as a trend spotter. She has an array of lovely friends, who laugh with her and at her. She’s had a few adventures, awkward moments, unusual dates and occasionally wonders out loud about the meaning of life. She tweets as @vicky_walker.

Mercy: Thought for 19th Sunday after Trinity (Proper 23)

Job 23.1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22.1-15; Hebrews 4.12-16; Mark 10.17-31

I discussed on the intercessions page for today my reasons for thinking about this set of readings, which are about anguish,  as linked by a common plea – if unspoken – for the mercy of God. We have known since the beginning that God will have mercy:

Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.Genesis 9.16
 
 
But are we equally good at showing mercy to those who need it from us?

O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter our enemies
And make them fall.
Confound their politics;
Frustrate their knavish tricks;
On thee our hopes we fix;
God save us all!

So goes the second verse of the UK national anthem, the one that is so politically incorrect that we are rarely allowed to sing it these days. But the sentiments are surely exactly those of our compatriots during two world wars in the last century, and it is human nature, when attacked, to concentrate on foiling one’s enemy’s (dastardly) aims rather than focusing on the need to show mercy.
 
 
However:
‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay’, saith the Lord. Romans 12:19

Judge not, that you be not judged, for with what measure you mete it shall be measured unto you again – pressed down and running over. Matthew 7:1-2

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.Micah 6:8
 
 
Justice and mercy are often competing goals, and Shakespeare based ‘The Merchant of Venice‘ on this moral dilemma. Portia’s speech is probably the best-known utterance on mercy except for the Bible:

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronéd monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God’s
When mercy seasons justice.

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: Exactly. Or, as St Matthew put our Lord’s words: Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5:7
 
 
Alexander Pope was inspired by this to write his ‘Universal Prayer’:

Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

 

Sir Thomas Browne elaborates:
By compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also. 

Jeremy Taylor used the metaphor of the rainbow:
Mercy is like the rainbow, which God hath set in the clouds; it never shines after it is night. If we refuse mercy here, we shall have justice in eternity. 
 
 
Let’s give C S Lewis the last word on justice and mercy:

A busload of ghosts is making an excursion from hell up to heaven with a view to remaining there permanently. They meet the citizens of heaven and one very big ghost from hell is astonished to find there a man who, on earth, had been tried and executed for murder. ‘What I would like to know,’ he explodes, ‘is what are you doing here, you a murderer, while I, a pillar of society, a self-respecting decent citizen am forced to walk the streets down there in smoke and fumes and must live in a place like a pigsty.’ His friend from heaven tries to explain that he has been forgiven, that both he and the man he had murdered have been reunited before the judgment seat of Christ. But the big ghost from hell replies, ‘I just can’t accept that!. What about my rights!’ he keeps shouting, ‘I have got my rights, just like you!’ ‘Oh no!’ his friend from heaven keeps reassuring him, ‘It’s not as bad as all that! You don’t want your rights! Why, if I had got my rights, I would never be here. You won’t get your rights, you’ll get something far better. You will get the mercy of God.‘The Great Divorce’

 
When Adam in ‘Paradise Lost’ asks Michael the meaning of the “coloured streaks in Heaven,” his angelic teacher instructs him that they have been placed there to remind the sons of Adam that:

Such grace shall one just Man find in his sight,
That He relents, not to blot out mankind,
And makes a covenant never to destroy
The earth again by flood, nor rain to drown the world
With man therein or beast; but where He brings
Over the earth a cloud, with therein set
His triple-coloured bow, whereon to look
And call to mind His Covenant.

Isaiah reassures us that the Covenant is everlasting:
For the mountains shall depart, the hills be removed, But My kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall my covenant of peace be removed’, says the Lord, who has mercy on you. Isaiah 54:10
 
 
O Lord our God, whose power is unimaginable and whose glory is inconceivable, whose mercy is immeasurable and whose love for mankind is beyond all words, in your compassion, Lord, look down on us… and grant us… the riches of your mercy and compassion. For to you are due all glory, honour and worship…now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen From the Greek liturgy
 
 
 
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The illustration is by Firewings via Shutterstock

 
 
 
 

Thought for the 17th Sunday after Trinity: Help

We are born helpless, delighting in our need for other people and the human contact it brings. Others take delight in helping us, because we smile, gurgle and generally show appreciation. Our needs are primarily physical and readily satisfied.

Then we grow up. Our needs become more complicated and harder to satisfy. We sometimes forget to smile and show appreciation and, in our teenage years, may instead sulk moodily in a corner, gracelessly accepting whatever help is on offer. By the time we are adults, we find it extremely hard to ask for help – so strongly do we feel the need for independence.

