Tradition

I went to an excellent Lent group on Wednesday, part of COTHA (Churches on the Hill, Amersham) which was using the Bible Society study on the BBC Passion broadcast on television last year.

This week it showed the overturning of the tables in the Temple and that led on to a debate on "tradition" - in the film one of the money changers says "we have been doing this for 30 years".

It struck me that we have three kinds of tradition:

Accidental Tradition:
Best described by the story of the teacher who was teaching his disciples, but found a stray dog interrupting the lesson, so each lesson he got his disciples to tie the dog to a post before he began. The years passed and the teacher died and a new teacher took his place. A few years late the dog died, and the disciples took a collection to buy a new dog!

Tradition without understanding:
I recently read an article in the Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2212616/ about a " lax, non-Hebrew-speaking Jew" who read the Bible through and was staggered to discover that there were so many references to it in common usage of which he had been unaware.

He went on "Reading the Bible has joined me to Jewish life in a way I never thought possible. I trace this to when I read about Jacob blessing his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh at the end of Genesis. I suddenly realized: Oh, that's why I'm supposed to lay my hand on my son's head at Shabbat dinner and bless him in the names of Ephraim and Manasseh."

This is tradition without understanding - there is meaning in what is done, but people are unaware of the meaning.

Tradition that is core:
Tradition without understanding might be worth keeping - although to make this sensible perhaps requires explanation so that it stops being "without understanding". What is left of tradition though is that which is at the heart of that tradition, which has meaning and is understood by those whose tradition it is.

When we are trying to draw others to God how can we make sure that we hang on to "Tradition that is core" whilst allowing them to jettison the other kinds of tradition - even if they are an important part of our own understanding of God?

Assorted Cuttings

I read quite a lot online, and occasionally something grabs me and I want to share it. Then I realised - Doh - I have a blog! So here are a few items that have grabbed me recently:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5860202.ece on how the creeds need to be understood in the light of faith

http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/peter-rollins-reads-parables-from-the-orthodox-heretic
I first came across Pete at Greenbelt and have since read his books and found them fascinating and enlightening. He is about to publish a book of stories to illustrate his ideas and here he reads three of them on streaming video.








There is a 25 minute interview with him here: http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/peter-rollins-explaining-emergent-churches

and some videos of him discussing Emergent Christianity with Phyllis Tickle here: http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/phyllis-tickle-and-peter-rollins-discuss-emergence-christianity

Phyllis wrote The Great Emergence, which I haven't got round to reading (yet).

Credit Crunch and socialisation

I'm starting up a coffee afternoon at Cafe Africa on Fridays 13th, 20th and 27th March 2009 1.30-3.30. Drop in for however long you like. The thinking behind it is that more people are working at home, or are between jobs, and when I was doing that I realised how dependent I was on my work colleagues for a social chat. I am trying to recreate the chat that took place around the coffee machine, and at the same time to see what might come out of it. Amersham is an amazing place. When I moved here it seemed as though everyone I met ran their own charity and if a few people with a bit of time on their hands get together then who knows what might happen.

This set me thinking about the whole issue of networks. I was perhaps unusual in that I worked for the same company for 27 years and knew some people there for most of that time. There were certainly people I had known longer than my wife, and probably one or two with whom I had spent more time! I recognised that the company was my equivalent of a village - I moved house while staying with them, and many of the people in the "village" had been there a long time. This is much less common these days and yet with the hours that people are often working then it will still not be unusual to spend more time with people at work than anywhere else. But what then happens when you move on, either voluntarily or not? The networks around the home are much weaker than they were, and more people are moving more often.

So, networks at home and at work are breaking down. Are they being replaced by the internet? And is this adequate? One thing that the internet is returning is the sense of being known. Depending on how candid you are then readers of your social networking site of choice, or twitterers will start to know more about you - although unlike villages of the past this is dependent on what you wish to disclose, so perhaps doesn't reintroduce the restraint that once existed.

I don't think that the internet is any replacement for personal contact - I think that the internet allows you to retain control of your image - in a way that real life doesn't. Just think of people who take on roles in online games. If we want to love and be loved then we have to be real - but of course we fear that if we are real then people won't love us! Online we can refuse to be real and will not then find love. Of course we can also choose to be real - but that option is perhaps only open to us if we already know that we are loved. In real life people can see all of us with much less mediation and still choose to love us. And of course if we can discover the God who loves us even though he knows us better than we know ourselves, and return that love, perhaps then we can reveal our true selves more in real life and on the internet.

Modern Art

On my day off I went to London to the Tate Modern and a number of things struck me. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that art is no different to anything else - the excellent stands head and shoulders above the good. I had assumed - not being an art afficionado - that good artists painted good pictures - and for all I know the experts might agree - but my observation was that even good artists paint lesser pieces. I would perhaps compare it to sport where there are certain performers who can raise their sport to a different level. So for example I enjoy watching good quality rugby (shame I'm an England supporter right now) but even Premiership games leave me unmoved. And sometimes there are performers who will take a sport that no one watches and make it unmissable, Torvill and Dean perhaps?
Then there was the appearance of some of these lesser pieces. Some looked to me no better than things that I have seen in schools. That set me thinking about the difference between modern art and older art. Some of the modern art had little physical skill in its production - anyone could have produced it (one of the pieces was reproduced each installation by staff following the artists instructions) whereas the Old Masters appear to me to require considerable techincal ability to produce. So what is it that makes something art? Is it the technical ability required to produce it, or is it the emotional reaction that it generates? What I found interesting was that there were some pieces which generated an emotional reaction without looking like "art".
And that made me think about how that relates to religion. Worship is about giving praise to God, and prayer about communicating with God - but these can happen in a variety of ways - the important thing is that they happen - not the format in which they happen.

