Haddon’s Blog
A series of articles edited by Haddon Willmer.
Notes of a Meeting on Dunstarn Lane. By Haddon Willmer
Last summer, a green leaf danced in the wind
turned gold and red
Fall came, it fell
rain soaked through winter
imprinting on the pavement – till
a silver star….
…..waiting,
waiting for the poor man who once found a sixpence on the road
and thereafter, anxious for another coin,
never saw a star again…until
one came down to meet his eye
shaking his obsession.
Lulu and the Archbishop: Who Invented God? Haddon Willmer serves up some food for thought
Just now, the Church is thinking quite a bit about children and young people.
Ever since I read it years ago, I have been gripped by this article, reporting the thoughtful interaction of liberal atheist parents, six year old Lulu, and Archbishop Rowan Williams about Who Invented God?
It raises issues not to be dismissed in five minutes. Lulu shows that the fundamental questions are simple enough for children to ask and to shape their life by. Can the questions be stopped by religious inculturation and indoctrination? And the questions don’t go away with age.
Would it not be a good thing to devote a whole day to share our understanding of these issues and our practice in relation to them? Or to give ourselves even more time to take this serious matter seriously?
When his six-year-old daughter, Lulu, wrote a letter to God, journalist Alex Renton did his best to get her an answer.
An article published in The Times on Good Friday 2011.
My daughter came home from primary school a few weeks ago and sat down to write a letter to God. It read “To God how did you get invented? From Lulu xo ” When she asked us to send it (by setting light to it and putting it up the chimney, as we do with letters to Father Christmas) several courses of action offered themselves.
Easiest of all, for us, would have been to fold the piece of paper and file it in the memory box — Lulu is 6 and hasn’t written more than a dozen letters in her life. Then we would have sat down and told her that God couldn’t be sent her letter or answer the question because, in our view, he didn’t exist. We would have said that he was invented by human beings, because they were rather puzzled by life and death and some other problems in between.
But that wouldn’t do. We (my wife and I, though I’m now going to stop speaking for her) try first to be honest with our children, but to follow that good principle here seemed self-indulgent. Selfish, in fact. In any case, the commitment to myth-busting in our house is already shaky — as shown by the Santa Claus rituals, not to mention occasional worship of the Tooth Fairy and that hideous Easter Bunny. I know people who don’t do Christmas and have stripped their children of the trammels of stockings and carols. But I can’t see the point. For one thing, you’re more likely to grow a teenager who embraces myths and cults, in reaction to rigid parental rationalism. Imagine the stories they’d tell about you to their friends.
More important, the desire to shield your children from delusion and falsehood is easily matched by the one that longs to protect their innocence, to let them learn about the world at a gentle pace and, indeed, learn for themselves, rather than always hand over your notion of what is what. Quite simply, I didn’t want to tell Lulu there was no God, and I could not tell her there was.
Not that that was the end of things to hum and ha about. Lulu’s new interest in the supernatural was eminently natural, of course, and welcome. Less comfortable was how much it was fuelled by her new school, not as an area of inquiry, but as a fact. Ridiculously ill-informed, we had no idea until last August that a state primary affiliated with a church would do quite so much God.
I like the idea of my child learning about the faiths and especially Christianity: it is the foundation of much that is lovely and important in our culture. I’m not revolted by the Bible’s “sinister fairy tales” as are some of the angry atheists of our times; though I, like Christopher Hitchens, did go at eight years old to the sort of boarding school where the book was used by the hypocrites and creeps who ran the place to arm themselves. That wasn’t much of an advert.
The Bible, taken highly selectively, is of course a pretty good introduction to the humanist moral system in which I’d like to see my children play a part. I have a copy of A. C. Grayling’s new “secular bible”: a wonderful enterprise, but it lacks the songs and the stories. No child should be denied Samson and Delilah. Or indeed Jael, the assassin and freedom fighter, with her lordly dish of butter and her sharpened tent peg.
I was happy that the Bible should have a role in Primary 1, but not at all that religious credo and worldly truths should be taught to my daughter as the same thing. Her adored, excellent teachers — thanks to whom she now writes letters — were giving out indubitable information (two and two equals four) with the same weight as the highly dubious (God loves you).
Within a few weeks of school starting last August we found her praying at bedtime. That was rather sweet, on first sight, but then I thought: shouldn’t we have been asked? I felt that the evening ritual of teeth-brushing, story, song and kiss — the most intimate between child and parent — had been rather invaded. And while teaching the habit of praying to God to help one be good is hardly corrosive to the liberties of a six-year-old, I felt already that her moral education had been taken out of our hands and off on to controversial ground. In a small way, I felt she had been insulted. My clever, kind girl didn’t need some unexplained superbeing’s help to be good, nor should she so lightly be invited to pass over the responsibility.
Deep in my gut, I disliked the fact that others were interfering with the mechanisms of her naturally emerging conscience. Offering her the consolations and excuses of religion was one thing, but what when they started with the threats? No child in my charge should have to make moral choices based on the fear of a god’s displeasure, or indeed of the fires of Hell.