Perhaps we are drawn to Eastern religions, but Buddhism offers bleak comfort:

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed. Buddha

And in old age, as we become physically infirm and dependent on help from others for our basic physical needs, many become irritable and difficult to live with because they find admitting that they need help so unpalatable. But, long before we reach old age, life invariably presents us with difficulties which we need help to overcome.

You do not need to be an alcoholic in order to benefit from the 12 steps devised by Alchoholics Anonymous – with only slight modification they are a good description of the Christian life as a whole: for instance, the first two steps are comparable to the admission that we need God in our lives.

  • We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
  • Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  • Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
  • Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  • Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  • Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  • Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
  • Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  • Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  • Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
  • Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
  • Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

 

So, first we have to accept our weakness and admit we need help.  As Pope Paul VI said, “Nothing makes one feel so strong as a call for help” .

Then we ask for it in prayer,  remembering that “He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.” Saint Augustine

God is not Father Christmas and is not there to offer you cargo or prosperity. And, as a French cardinal put it, “Jesus said ‘Ask, and the the door shall be opened unto you’. But he didn’t say how many times you have to knock!”

Back to the Beatles for a moment, who thought all they needed was a little help from their friends (whether human or chemical). But if you substitute the word ‘God’ in your mind, it becomes as good a ‘worship song’ as many out there.

Oh, and one last thing. You haven’t forgotten Christ’s words: A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. (John 14.34)

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” Martin Luther King, Jr.

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks likeSaint Augustine

 

Thought for the 16th Sunday after Trinity: Peace

Proverbs 31.10-31, Psalm 1, James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a, Mark 9.30-37

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing: Romans 15:13

How the human race longs for peace! Jesus offered the disciples peace, and our intercessions may contain prayers for world peace, as they often do. But world peace, and peace within ourselves, are inextricably interwoven, as Jawharlal Nehru said:

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

The constitution of UNESCO, the United Nations’ educational, scientific and cultural arm, makes it clear that its aim is ultimately peacekeeping:
Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defence of peace must be constructed.

The same thought was put more pithily by Jimi Hendrix:
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

But our strongest desire for peace is as individuals, not just as members of a community. Some suggest we achieve this nirvana-like state by meditating on the infinity of the universe, sub speciae aeternitatis :

When quacks with pills political would dope us,
When politics absorbs the livelong day,
I like to think about the star Canopus,
So far, so far away.
Greatest of visioned suns, they say who list ’em;
To weigh it science always must despair.
Its shell would hold our whole danged solar system,
Nor ever know ’twas there.
When temporary chairmen utter speeches,
And frenzied henchmen howl their battle hymns,
My thoughts float out across the cosmic reaches
To where Canopus swims.
When men are calling names and making faces,
And all the world’s ajangle and ajar,
I meditate on interstellar spaces
And smoke a mild seegar.
For after one has had about a week of
The arguments of friends as well as foes,
A star that has no parallax to speak of
Conduces to repose.
B L Taylor, Canopus

Or we can seek comfort in the natural world, like W B Yeats:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day,
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

For Christians, of course, our best hope of a sustaining and lasting peace is through our relationship with God:

Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?
The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.
Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed?
To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.
Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round?
On Jesus’ bosom naught but calm is found.
Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away?
In Jesus’ keeping we are safe, and they.
Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?
Jesus we know, and he is on the throne.
Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours?
Jesus has vanquished death and all its powers.
Edward Bickersteth

But peace, though infinitely desirable, and infinitely desired, is not— for Christians, though it may be for Buddhists — an end in itself. Yeats was dreaming about Innisfree while standing on a grey pavement, and Taylor was contemplating Canopus as a temporary respite. Christianity offers us permanent peace beyond the grave, but in the here and now the Christian message offers us Elastoplast for our wounds, and chicken soup for our soul, but unless we join a contemplative order, we are then expected to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again.

Not for ever by still waters would we idly rest and stay, or as Robert Frost put it:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

St George knew very well the limitations of peace, as Jan Struther wrote:

When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold;
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand,
For God and for valour he rode through the land.
No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride.
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons have fled
Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
‘Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free, with the sword of my might,
From the castle of darkness the power of the light.

The philosopher Hegel thought that all human endeavour was defined by the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, in other words that truth could only be arrived at by the opposition of conflicting forces. Anyone who watches football or plays bridge is deliberately taking part in this interplay of conflicting forces for pleasure, as we have done since we played Cowboys and Indians in childhood.

In Britain, when playground games threatened to become overwhelming, you could call a temporary halt by shouting ‘Pax’. As Christians, our religion brings us a haven to which we can always retreat to reflect and in the communion service ‘the peace’ is a central part of the liturgy.

Almighty God, kindle we pray thee in all our hearts the true love of peace, and guide with thy pure and peaceable wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquillity thy kingdom may go forward, till the earth be filled with the knowledge of thy love, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

O Lord, grant us courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; so that after we have laboured to accomplish our daily tasks, we may in peace go to sleep, knowing that You are awake. Amen

 

 

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The illustration of a dove is by Audrey Hogan, downloaded under licence from Twelve Baskets.