Oh, and the picture... One of the surprises of the day. Although no art afficionado I know that Jackson Pollock dripped paint onto canvas, what I didn't know was that he also painted pictures!

Funeral Thoughts

My dad died 4 weeks ago today - the first close bereavement that I have suffered. The time since has been one of conflicting emotions and experiences, and it seemed good to reflect on them here.



I wrote the tribute, with the help of my brothers and an old CV we found, and read it at his funeral. This is something that I know many clergy encourage - and I don't believe just for selfish reasons. Indeed I was going to follow suit as I thought it seemed a good idea. However, having done it I am less certain. There is a lot to be said for the writing of it, after all who better to get the facts right and to say what they want to say than the family, although we can also be blinkered in how we see those close to us (the vicar encouraged short vignettes from others as well as the tribute and it was amazing what we learnt about dad). It was also helpful in thinking through what we felt and thought about dad. But... when it came to the funeral itself I found it a distraction - knowing that I had the tribute to deliver meant that for a good deal of time I was focussed on that - and hence on suppressing emotions that would otherwise have been released - emotions which then took another 10 days to finally break out. I can't be sure that I wouldn't have suppressed them anyway - but it has given me serious cause for thought.

The other thing which hit me was the power of music. Four days after my dad's funeral I attended the funeral of a member of the congregation. I sat in the pews, having agreed that this was the most sensible thing for me to do. As the service progressed I thought I was OK - no real flashbacks - and then it hit me - we sang "Thine be the Glory", the final hymn at dad's funeral - the repressed emotions broke through - though not completely - that took another week and the help of a good friend. This is a well known occurrence - whilst training we had a weekend on death and dying and various pieces of music were played and someone had to run out when a particular piece - which had been played at a recent funeral - was heard. An explanation of this can be found here - after all what stronger emotion can there be than grief at a death - and music can be evocative at the best of times. This opens up for me a question to which I don't have the answer! Does that make it sensible or not to have treasured music played at a funeral?

• Pros
• It works in reverse and the music brings back happy memories
• The linking of the music to the feelings of grief will facilitate the grieving process after the funeral

• Con
• A good piece of music spoilt!

• Question
• Will the linkage work for ever, or will the impact be lessened as the process of grieving progresses?

Do let me know your thoughts - after all, I shall be helping others through this for a few years yet, and the more information I have the better I shall be able to do it.

Celebrity Lives - Know and be known?

It may not be an original thought - but the other day I caught sight of the front page of the Sun http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article2195808.ece detailing Jade Goody's cancer. This set me thinking about the role of celebrities and celebrity gossip. Village life, even today as my friends in villages tell me, is a place where everyone knows everybody else, and no one can have any secrets, yet in big towns and cities this is not the case. There are theories about why this is (why can you never Google something when you want it?) - noting that in large towns people avoid looking at others - you only need to travel on the tube to see this in action - and yet perhaps there is something there - we long to know and be known - and yet we are also drawn towards anonymity.

Celebrities - particularly those who are primarily famous for being famous - sacrifice their anonymity in return for money - and yet there is nothing mutual about it - for although they are known they do not know.

Is this good? At least people will know someone. Or is it bad because it allows us to know without being known? I will opt for bad - I think that it is actually the being known - and accepted for what we are - that matters. If celebrities and soap operas allow us to get our "fix" of "knowing" without having to be known then we are the poorer for it.


St Benedict saidsomething similar (far more concisely) "The fifth step of humility is that we do not conceal from the abbot or prioress any sinful thoughts entering our hearts, or any wrongs committed in secret, but rather confess them humbly." Joan Chittister in her commentary on this says "The struggles we hide, psychologists tell us, are the struggles that consume us. Benedict's instruction, centuries before an entire body of research arose to confirm it, is that we must cease to wear our masks, stop pretending to be perfect and accept the graces of growth that can come to us from the wise and gentle hearts of people of quality around us." (The book is serialised here http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html over 4 months and the passage above can be seen in roughly February, June and October).
If we avoid being known then we are free to maitain those masks - both to others and to ourselves - which prevent us from growing.

Clothes and Happiness

I saw two contrasting things today - the first was an advert for a conference on happiness http://www.scimednet.org/conference_pages/09_Happiness_conference.htm. This contained the information that "the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago".
Then a little later it was contrasted by an article saying that a significant proportion of clothes bought are never worn - around 50% if my quick scan of the numbers is accurate - and that in Cardiff 2/3 of respondents had thrown catalogue clothes away unworn.

The question that this prompts in me is what contribution this makes towards happiness. Is it the act of shopping that generates the happiness - regardless of the outcome, or are the people unhappy about this, but for some reason don't return the goods? Given that we seem to be coming more like America in our attitude towards our rights I suspect that it is the former, and that people are seeking happiness in shopping - Tesco ergo sum as I have heard it described.

However it doesn't work - or is there someone out there who can tell me otherwise? As soon as happiness depends on acquisition there is always one more thing to buy, one more thing to make your life better - and yet it never does. True happiness is found not by looking for it, but by serving others - For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.