And there was a further problem. My sister and her daughter, almost Lulu’s age, died in an accident last year. A beloved aunt went a few months before. While these awful things made no difference to my (lack of) religion — they did throw up the simple question: What do you tell the kids? When inevitably I was asked “Are they in Heaven?” I muttered something like “Lots of people are sure they are in Heaven: they’re in my heart.” I’m not proud of that, though I know I could have stepped up and lied if the full assurance had been required. Under the dubious moral code of my childhood, that would have been OK: a “white lie” to ease suffering.
But when, a few months after that disaster, she came back from school announcing that her grandmother’s recently deceased dog was in Heaven being looked after by St Francis of Assisi, I began to grow tired of nodding along. So when she asked God how he was invented, I cheered my little nascent rationalist. Only one step now to asking who invented God. And: why?
But that isn’t a small step. And then I thought: this isn’t my problem. There are people who believe in God who ought to be able to answer a fellow believer’s question. Some of them are paid to do it. Lulu’s letter is of their making, not mine. If they could satisfy her, I would keep out of it. For the time being.
First, I e-mailed her letter to both her grandmothers, and to some friends who are active Christians, The responses were interesting, and Lulu listened to them patiently. The grandmothers did best, perhaps because they’d faced these questions before. Both said that God did not have to be invented because He was always there, even for people who didn’t feel they needed Him. That He wasn’t actually a person, but “the power of love”. It took courage to have faith in Him, said one.
My Christian friends were less useful, but then they were the wrong people to ask. Of course they had had no trouble giving their children answers when the What is God? question emerged (usually at about six or seven years old). What if they were me? I wondered. One said he had no idea how he would deal with the letter as me, but why not ask an expert? He suggested Rowan Williams, whose writings on faith he admires.
So I sought the views of some of the professionals. After a bit of googling, I e-mailed a Jpeg of Lulu’s letter and a brief explanation to the Episcopalian Church in Scotland, where we live, to the Church of Scotland and to the Scottish Catholic Church. I did not mention my own views. For good measure, I sent it also to the head of theology of the Anglican Communion, based at Lambeth Palace.
I heard first from Monsignor Paul Conroy, of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland. He wrote this: “My reply would be along the lines of ‘God is like us — he wasn’t invented — but unlike us he has always been there. God is like someone we’ve always loved — we don’t remember when he came into our lives because like the people we love who have been there all our lives it’s as if we can’t imagine what it would be like without him’.” It seemed theologically on the button, but not much tailored to the six-year-old mind.
The Episcopalians and the Presbyterians didn’t reply. Lambeth Palace waited a couple of weeks and then asked me to tell Lulu that someone special was going to write to her. Eventually there came an e-mail from “Archbishop Rowan” (Lambeth Palace gave permission for the letter’s reproduction here).
Dear Lulu,
Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It’s a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this –
‘Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn’t expected.
Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – specially in the life of Jesus – to help them get closer to what I’m really like.
Haddon Willmer shares a remarkable, moving and sobering story
O boundless Salvation, the whole world redeeming
I was searching for the email address of an old friend, and I found myself in the record of Broadmead Baptist Church, Bristol, reading a fascinating story, reprinted from the Officer Magazine of the Salvation Army. http://www.broadmeadbaptist.org.uk/recordpdf/record201405.pdf
A quote from William Booth who with his wife Catherine founded The Salvation Army in 1865
GÜNTER AND JEAN
The remarkable story of how the Salvation Army founder’s song united Second World War enemies. Originally from the South of Germany, Günter had the figure of an athlete: blond hair and blue eyes, yet genteel and remarkably humbled. I’m Jacques Roufflet and as a student had newly joined The Salvation Army at Tailfingen, and was encouraged to go to Günter’s house by an older church member who advised, “Günter has a wonderful testimony to share. (I was conscripted in the German Army during the Second World War, but Günter had wilfully signed up). Ask him to tell you about it.”
Born into Bavarian nobility, Günter received the strict education of young men of his rank. As I attentively listened to him, my eyes stopped on a picture that filled me with fear – there, astride a black horse, Günter was wearing with pride and arrogance the uniform of an SS officer. “One November day, after my men had ransacked the Salvation Army hall, I entered the building where flags, Christian newspapers and flyers had been burnt. There was a broken bench on which I could still read ‘He can sav…’. I found some of their hymn books in French and German. The German book also had music, so being a musician I sat at the dust – and ash covered piano and started to play the melody of the first hymn I turned to. “I read the words of the hymn: ‘O boundless salvation! deep ocean of love.’ I stopped playing and thought about the place I was in – broken chairs, smashed windows and swastikas painted on the walls. A crest of The Salvation Army was smashed into pieces, cutlery and plates were scattered on the floor. ‘Where is their God?’ I thought, smirking. I put the hymn books in a box and took them with me to burn later.
I was urgently called back to Berlin the same day, so forgot about the hymn books until the following day when I discovered them along with other books. Fearful of being accused of being part of this ‘strange’ Army, I resolved to throw them in a fire located at the bottom of Landerberg Allee. As I hurried to get to the huge fire I went past a dilapidated evangelical church.To my great surprise, I heard the same melody I had been playing… I went in. Seven French prisoners of war (POWs) were laboriously singing ‘O boundless salvation!…’ and needless to say they were absolutely petrified to see me among them! They were gaunt and filthy – a pitiful sight as they played the melody by candlelight on an awfully out-of-tune piano. They were stumbling over the words of a hymn tune that they couldn’t fully recall.