 

 

 

Thought for the 15th Sunday after Trinity: Zeal

The jury is out on whether zeal is a good or a bad thing. This scene from ‘Cabaret‘ has been seared into my memory since I saw the film in 1972. I was born three years after the end of the war, and had been brought up with the facile notion that Nazis were wicked people, quite unlike anyone I was ever likely to meet. This clip shows you, in three minutes, just how easy it is to get sucked in by zeal to a cause which, in your saner moments, you do not believe in at all.
I had known the theory since studying Mark Antony’s funeral speech in ‘Julius Caesar’ in which he whips up the crowd to do a 180° turn, but it was ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’ that convinced me that zeal, unmixed with wisdom, is a very dangerous emotion.

Today’s readings, from Proverbs 1.20-33 (about Wisdom, and her revenge if ignored), Psalm 19.1-14,  James 3.12 and Mark 8.27-38 are about being  ‘fervent in the fellowship of the gospel’ and following Christ to the extent of taking up one’s own cross. At the same time, we are told to remember Wisdom, and to curb our tongues, in other words to temper our zeal with common sense. This advice seems as pertinent today as when it was first written, and I congratulate the compilers of the lectionary on this juxtaposition.

Lord Dunsany, however, liked to point out that even the excesses of zeal that led to ten years of the Trojan War led to mixed results:

‘And were you pleased?’ they asked of Helen in Hell.
‘Pleased?’ answered she, ‘when all Troy’s towers fell,
And such a war was fought as none had known,
And even the gods took part; and all because of me alone! Pleased?
I should say I was!’

With Dunsany’s Helen, there was no nonsense about considering anyone else’s welfare. Her passion was strictly egocentric. But then, consider what Hamlet promised Ophelia in Act II Scene II:

‘Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt that I love.’

Unfortunately for Ophelia, there are five acts in Hamlet. Still, I expect he meant it at the time.

 

Very often, though, the problem is not that the zeal is transitory but that it isn’t.

The assassination of the American ambassador to Libya this week is the latest in a long line of  jihads (not forgetting the Crusades), where the zeal may have religious origins but becomes overlaid with political and colonising motives as well.

“It is wonderful to have a high regard for the truth, but zeal for the truth must be balanced by a love for people, or it can give way to judgmentalism, harshness, and a lack of compassion…Sometimes zeal is less than righteous. Zeal apart from knowledge can be damning. Zeal without wisdom is dangerous. Zeal mixed with insensitivity is often cruel. Whenever zeal disintegrates into uncontrolled passion, it can be deadly.”  John MacArthur, Twelve Ordinary Men
“For zeal’s a dreadful termagant, That teaches saints to tear and cant.” Samuel Butler (Hudibras pt. III, canto II, l. 673)

“Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.” Thomas Henry Huxley

“Zeal is fit for wise men, but flourishes chiefly among fools.” John Tillotson

“Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.” William Shenstone

“Zeal without knowledge is like a mettled horse without eyes, or like a sword in a madman’s hand; and there is no knowledge where there is not the word: for if they reject the word of the Lord, and act not by that, ‘What wisdom is in them?’ saith the prophet (Jer 8:9; Isa 8:20).” John Bunyan

And yet:

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going”: Ecclesiastes 9.10 (RSV)

“Blind zeal is soon put to a shameful retreat, while holy resolution, built on fast principles, lifts up its head like a rock in the midst of the waves.” William Gurnall

“Awake, my soul! stretch every nerve, And press with vigour on; A heavenly race demands thy zeal, And an immortal crown.”Philip Doddridge  Zeal and Vigour in the Christian Race

It is no marvel that the devil does not love field preaching! Neither do I; I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal if I do not trample all these underfoot in order to save one more soul?  John Wesley

“If we have no zeal for the glory of God our mercy must be superficial, man-centered human improvement with no eternal significance. And if our zeal for the glory of God is not a reveling in his mercy, than our so-called zeal, in spite of all its protests, is out of touch with God and hypocritical.” John Piper

“Learn to break your own will. Be zealous against yourself”. Thomas a Kempis

Now the danger, which among Anglicans is perhaps greater, becomes:

“When suave politeness, tempering bigot zeal, corrected ”I believe” to ”One does feel.”” Ronald Knox

Joseph Addison concludes:”Whether zeal or moderation be the point we aim at, let us keep the fire out of the one, and the frost out of the other”.
John Newton’s hymn says it all – its seven verses begin:

Zeal is that pure and heavenly flame,
The fire of love supplies ;
While that which often bears the name,
Is self in a disguise. True zeal is merciful and mild,
Can pity and forbear ;
The false is headstrong, fierce and wild,
And breathes revenge and war.