‘Nicht! No, not like that,’ I said to the pianist in my bad French. I vigorously pushed him aside and started to play the tune. ‘Go on! Sing! Books, in the box there.’ They obediently took books and sheepishly began to sing the Founder’s song, which they finished confidently. “‘Stille Nacht, bitte!’ one of them asked. It was Christmas, so what could I do? I started to play the melody and they sang along in their language and I in mine. As we sang, I pictured my family around the Christmas tree, sharing meals and gifts as a sign of peace and love. As I listened to these French prisoners – my enemies – singing I had the sudden realisation that the unity Germany sought to create in Europe by force, had already been won by Christ though his selfless love and sacrifice. “Unable to contain my emotions and feeling the love of God invading me, I rushed from the church with a heavy heart and tear-filled eyes, taking with me the Salvationist hymn book. “As we sat at the table, Günter filled with barely controllable emotion. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘See the stamp here: This book belongs to Strasburg Salvation Army.’
Günter continued, “Since leaving that church I hated my life, uniform and political party. With the help of trusted friends I found refuge in Switzerland, where I stayed until the end of the war, went to church and discovered the Bible. Once back in Germany, I settled in Tailfingen and joined The Salvation Army.”
I had forgotten this extraordinary conversation by the time I entered the training college in London in 1972. Two years later I married Yvonne Chislett and as lieutenants we were appointed to Montparnasse, a small corps in the middle of a Parisian quarter. By 1974, I had forgotten this extraordinary conversation with Günter. I and my wife Yvonne were now Salvation Army Ministers at Montparnasse, in Paris. One day, one of my sergeants asked me to visit her brother Jean, a soldier of the corps who was unable to worship regularly. Jean received me in his bedroom as he was bedridden, and struggling to know what to say I talked about the weather. But after a short while Jean told me his testimony. I pulled my chair close and listened to his adventure… “I’ve been a Salvationist all my life,” he said, “but there was a time when I thought I’d lose my faith, but strangely, that time proved to be a blessing. “In 1943, when as a soldier in the French Army, I was made a POW and was deported to Berlin, where the SS didn’t hesitate to beat us up, but the citizens had pity on us and treated us well. Whilst living in a squalid POW camp, and would be delighted to introduce them to me, it was reassuring to meet fellow Salvationists in the middle of this hell, but we kept our meet ings secret, because The Salvation Army had been harassed by the authorities. “Just before Christmas we were particularly discouraged and demoralised. There was no news from France and spending Christmas far from our families was tough. My friend Paul, a musician, had found an abandoned good condition,’ Paul assured us. ‘There’s even a piano. We could go tonight because the authorities are busy burning books.’” When we arrived at the church there was not much left, but fortunately it wasn’t raining because we could see the stars through the roof! There were no doors and no electricity. It was so cold that we weren’t surprised that people were singing and dancing to the heat of the book fire on Alexanderplatz. Paul had a candle with him, but without any music he wasn’t very good on the piano.
We tried to play some well-known hymns to lift our spirits. We played Christmas carols too, but in this dark and sinister place our hearts weren’t in it. Antoine suggested that as we were Salvationists singing the Founder’s song would encourage us, but after the first verse we were only able to hum the second. ‘Lord,’ I cried, ‘we’re losing faith. Give us the strength to sing for you.’ So we tried again. Paul played as best as he could and we sang O boundless salvation! deep ocean of love. “Just at that moment a young SS officer entered the hall. We froze in fear when we recognised the black uniform and cap featuring a skull. He looked at us with disdain; he could see we were only insignificant French soldiers – lost, miserable and stinky. I thought this was the end for us, but instead he threw a box on a table and took a book out if it. He pushed Paul off the piano stool and started to play the music – the first bars of the Founder’s song. We were stunned and didn’t dare sing. “‘Go on!,’ he said. ‘Go on, sing!’ He pointed to the box. Incredible! It was filled with Salvation Army song books in French and German. The first page was stamped: ‘This book belongs to Strasburg Salvation Army’. We each took a book and tremulously started to sing ‘O boundless salvation!…’ We were faltering at first, but by the end we were singing with passion and fervour: ‘And now, hallelujah! the rest of my days shall gladly be spent in promoting his praise…’ The silence that followed was only interrupted by sniffling. “Paul courageously suggested to the SS man: ‘Stille Nacht, bitte!’ We sang ‘Silent Night’ at the top of our voices, but without warning the SS officer stopped in the middle of a verse and hurriedly left the church, taking the hymn book with him. We never saw him again, but we also never forgot that moment when God revealed himself to us in this unexpected way.” As Jean told me his story his face lit up. He reached into his bedside cabinet where he took out an old Salvation Army song book. “Look Lieutenant, I kept the one I picked up.” On the first faded page could still be read: “This book belongs to Strasburg Salvation Army.” As we cried, I told Jean the incredible story of Günter and his conversion
Jean died just a few weeks later. I lead his funeral and went to the service with Colonel Wälly, a retired officer. Shortly before the service the undertaker approached me to share his embarrassment. “The family has put one of your hymn books close to Jean’s heart,” he said, “but it belongs to The Salvation Army in Strasburg.” I replied with a smile: “I know. He’ll take it with him to Heaven. In fact, he’s got an appointment with a German SS officer who has an identical book that also belongs to The Salvation Army in Strasburg. They’ll probably join together to sing O boundless salvation!…’ as we will in this service.” There weren’t many people in the cold church as Jean’s family and friends paid their last respects, but my story about the song book was occasionally interrupted by the undertakers who, heads bowed, were trying to hide their emotions. Touched to the heart, the congregation sang with faith and assurance the Founder’s song.
——————————————————————————————————————
Not being a Salvationist, I did not know the words of the Founder’s Song. Here they are:
O boundless salvation! deep ocean of love,
O fulness of mercy, Christ brought from above.
The whole world redeeming, so rich and so free,
Now flowing for all men, come, roll over me!
My sins they are many, their stains are so deep.
And bitter the tears of remorse that I weep;
But useless is weeping; thou great crimson sea,
Thy waters can cleanse me, come, roll over me.
My tempers are fitful, my passions are strong,
They bind my poor soul and they force me to wrong;
Beneath thy blest billows deliverance I see,
O come, mighty ocean, and roll over me!
Now tossed with temptation, then haunted with fears,
My life has been joyless and useless for years;
I feel something better most surely would be
If once thy pure waters would roll over me.
O ocean of mercy, oft longing I’ve stood
On the brink of thy wonderful, life-giving flood!
Once more I have reached this soul-cleansing sea,
I will not go back till it rolls over me.
The tide is now flowing, I’m touching the wave,
I hear the loud call of the mighty to save;
My faith’s growing bolder, delivered I’ll be;
I plunge ‘neath the waters, they roll over me.
And what does it sound like? You can find many recordings on youtube; I like this one, with its near-global coverage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kLFCNbjHJk
Confession, by Haddon Willmer
It is time I confessed. I am uncomfortable in church – and not because of the chairs. I am uncomfortable in Moortown Baptist Church and I would be uncomfortable in many other churches known to me.
Anyone who confesses to such discomfort will be told to look to themselves. Many people are happy here, so what is it about you that makes you unhappy? Don’t let your personal quirk disturb the life of the church – get over it.
Confessing discomfort is too vague to be useful. But now I can put a finger precisely on one cause of my discomfort: I am a fairly regular on-line reader of The Guardian. There I encounter segments of the world we live in, concretely reported and often interpreted in prophetic ways.
Just this morning (18 December) for example, there is an article on Hunger in the Wirral: the truth behind the tale that made a Tory MP cry. It is about increasing numbers of people who are driven to use food banks.
Frank Field, the MP there for 38 years, told this tear-jerking story first (the picture on the left is of him with volunteers filling Christmas hampers for Birkenhead’s needy). Until five years ago, no one had come to see him complaining of hunger.
“Now, two-thirds of the people who come to my surgery are on the brink of destitution. There’s a lot of crying and gnashing of teeth in the surgery. It was totally unheard of before.”
Now of course our church supports the local food bank. Some church people are active in it, but, on the whole, is it not at the fading margins of church consciousness? If we talk about it, do we not tend to see it from the point of view of the providers, and to be glad that we are able to do some good?
What The Guardian does is to take us further in two ways. First it helps us to see food banks from the point of view of desperate users. So we hear stories that can make a Tory MP weep. Do we ever get near to weeping in Church? Do we not expect weeping to be done in private, if at all? Do we, as Church, go with Jesus on his way, in the world, of ‘strong crying and tears’ (Heb.5.7, Luke 22.43, 44)?
Please read these stories for yourself – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/18/hunger-in-wirral-truth-tale-tory-mp-cry-frank-field-heidi-allen – any summary I could give would be inadequate.
Secondly, The Guardian does not give us a chance to hear the human story without challenging us to take a responsible view of the politics of it. Why is this happening in so rich a country? And in so professedly a democratic and open society? Why do those who arrange our social and economic order do it so badly? Why do we free citizens allow them to do so and demean ourselves by supposing we can do nothing much to alter things? Why do we so easily scorn politics and give up on politicians as a whole?
Do we have ways of being Christian which insulate us from the realities of the world and of our society, that part of the world where we have real if limited responsibility? Why does our language lack the concreteness, the pain, the desire of some of the prophetic writing to be found in The Guardian?
I am not at all arguing that we should put The Guardian in the place of the Bible. I have preached many times, and always from a Bible text which I try to attend to carefully, never from The Guardian. But The Guardian can help us to be more open to the Bible as prophecy, as what God says to people today in the realities of life. Truly, before ever there was The Guardian, there was the Bible, and before, with and beyond the Bible, there is the Word of God, God speaking God-self in Jesus. All the same, I can imagine that if Church muffles the prophetic word, God may be grateful for a secular newspaper.
The Guardian is not the only help to becoming more open to the call of God. If you can find help elsewhere, take it. The Guardian is not in its totality the voice of God – it is a mixed up very human construction and much in it exemplifies our contemporary lostness. But somewhere in the mixture, the sharp if small voice is to be heard, for those who have ears. Some of its writers sometimes are prophetic. Don’t take king Jehoiakim’s knife to The Guardian (Jeremiah chapter 36, see verse 23).