If you want to hear what zeal sounds like at its best, with a heart set on fire by God, try Mahalia Jackson singing ‘How Great Thou Art!’

Living in the Dust – 11 September: Wendy Dackson

 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. (Liturgy for Ash Wednesday)

 But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger.  As they persisted with their question, he straightened up and said, ‘Let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her.’  Then he bent down and continued writing on the ground.  (John 8.6-8, New Jerusalem Bible)

When we finally escaped from our building, it was quite hard to breathe normally in the street:  dense fumes; thick, thick dust; a sort of sandstorm or snowstorm of dust and debris; large flakes of soft grey burned stuff falling steadily.  In the empty street, cars with windows blown in, a few dazed people, everything covered in this grey snow. (Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust:  Reflections on 11th September and its Aftermath)

 

It’s usually a cold, dismal morning when winter has lost its pristine snowy charm and become tiresome, that I arrive at an early church service and hear the words of the Ash Wednesday liturgy.  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  We are part of the cycle of life, death, and decay, which we can neither change nor escape.   In time, we will disappear, and there will eventually be no distinctive trace of our individuality—our achievements, or commitments, our aspirations.  The words are meant to remind us that we are not God, perhaps even to remind us that we are not very important, that we don’t make a difference.

 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Our lives are filled with dust, both literal and metaphorical.  How many times do we see and hear advertisements on the radio and television about Dyson vacuum cleaners, HEPA air filters, and the need to replace our mattresses periodically because they’re full of highly allergenic dust mites (which would not thrive were it not for an abundance of dust)?  And we are the source of all that dust which we are told we must avoid for our own good—we shed enormous amounts of skin cells, and other bits produced by our own bodies.  Not only shall we return to dust entirely at some future point after death, but we are grinding imperceptibly into dust as we go about our daily activities.  Dust is never something we welcome more of into our lives.  Even metaphorically, dust is a negative.  We say something is ‘dusty dull and dry’ when we find it boring; we say that our desire for an opponent in a legal or business proceeding is that we will ‘grind him into the dust’; and as a child on the playground, almost every foot race began with the words ‘eat my dust’ as we took off  as fast as we could and left the other runners behind.  (Being no athlete, nobody ever ate much of my dust.)    Cheeky adolescents take a finger to the dirt on the back of the family car and write ‘Wash me’.  We are hyper-vigilant about dust, offering to remove a speck of it in our neighbor’s eye while ignoring a log in our own.  Dust, in the Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic world (what moral psychologist Jonathan Heidt calls WEIRD, because it is the ‘outlier’ to the norm of human existence on Earth), is unimportant, insignificant except as something to be avoided, and then more as an irritant than a danger.  Dust is temporary, fleeting.  Dust doesn’t make a difference.

 

Until a bright Tuesday morning in September of 2001.  At that point, dust, and the people who made it, asserted themselves as a force to be reckoned with.  In lower Manhattan, dust became unavoidable, significant, and dangerous—and it made a permanent difference.

 

Most of us saw the airplanes fly into the World Trade Center on television or on computer screens via internet connections.  I was about 1300 miles southwest of New York City at the time, on a one-year sabbatical replacement contract in the religion and philosophy department at a small college in rural Kansas.  I was preparing for my first class of the day (a ‘senior capstone’ seminar in applied ethics titled ‘Responsibilities for the Future’).  I had collected my books and notes, when I heard a scream of absolute terror from the office adjacent to mine.  My colleague had CNN on her computer, and saw the first plane hit a tower.  By the time I had reached my classroom and moved my students down the corridor to a room with a cable connection, the second tower had been struck.  The rest of my day was spent in what I wanted to think of as practical action:  standing with the psychology instructors as they offered counsel to students (this part of Kansas was home to a number of aerospace manufacturing facilities as well as an Air Force base, and there was a real fear that there might be an attack there), helping to arrange a trip to the nearest mid-sized city so that the cheerleaders could donate blood, phoning my own family members in the New York metropolitan area to see if they were okay.  And knowing that a number of classmates from my earlier MBA studies had work addresses in the World Trade Center, and were probably dead or dying, and might not be recovered or identified.

 

As dramatic as that felt at the moment, it was still at a much greater remove than the current Archbishop of Canterbury, who was essentially next door to the Twin Towers, at Trinity Wall Street, the wealthiest Anglican church on the planet.  The tiny, eloquent book of reflections from which the description above is drawn, was published early in 2002.  I received a copy as a gift from a dear friend in England, and this is the tenth year in which I’ve paused on or around the anniversary of the first ‘successful’ attack on the US mainland in almost two centuries (the last was the War of 1812).