Elements of prophecy which The Guardian often exemplifies and by which it could help us in Church are:
Telling human stories in detailed rawness, soberly, accurately
Even to the point of
Weeping,
and of
Understanding them politically and so getting and keeping ourselves in a position to act together more effectively for good.
A final note: sometimes prophecy works by telling stories that have the three elements I have identified but in a more cheering form. They are raw, there is weeping in them, but they also show some good being achieved in this dark world.
In today’s Guardian, we read the story of Simone Veil, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/17/simone-veil-remembered-by-robert-badinter
Once more, please take five minutes to read it for yourself – a summary would spoil it. I specially valued the example of wise, practical, political forgiving Simone Veil worked for, after the Holocaust and the terrible history of wars between France and Germany.
“With her indomitable youth and determination, she became a champion of reconciliation with Germany. Instead of looking back, she looked ahead: the future for the next generations and hope of a lasting peace could lie only in a European Union, with a reconciled France and Germany at its heart. It required true moral greatness to have felt this way just months after returning from the death camps.”
“That is how I see her: as a woman who managed the incredible achievement of transcending her own immense personal suffering in the higher interest of her country and of her children’s future. Against all the odds, she turned her back on despair and chose hope.”
Haddon Willmer
Haddon Willmer shares some thoughts about prayer
I have a friend who considers himself still a Christian. Indeed he is determined to go on being a Christian, and publicly. But he says his prayer life is shot to pieces and has been for some time. I’m in much the same place.
What is prayer? he asks. It seems, in much of our practice, to be asking God for things, expecting answers, which is rather like customer satisfaction. But we often don’t get what we ask for. We see people in desperate need in the world, for food, for security, who cry out to God but don’t get the help to live. They are encouraged to ‘ask and you will receive’ but experience throws the advice into doubt. And then the doubt spreads to God. God seems not to care, not to be.
Does prayer have to take a form that runs head-on into a brick wall? Is ‘Ask and Get’ the primary, essential form of prayer? When we pray to God as God is in Jesus, are we coming to the keeper of a shop which stocks everything – and all just for the asking?
I don’t think prayer is like that. It is much more a matter of keeping company with God who keeps company with us in the way we see in Jesus. Jesus did not get what he asked for in any straightforward way. Remember his praying in Gethsemane, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’ (Matt 26.38). Jesus talked with his Father, out of a lifelong relationship. That relationship did not consist in ‘asking and getting’ or in a comforting intimacy, so much as a working obedience, loving service and risk-taking trust, which were the ingredients that went into making the life and death and resurrection of Jesus as we are given to see it in the Gospels.
To pray is to be thinking the living of real life on earth, in a truthful relation with God the Father.
The words we put together in order to bring our praying relation to God into our consciousness – God doesn’t need them – have to be fashioned carefully so that they are truthful about our life and about God. We often pray with words that come to us casually, or are given to us by convention; there is not enough truthful thinking in them. And when they are not truthful, they easily come to mean nothing to us, or they lead us into mistakes about the reality of our earthly life or the reality of God, as God is in Jesus.
Would it help our praying to look at ancient written prayers, which come out of thinking, living life, and attending to God?
I find prayers of this sort helpful, but not because, being written, they are ready-made and demand little effort. Rather the problem is that prayers composed by people in other ages or other places, often have features I cannot make my own, as I live in my own times. They help me to work at prayer rather than to get an easy ride. Through classic prayers, I can see how to go about thinking and even writing my own prayers. When I have a good clue about how, I can get on trying to do it truthfully, with some hope that my praying will be worthwhile.
Take an example: a collect from the old English Book of Common Prayer
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: Defend us, thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
What is the structure of this prayer?
First God is addressed, but not merely named. The name of God by itself has too many possible meanings to be any help in focusing our minds and living, or helping us to distinguish the true God from mere imaginings.
God is named, and then identified. God is not completely described – that is impossible. A particular characteristic of God is specified: ‘the author of peace and lover of concord’. These are big words, calling for a lot of meditation and searching. That is one reason why it is worth saying a prayer like this frequently, so that it gets embedded in our memory and can repeatedly speak to us.
Is there such a God? If God is ‘the author of peace and lover of concord’ what follows? What does it mean for our living? In knowing Go, the prayer tells us, we find eternal life, life not in the human earthly abundance of some sort of wealth, but life in the abundance of God as God is in Jesus. And then it offers a further specification of God, which carries an implication for how we human beings are to live: serving God is ‘perfect freedom’. This language has been dismissed as impossible and oppressive paradox – how can servitude be freedom? As it stands it does not truthfully explain much of our experience of the human world. It is a prayer of desire and aspiration, reaching for something better than we routinely have. So it invites us to venture into God, who is not like the familiar powers that arrange and manage the earth, only bigger. God is the mystery at the heart of a ‘strange new world’, his own new creation.
In this prayer we start by seeing God in a specific way and then we find ourselves challenged and invited to risk moving into and with God.
After this start, the prayer goes on to present our need to God – in a world where we have enemies, we ask to be defended, on the basis that we are God’s humble servants, against the ‘others’ who are not. As those who serve God, we ask to enjoy the freedom that goes with service (‘whose service is perfect freedom’). We trust in God to defend us, keeping us free from the assaults of our enemies. And this we expect to happen, because our Lord Jesus is ‘mighty’.