 

I have not been able to listen to the Ash Wednesday words in the same way ever since.  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Yes, perhaps.  But we do not return to the same dust from which we came.  What we do between our entering this world and our leaving it, the dust we generate, matters; it makes a difference.  The dust doesn’t change without our participation—and the dust does change, and in its turn, it changes us.  The dust created on 11 September 2001 had, and still has, the potential to make a difference.  It has realized that potential, both in the armed conflicts and further loss of life occasioned by the attacks—and by the impetus to greater inter-religious and cross-cultural understandings that those attacks have inspired.  The dust has both confirmed some prejudices that existed before the attacks, and it has clouded and obscured others.

 

We live in and with the dust that we are.  What happens in the dust between our conception and our decay matters.  Rowan Williams talks about John 8, the story of the woman ‘caught’ or ‘taken’ in adultery.  He suggests that when Jesus bends down and writes on the dusty, dry ground, two truths emerge.  First, the refusal to give an immediate judgment creates a space between the actors in the drama, in his words, a ‘breathing space’ that helps in sympathy and understanding that would never have happened had he given into the demand for making a fixed interpretation.  Secondly, that this hesitation, more than anything written ‘in the dust’ is what is important—this space for understanding and reflection, not the particular interpretations given.  What is written in dust is less important than the time we take to do the writing.

 

The dust of 11 September 2001 is now a part of the dust from which we come.  What will we do with that dust, how will we live with and in it, and how will it shape the dust to which we, and all humanity, eventually return?

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We are honoured that The Episcopal Cafe has reblogged this as its lead today. Thank-you again, Wendy.

1. The main illustration, of the cross made of ashes, is by Ansis Klucis, downloaded from Shutterstock under licence.

2. New York, N.Y. (Sept. 14, 2001) — A fire fighter emerges from the smoke and debris of the World Trade Center. The twin towers of the center were destroyed in a Sep. 11 terrorist attack. U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Jim Watson, downloaded from Wikimedia under CCL.

3. The bottom illustration of a star nebula, galactic dust,  is by William Attard McCarthy and downloaded from Shutterstock under licence.

Thought for the 14th Sunday after Trinity: Generosity

But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?  1 John 3:17


All the world’s religions promote generosity

When you find something that all world religions agree on, you feel you are on to something.

“The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.The more he gives to others,the more he has for his own.” Lao Tzu

Zakat, or the giving of alms, is one of the five pillars of Islam:

“God will not call you to account for what is futile in your oaths, but He will call you to account for your deliberate oaths: for expiation, feed then indigent persons, on a scale of the average for the food of your families; or clothe them; or give a slave his freedom”. Muhammad

“He that gives should never remember, he that receives should never forget”. Talmud,

“Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity”.  Buddha

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” – Luke 6:37-38

“It is more blessed to give than to receive”.– Acts 20:35

“God loves a cheerful giver”.– 2 Corinthians 9:7

“He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord”.– Proverbs 19:17

“Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possesions of no one race or religion”. Mohandas Gandhi

“If you are a Buddhist, inspire yourself by thinking of the bodhisattva. If you are a Christian, think of the Christ, who came not to be served by others but to serve them in joy, in peace, and in generosity. For these things, these are not mere words, but acts, which go all the way, right up to their last breath. Even their death is a gift, and resurrection is born from this kind of death. (157)”
― Jean-Yves LeloupCompassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic Between Buddhism and Christianity


 Let’s start with the easy, and the obvious

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”― John Bunyan

“If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.”  Bob Hope

“You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.”― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet 

“Go give to the needy sweet charity’s bread.
For giving is living,” the angel said.
“And must I be giving again and again?”
My peevish, petulant answer ran.
“Oh, no,” said the angel, piercing me through,
“just give till the Master stops giving to you.”

Recipients of our appreciation are apt to express their own gratitude to others, lengthening the unending, golden chain of connections-in-goodness that stretches across the world. Mary Ford Grabowsky

All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors’  Kahlil Gibran

There are three kinds of givers — the flint, the sponge and the honeycomb. To get anything out of a flint you must hammer it. And then you get only chips and sparks. To get water out of a sponge you must squeeze it, and the more you use pressure, the more you will get. But the honeycomb just overflows with its own sweetness. Which kind of giver are you?

 The Rich and Generosity

“Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.” ― G.K. Chesterton

But in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was very well understood by the rich that they needed to be generous – Andrew Carnegie said it was a disgrace to die rich.

“Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.”— John D. Rockefeller Jr

Bill Gates continues that tradition. But sometimes the penny does not drop and there is resentment and loss of social cohesion when bankers continue to flaunt their new-found wealth in the faces of those who are suffering financial hardship as a result of the crisis triggered by their ‘sub-prime’ investments.

“Even the poor need to know they can give”

Money is not the only currency of generosity. There is also time. And love.

“Giving with glad and generous hearts has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon greed”. — Richard J. Foster

What is false generosity?

“Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.” Khalil Gibran

“What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.”  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self sacrifice.” Henry Taylor

“If we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.” J.M. CoetzeeDisgrace

“Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgement, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.”― Fanny BurneyEvelina

 The Ayn Rand Excuse

There is an argument which runs that it is best for all  if everyone acts out of pure self-interest. Ayn Rand behaved as she was the one who first thought of this, but there were many before her. Here is an explanation by Dostoevsky:

“No, it is not a commonplace, sir! If up to now, for example, I have been told to ‘love my neighbour,’ and I did love him, what came of it?. . . What came of it was that I tore my caftan in two, shared it with my neighbour, and we were both left half naked, in accordance with the Russian proverb which says: If you chase several hares at once, you won’t overtake any one of them. But science says: Love yourself before all, because everything in the world is based on self-interest. If you love only yourself, you will set your affairs up properly, and your caftan will also remain in one piece. And economic truth adds that the more properly arranged personal affairs and, so to speak, whole caftans there are in society, the firmer its foundations are and the better arranged its common cause. It follows that by acquiring for everyone, as it were, and working so that my neighbour will have something more than a torn caftan, not from private, isolated generosities now, but as a result of universal prosperity.” ― Fyodor DostoyevskyCrime and Punishment

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it is not much good to the starving man on your doorstep, and would be hard to argue convincingly in reply to Matthew 25.35-45.

And what is true generosity?

“Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find out.” Frank Howard Clark

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.” Jack London

“True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands–whether of individuals or entire peoples–need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.” ― Paulo FreirePedagogy of the Oppressed

Generosity is delight in sharing the credit with others

It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert. Jacques Yves Cousteau

One’s performance is often heightened by the brilliance and generosity of other actors. Cyril Cusack

 The hardest lesson of all: sometimes true generosity is allowing others to be generous to you

“When we don’t ask, we don’t let others give. When we fear rejection, we don’t let generosity arise.” Roshi Bernie Glassman

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.”
― Elizabeth GilbertEat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

 Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…

“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish”,said Richard Dawkins. Up to a point, Richard. The delight of childhood is the increasing importance of the world around us:

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement. She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,“Well, I made a difference to that one!”The old man looked thoughtfully at the girl as he considered what she had done and said. Then, wordlessly, he too began throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined, and all the starfish were saved.
Traditional, retold by Lene Jytte Hansen on Facebook. This story also very well illustrates why St Paul talks about Hope, Faith and Charity (generosity) being inseparable. Had the little girl not hoped, and had faith, that her actions were worth taking and that she was indeed saving the lives of the starfish, her generosity would have been pointless.


And finally, a story which encapsulates all that we have been talking about:

  Picture the setting – it was the Paralympics, some years ago now (in 1980’s) held that year  in Minnesota.  Two young boys with cerebral palsy lined up to run the 400 metre sprint. It was the end of the day, everyone was tired, nobody paid much attention to the race. The message came over the loud speaker, “On your marks, get set,” and the gun went off. The man who was reporting this for Time Magazine said it was painful to watch these two boys run. He said that they ran with a staggered gait that could be imitated by almost any  person. He said as he watched he can remember looking up and thanking God he wasn’t like those boys. He said the crowd weren’t really paying much attention except one of the coaches was a really wild man. He kept yelling at one of the runners “C’mon Joey you can beat this kid, you’re a real winner – you can beat him. C’mon, run , keep running.” He seemed to have forgotten that the Paralympics weren’t about humiliating your opponent it was about participation, friendship, etc. As the race got under way and his voice boomed across the stadium the crowd began to pay attention and join in. By the time they got past the first turn Joey had what sports writers call a commanding lead. By the time he got to the final leg he was over 40 metres ahead. As the coach continues to bellow at him the crowd joined in. ‘Joey, Joey’ chanting as he made his way towards the finish line. Coming down the home straight way ahead of the other guy, amidst the crowd cheering Joey stopped in his tracks. He stood there. The coach was jumping up and down and waving his arms.– he knew he couldn’t touch Joey or he’d be disqualified. He was close enough to shout – “C’mon Joey- don’t you want to win this race – there’s the finish line – go.” But Joey just looked at the coach and smiled at him. The crowd got quiet and he turned to them and waved. And then he looked back down the track at the other boy. As a hush came over the stadium the reporter said you could hear his voice: “ C’mon Billy, c’mon” And it was as if the other runner ran as he hadn’t run all race. And as the gap narrowed Joey reached out and took Billy’s hand and said “C’mon, let’s finish the race together.” The crowd went wild.  The man reporting this for Time Magazine who had prayed earlier – offered a different prayer and said “Lord, will you make me more like Joey.” He can remember hearing the coach saying “Joey you’re a real winner”.
Preached on 2 September, and generously given to me by the Revd Dodie Marsden


Part of the prayer attributed to St Francis:

O Divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.  Amen.



Courage: Thought for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

We already considered intercessions for today, based largely on the epistle:

Ephesians 6.10-20

Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil… Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God…

But what does putting on the whole armour of God actually mean? Splendid metaphor and all that, but it is not as easy as it sounds. I think we are really talking about courage, and God’s help in being brave in facing whatever may come. After all,
The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid? Psalm 27

We are told that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of fear, as Gerard Manley Hopkins so vividly described:

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No lingering!
Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep

It’s no accident that fear and courage are among the main themes of the stories we read as children. Dealing with fear – and some of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales were pretty terrifying – is one of the most important lessons of childhood.

But, as John Bunyan knew, fear can be ever-present:
Timorous answered, that they…had got up that difficult place: but, said he, the further we go, the more danger we meet with; wherefore we turned, and are going back again. ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’

Timorous needed an introduction to ‘The Little Engine That Could‘:
A long train needed to be pulled over a high mountain. Various larger engines, treated anthropomorphically, are asked to pull the train; for various reasons they in turn refuse. Finally, a small and insignificant engine offers to have a go; the other engines mock it for trying. But by chugging on with its motto I think I can, I think I can, the engine succeeds where the others had failed and sails down the other side singing I thought I could, I thought I could.

Some try Dutch courage, attempting to keep their spirits up by pouring spirits down, but this kind of courage is liable to wear off at three o’clock in the morning in a dark night of the soul, when one needs it most.

A better stiffener of the sinews than alcohol is reading Tennyson aloud, as I hope this short extract illustrates:

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly…
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!…
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods…
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Or, if ‘Ulysses’ doesn’t do the trick, what about W E Henley’s  Invictus‘?

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul…
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

This is a sort of whistling in the dark, recommended by many poets, like Emily Brontë who proclaimed:
No coward soul is mine, no trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven’s glories shine, and faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

Pascal talked about the nobility of a reed, destroyed by the wind, and Marcus Aurelius thought you could out-tough the elements:

Be like a cliff at whose foot the waves break and break again; but it stands firm and by and by the seething waters about it sink to rest.

The chief problem with giving in to fear, though, is how then to recover:
The descent to Hell is easy. All day and all night the portal of Dis is open: but to retrace your steps and escape to the air above, this is the problem and this the task
Virgil, ‘Aeneid
One way to cheat fear is to refuse to take it seriously:

Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. 
Friedrich Nietzsche
.

And as Charles Schulz, the author of the ‘Peanuts’ cartoon points out:

Don’t worry about the world coming to an end. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.

Of course, there’s courage, and there’s pointless foolhardiness, as Don Quixote refused to acknowledge when he set off to tilt at windmills:

‘I tell thee they are giants, and therefore, if thou art afraid, go aside and say thy prayers for I am resolved to engage in a dreadful unequal combat against them’. This said, he clapped spurs to his horse Rozinante, without giving ear to his squire Sancho, who bawled out to him, and assured him that they were windmills, and not giants. But he did not so much as hear his squire’s outcry, nor was he sensible of what they were, although he was already very near them. ‘Stand, cowards’, cried he as loud as he could, ‘stand your ground, ignoble creatures, and fly not basely from a single knight, who dares encounter you all’  Miguel de Cervantes

In the end, though, as Victor Frankl said in Man’s Search for Meaning, it is the meaning we give to life which gets us through it:

A man who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how. 


Cowards die many times before their deaths
, said Shakespeare,

and C S Lewis adds:

one is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the hundred and one things that might happen.

 

Sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and hope for the best, said Patrick Overton :

When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly.

 

Give to the winds thy fears; hope, and be undismayed;
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears;
God shall lift up thy head.
Through waves and clouds and storms
He gently clears the way.
Wait thou His time,
so shall the night soon end in joyous day.

But we can’t all be brave all the time. It may help to remember that:

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof Matthew 6:34

or, as Scarlett O’Hara comforted herself at the end of ‘Gone With the Wind‘:

Try two mantras:
Jack Kerouac: All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh

and St Paul: I can do everything through Him who gives me strengthPhilippians 4:13

Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest: to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do thy holy will. Amen.
St Ignatius of Loyola

 

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The illustration is from the Royal Military College of Canada memorial window to Ian Sutherland Brown ( Sir Lancelot whole armour of God) via wikimedia under licence.

Wisdom: Thought for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

1 Kings 2.10-12, 3.3-14, Ephesians 5.15-20,  John 6.51-58, Psalm 111

Part of the first reading in today’s lectionary is the following:

1 Kings 3.3-14

Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt-offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.’ And Solomon said, ‘You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?’  It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honour all your life; no other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.’