A prayer needs to have this sort of second half, answering the first half which presents God to us. Now our existence is brought to God, presented to God for service, so that we can live it with God in faith.
This is often the hardest part of a prayer to think and write. The second half of this prayer makes me uncomfortable; I don’t want to say from the heart ‘Yes’ to all these words; indeed, if this is Christian faith, I may not be able to go along with it.
Why are these words difficult? Should we find them difficult? The prayer identifies God as the author of peace and lover of concord, and then puts ourselves in the picture as God’s humble servants against enemies. And then we call God with his might into action on our side in the battle. When we trust in a God of Battles, are we trusting in God as he is in Jesus? This prayer does not ask for the peace of the world, we ask for our peace, our freedom from fear, in a world structured by the logic and spirit of enmity, a world where we struggle for our survival.
It is natural enough for us to pray like this; there are enemies, and we have reason, sometimes, to be fearful, unbearably. But when we pray in these terms, are we being faithful to God? Are we being wise and generous in our approach to living?
I criticise this prayer and feel inclined not to say it. So can I leave it there? Not if I want to be a responsible human being in this present world; not if I have any glimmer of God as the author of peace and lover of concord or have the beginnings of an aspiration to serve him. I find myself constrained to try to write a prayer I can say.
Here is my attempt. If you can’t join me, which is quite likely, make your own.
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, Continue your patience with us, who make, manage and suffer a world at war in itself and do it all with fearful discordant spirits: please do not give up on us just yet, though a fair case is made against us, as some of our own wise prophets tell us. Our mountainous sins rise up in witness against us. Enlighten us so that we may see how your patience gives us time to change our thinking and our practice. Help us to use our time redemptively and to give our full energies to your service. Please go on walking your weary way in our world, which loads its sin upon your frailty and mocks your example of a better way of being human. Go on walking in our world so that we may come to follow you, share your spirit and work with you. May we see you gladly when you come our way . Do not give up on us: Come Lord Jesus!
Grantchester: small screen or book? Haddon Willmer explains why for him the printed word wins hands down
Have you watched Grantchester on the TV? Try to forget it. Are you tempted to watch? Resist and desist! Why? Because the original books by James Runcie are much better and will give you a richer experience. Why drink muddied water when fresh living water is on the table?
Sidney Chambers appears in the first of the series as a young vicar of Grantchester. As time goes on, he rises up the ecclesiastical ladder – to be an Archdeacon, and maybe a Bishop beyond that. Always, he goes about his work as a priest seriously, praying, thinking the Faith with insight, sharing it in sensitive pastoral responses to people around him.
Here we see Anglican Christian humanism at its best – all the more Christian for being so human. Sidney seems to be accident prone – not that he gets hurt himself, but he is forever stumbling across bodies of murdered people. Then he cannot hold back from contributing to the investigation: he is a very good detective, appreciated by his local policeman friend, Geordie.
He enjoys the intellectual puzzles and the skills of the chase, but much more: he sees victims and perpetrators alike within the perspective of the love of God for his children who are caught and overwhelmed by the complications of life. He is a praying detective.
The depths and subtleties of human being and the mystery of God don’t transmit on TV. This seed falls on stony ground there. They are there on the page, and we can linger over them, for the books give us the chance to enter into the spirit, even while we are being entertained by the intricacy of the detection and the earthy ordinariness of life.
The titles of the books are themselves invitations to think about the Gospel and the Christian way:
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (2012)
Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night (2013)
Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (2014)
Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins (2015)
Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation (2016)
I would recommend reading them in order. I have just read the most recent, Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love (2017), a wonderful book, but don’t spoil it by going straight to it.
It wouldn’t be a waste of time to read these stories and talk about them together in small groups.
I will say no more, I don’t want to spoil the books for anyone.
In the wake of the Westminster terror attack read what Giles Fraser (priest-in-charge at St Mary’s, Newington) has to say about prayer
Amid the murderous mayhem of a terrorist car and knife attack, and the anti-social squabbles on social media, Giles Fraser (priest-in-charge at St Mary’s, Newington and Guardian columnist) says a few useful words: ‘Prayer is not wishful nonsense – it helps us to shut up and think’.
You can find it from the Guardian 24 March, and also here:
Yesterday, a minute or so before 3pm, with a policeman struggling for his life outside, and with details of what had gone on still sketchy and confused, the work of parliament was suspended. David Lidington, leader of the House of Commons, rose to explain why the lockdown was necessary. And his Labour opposite number, Valerie Vaz, replied that “Our thoughts and prayers are with the police officer”, a sentiment with which Lidington concurred and with which the house murmured its agreement.
I wandered over and unlocked the church, putting up a board to invite passersby to come in and light a candle or say a prayer. You can see Big Ben from some parts of my parish and the church was filled with the sound of helicopters overhead and police sirens whizzing past. A handful of people dropped by over the couple of hours I sat there. Not many, I know, but it was still worth opening up. It was my way of showing respect. Of expressing solidarity. Of managing my own anxiety. This church was bombed by the Nazis on the first day of the blitz. It has seen great violence. And it has been calmly rebuilt. It symbolises the defiance of Londoners in the face of terror. This felt the right place to be. And as I sat quietly, I kept up with unfolding events via Twitter. And that was my mistake.
“Can everyone stop all this #PrayforLondon nonsense. It’s these bloody stupid beliefs that help create this violence in the first place,” tweeted Julia Hartley-Brewer, a middle-England talk radio host in the mould of Katie Hopkins. Now there is a time and a place for atheists to have a pop about whether prayer is a waste of time. Even for a debate about the role of Islam in the formation of terrorism. Bring it on. But bundling together the person who had just come into church to pray for the dying policeman with the policeman’s very attacker was gratuitously offensive and just plain ignorant.
But the charmless Hartley-Brewer was having none of those who challenged her: “So having an opinion on religious expressions is indecent now? Have you thought of joining Isis?” she preposterously spat back. Of course, she hardly matters. But all over Twitter, in millions of micro-encounters, all this surround-sound unpleasantness builds up and gradually eats away at our civility. Under that flag of convenience called free speech, people tear up their decency in the search for “likes”. Oh, how cheaply we trade the things that matter most. Have social media and the stamping foot of the 24-hour news cycle killed off the quiet dignity of grief, both religious and non-religious?
Some things, often the most important things, do not lend themselves to immediate comment. Bigger thoughts take time and silence, and require waiting for the right perspective. Yes, I know, defending slowness and silence in a newspaper is a bit like defending chastity in a brothel. But the world does not readily give up its truth just because you click on a webpage or react to a tweet. “You must wear your eyes out, as others their knees,” said the great Welsh poet RS Thomas.
Prayer is not a way of telling God the things he already knows. Nor is it some act of collective lobbying, whereby the almighty is encouraged to see the world from your perspective if you screw up your face really hard and wish it so. Forget Christopher Robin at the end of the bed. Prayer is mostly about emptying your head waiting for stuff to become clear. There is no secret formula. And holding people in your prayers is not wishful thinking. It’s a sort of compassionate concentration, where someone is deliberately thought about in the presence of the widest imaginable perspective – like giving them a mental cradling.
But above all, prayer is often just a jolly good excuse to shut up for a while and think. The adrenaline that comes from shock does not make for clear thinking or considered judgment. Those who rush to outrage say the stupidest things.
Some thoughts on Pastor Paula White’s prayer for President Trump
Paula White, is pastor of the New Destiny Christian Center, she is also President Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser. Here is the text of her prayer at his inauguration.
We come to you, heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus with grateful hearts, thanking you for this great country that you have decreed to your people. We acknowledge we are a blessed nation with a rich history of faith and fortitude, with a future that is filled with promise and purpose.
We recognize that every good and every perfect gift comes from you and the United States of America is your gift, for which we proclaim our gratitude.
As a nation, we now pray for our president, Donald John Trump, vice president, Michael Richard Pence, and their families. We ask that you would bestow upon our president the wisdom necessary to lead this great nation, the grace to unify us, and the strength to stand for what is honorable and right in your sight.
In Proverbs 21:1, you instruct us that our leader’s heart is in your hands. Gracious God, reveal unto our president the ability to know the will, your will, the confidence to lead us in justice and righteousness, and the compassion to yield to our better angels.
While we know there are many challenges before us, in every generation you have provided the strength and power to become that blessed nation. Guide us in discernment, Lord, and give us that strength to persevere and thrive.
Now bind and heal our wounds and divisions, and join our nation to your purpose. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, the psalmists declared.
Let your favor be upon this one nation under God. Let these United States of America be that beacon of hope to all people and nations under your dominion, a true hope for humankind.
Glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Haddon Willmer writes: There is much in this prayer which disquiets me. It is a complacent ‘America first’ prayer. Not being an American nor a Trump-fan, I find it hard to get past its nationalism to find a Christian prayer I can join in with.
Confession of sin is a key component of Christian prayer: there is not a hint of it here. The USA is simply ‘the gift of God’. It is called to be, and is confidently proud that it will be, a ‘beacon of hope to all people and nations… a true hope for humankind’. Without qualification, we ask God to give Donald Trump ‘the wisdom necessary to lead this great nation, the grace to unify us, and the strength to stand for what is honourable and right in your sight’. We have no sense, it seems, that if this prayer is real, we are here asking God for a massive miracle, bringing about a painful uprooting and an unimaginable remaking, a radical conversion for the Donald Trump we have come to know and have to live with for the next four years, at least. Could Donald Trump accept such a miracle? There is little evidence that he would. He certainly does not imagine it is necessary.
This prayer is made ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’. If those words mean anything at all, they remind us that our prayer goes through the filter of Jesus Christ, so that it fits faithfully with Jesus Christ. In his words and actions, in his self-giving and dying, Jesus calls us to repentance, humility, and truthfulness. He saw through the self-assured illusions of the Pharisee at prayer in the public glare and stood with the broken tax-collector, who could do only pray, God be merciful to me, a sinner (Luke 18.9-14).