 

The price of wisdom is, as we know, above rubies Job 28:18 and even Bob Marley sang:

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

 

But what is it, and how are we to get it? I use the word ‘get’ because the book of Proverbs does, and because it makes the process of acquiring wisdom sound like a lifelong search for buried treasure, which perhaps it is.

 

As I suspect the recommendation of early to bed, early to rise will not in itself make you wise, let us begin by agreeing with Clifford Stoll what wisdom is not.

Data is not information,
Information is not knowledge,
Knowledge is not understanding,
Understanding is not wisdom.

Data on its own is certainly not the answer, although the teacher Thomas Gradgrind in Charles Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’ would disagree with me:

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. And then there was his colleague Mr. M’Choakumchild: Orthography, etymology, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling… were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers… If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!

 

Rachel Carson said:

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow, and it was three wise men, not three know-alls, whom God sent to visit Jesus in the manger.

 

King Solomon knew the importance of wisdom, as well as knowledge of the law, in attempting to rule his people, and the difference between knowledge and wisdom is of more than academic interest, as Professor Sir Roy Calne pointed out in his ‘Creator’s Testament to Modern Man’:

God speaks: I have given you DNA programmed by evolution through millions of years…many of the secrets of nature are now revealed to you by your probing curiosity and rational analysis. This knowledge can be used for good or evil. The legend of the serpent who gave Eve the fruit of knowledge is a terrible warning…you will have many hard decisions to make but I have given you the ability to choose…I hope you become Homo Sapiens; the alternative is Homo Extinctus.

 
There is a very real danger that our thirst for knowledge may lead us after years of hard work to a wise conclusion already reached by God, and freely available to any onlooker who cares to observe: (‘Green Blackboards’ by Michel Quoist)

The school is up to date. Proudly the principal tells of all the improvements. The finest discovery, Lord, is the green blackboard. The scientists have studied long, they have made experiments. We now know that green is the ideal colour, that it doesn’t tire the eyes, that it is quieting and relaxing. It has occurred to me, Lord, that you didn’t wait so long to paint the trees and meadows green. ..thank you, Lord, for being the good Father who gives his children the joy of discovering by themselves the treasures of his intelligence and love. But keep us from believing that – by ourselves- we have invented anything at all.

 

Wisdom, in fact, has little to do with IQ. As Groucho Marx said:

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

 

You don’t even have to be human, as the following piece on dog wisdom by Anon. points out (cat lovers are free to substitute their own version):

If your dog were your teacher, you would learn stuff like…
Be loyal. When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.
Take naps and stretch before rising. Delight in the simple joys of a long walk.
When it’s in your best interest – practice obedience.
Tolerate cats – humans love that. Avoid biting, when a simple growl will do.
If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it, wherever that leads you.
In fact:
If you can start the day without caffeine;
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains;
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles;
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it;
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment;
If you can face the world without lies and deceit;
If you can relax without alcohol and sleep without drugs;
If you can honestly say you have no prejudice against anyone based on their creed, colour, or politics…
then, my friends, you are ALMOST as wise as your dog.

 

It was Cicero who pointed out the moral dimension: the function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

And for Saint-Exupéry’s ‘Little Prince’ the secret was very simple:

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

 

Seeing, even if through a glass darkly, to the essence of things, is an important part of wisdom, as we learn in C S Lewis’s ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader‘.

In our world, said Eustace, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas. Even in your world, my son [said Aslan], that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.

 

So how are we, then, to get wisdom? According to Proverbs again, it is easy enough to give the appearance of wisdom:

even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise:17:28 and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

 

But if only the real thing will do, Confucius, of course, had the answer:

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

 

It may be bitter, but as Proust said:

we don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

 

And Herman Hesse added, in Siddhartha:

knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.

 

Nevertheless, the hope of learning wisdom from others, whether a hermit in a cave in Tibet or, more likely, the man next door, is universal. Did you see the 1979 film, ‘Being There’, in which Peter Sellers played the part of Chance, the gardener or, as he was understood to say, Chauncey Gardiner? His simplistic responses (usually related to his gardening experience) to the most difficult questions are interpreted as pearls of wisdom. On the vagaries of the stock market:
first comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
On economics: In a garden, growth has its season…as long as the roots are not severed, all is well, and all will be well in the garden.
By reflecting the forgotten truths of nature, Chance is hailed as a hero and introduced to the president who, impressed by his political analysis, quotes Chance as his guru and turns him into a national prophet.

 

Let’s leave the last word to Piet Hein‘Grooks’:

The road to wisdom? –
Well, it’s plain,
And simple to express:
Err and err and err again,
but less and less and less.

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Both illustrations are taken from murals in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. They are by Robert Lewis Reid. The top one is of  Understanding, captioned  ‘Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding‘ (Proverbs 4.7). The bottom on is Wisdom, annotated ‘Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers’.

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