Haddon Willmer shares the obituary of Zygmunt Bauman, “a prophetic man” and a former colleague at the University of Leeds
Emeritus Professor Zygmunt Bauman
Colleagues will be sorry to hear of the death of Emeritus Professor Zygmunt Bauman, former Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology. Formerly of the University of Warsaw, he joined the University in 1972 as its first Professor of Sociology. He was an inspirational teacher and academic leader who served two terms as Head of Department and during his time here published widely, continuing to do so after his retirement in 1990. In 2004 the University awarded him an honorary degree in recognition of his extensive contribution to modern sociological thought, and in 2010 founded the Bauman Institute for Theory and Society, which seeks to address specificities such as the social impact of the global financial crisis alongside broader themes such as how we understand liberty and choice, identity and citizenship, and collective responsibility in modern societies. The following tribute has been contributed by Dr Mark Davis, Director of the Bauman Institute and was also published in the Guardian. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/secretariat/obituaries/2017/bauman_zygmunt.html
In a book published in 2000, the Polish-born sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who has died aged 91, deployed a metaphor since taken up by the anti-globalisation movement around the world. Liquid Modernity analysed the disappearance of the solid structures and institutions that once provided the stable foundations for well-ordered modern societies, and the consequences for individuals and communities.
Bauman, professor of sociology at Leeds University (1972-90, and then emeritus), argued that our “liquid modern” world was unable to stand still and keep its shape for long. Everything seems to change – the fashions we follow, the events that catch our attention, the things we dream of and the things we fear. An increasing polarisation between the elite and the rest, our growing tolerance of ever-expanding inequalities, and a separation between power and politics remained constant themes in his writings – in all he produced more than 60 books. As the state and the market vie for supremacy within the space of global capitalism, the fate of poor and vulnerable people assumes particular importance. As he put it: “When elephants fight, pity the grass.”
His work was especially influential among progressive young activists in Spain, Italy and across central and South America. “See the world through the eyes of society’s weakest members,” he said, “and then tell anyone honestly that our societies are good, civilised, advanced, free.”
His best-known book, Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), provided a stark warning of the genocidal potential latent within every modern bureaucratic society to privilege process, order and efficiency over morals, responsibility and care for the other. It was shaped by the memoir Winter in the Morning (1986) by his wife, Janina (nee Lewinson), later revised as Beyond These Walls: Escaping the Warsaw Ghetto – A Young Girl’s Story (2006), and his own experience of 20th-century horrors.
Always wary of offering any alternative blueprint for the future, Bauman declined to profess any concrete solution to our common plight. But he retained a commitment to a form of socialism that remained counter-cultural, even when an avowedly socialist government was pulling the levers of power. He believed that a truly good society was one that could never be satisfied that it was good enough.
As people choose to manage their individualised concerns as consumers, hoping to find solutions to their private troubles by shopping, they have largely ceased to act collectively as citizens who share common public issues. In his words: “Can notions of equality, democracy and self-determination survive when society is seen less and less as a product of shared labour and common values and far more as a mere container of goods and services to be grabbed by competing individual hands?”
With the evacuation of trust from political leaders has come a loss of faith and a demand to “take back control” from self-interested elites. Bauman pointed, for instance, to the bank bailout of 2007-08 as the instantaneous creation of “a welfare state for the rich”. Having lived through two forms of totalitarianism, he warned that the change demanded would be authoritarian in character.
A native of Poznań, in western central Poland, he was first a victim of the Nazis, then the communists. The son of Moritz Bauman, an accountant, and his wife, Sophia (nee Cohn), he fled with his family at the outbreak of the second world war to the Soviet Union, and was awarded Poland’s Military Cross of Valour for fighting against the Nazis.
He married Janina in 1948 and lectured in sociology at Warsaw University, becoming a professor in 1964. Four years later he and his family – now with three daughters, Lydia, Irena and Anna – were exiled as a consequence of an antisemitic campaign by the ruling communist regime. He thus became a refugee for a second time and his experiences of poverty, marginalisation and exile led him towards an explicitly morally driven sociology. After temporary posts at universities in Tel Aviv (despite being a critic of the treatment of Palestinians), and then more briefly in both Haifa and Melbourne, Australia, in 1971 Bauman and his family settled in Britain. There he headed the sociology department at Leeds. A prolific and disciplined writer, he started before sunrise. In the 1980s, those tidying up after a staff-student party recall him striding purposefully into the building at 4.30am and into his office to start work. He continued to publish for the rest of his life.
In recent years Bauman analysed the refugee crisis and the rise of rightwing populism across Europe and the US as a “crisis of humanity”. The promise of a socially progressive Europe meant a great deal to him. He believed ardently that the European Union stood as a safeguard for hard-won rights and for shared protection against war and social insecurity. In what proved to be his final lecture at Leeds last October, he drew parallels between the Holocaust and the capacity of today’s populism to make everyone “other”, without compassion or remorse.
His many honours included the Theodor W Adorno prize (1998). For the award ceremony in Frankfurt, neither the Polish nor British national anthems seemed appropriate to him, feeling a stranger in both lands, and so he settled on the Ode to Joy, the anthem of Europe. His work serves as a reminder that our world has been made by human hands and so it can be remade by them too. For all his passion and pessimism, he wrote because he believed that that challenge could and should be confronted.
Janina died in 2009. Six years later Bauman married Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania, also a sociologist. She survives him, along with his daughters, three granddaughters and three grandsons.
Zygmunt will be remembered by students and colleagues alike as one of the great social thinkers, and with genuine affection and warmth for his energy, his compassion and his ability to bring out the very best of others. A private family funeral has taken place, during which, as a mark of respect, the flag on the Parkinson Building (left) was flown at half-mast.