Saturday 25 June 2016

The Game of Tennis

On Sunday 10th July many people will be watching the men's tennis final from Wimbledon. Not so members of General Synod, who begin forty eight hours of facilitated conversations about our attitudes to same-sex relationships. One side believes that any such relationship is sinful, whilst the other side thinks that relationships are relationships and any relationship can lie on a spectrum from destructive and soul destroying to creative and a place of real blessing. The Anglican Communion is threatened by being broken by this debate. It has been likened to a game of tennis in which both sides are concentrating on serving ace after ace in the belief that their argument is a winner that cannot be returned. However, each player is on a different tennis court. Their arguments do not engage. There is no discussion. There is no game of tennis. The point of the shared conversations is not to assist either side to win, but to help them engage and at least begin to listen to each other.

I find the picture of tennis, played on separate courts, to be a useful one. It might also be used about the recent 'debate' about our place in Europe. Rather than debate, it seems that we have not engaged in discussion, but rather we have just shouted at one another. The shouting match has been fueled by anger at the way life is and our feelings of helplessness in the face of moving populations and lack of control in a world of increasing globalization. Many people wanted to stop the world and get off, enticed by the belief that we can get off and survive. To liken this exchange of ideas to a tennis match, in which there is no engagement, is to recognize the 'truth' on both side of the argument. Debate there should have been, which would have meant a coming together (on one court) to draw out and balance the different elements to find one picture in which the pros and cons could be seen. 

So I think the Brexit side does have an argument about the importance of democracy and the desire to have control over our own affairs. How we order our lives is tied up in our sense of self-identity. Being part of a constantly moving flow of people can bring riches, but it also risks a loss of what makes sense of life, in terms of culture and tradition. Feeling we are governed by faceless bureaucrats in Europe gives rise to a sense of helplessness in the face of a rapidly changing world. 'Take Back Control' became the central mantra of the Brexit campaign.  Yet, if we had taken part in discussion, and done so in a way in which we listened to each other, what was predictable before the vote was that to vote to Leave would take us into very troubled waters. The markets were bound to crash. Our credit rating was pound to slump, thus pushing up the cost of borrowing. Europe was bound to act to limit the damage we were going to do to it. A future trade deal was bound to be on worse terms than what we already have. We will be at the back of the queue for any deal with America. Immigration will rise as France takes the opportunity to ride themselves of the camps at such places as Calais and push the 'problem' and the people onto English soil. And suddenly Europe is a far less stable place than it was last week. Empires rise and empires fall and we are kidding ourselves if we think we can claim back any status as Great Britain. Indeed, a vote for Leave was bound to be a vote for the break up of the United Kingdom and maybe Europe too. It is a vote for us Englanders to be on our own. That is what we have chosen. All this was known before we cast our vote, but no one seemed to be listening to anything that was said. The argument of Brexit is that we willingly choose all of this, a loss of power, a smaller economy, a surrender of influence in the world, because  we think that is a price that is worth paying for the reclaiming of power over our own affairs. Let's hope that so high a price is worth paying for our own autonomy and that such autonomy does not just become isolation and decline. What is missing in all of this is the right leader to take us into the future. It will take an extraordinary man or woman (and supporting team) to pull our nation together again and begin to heal the wounds that we have inflicted, both upon ourselves and upon our European Community. It will take extraordinary transformation to move from being able to blame Brussels for everything to living with the reality that life will be what we make it. Perhaps the Church is called to stand with people in the midst of the ruins we have created, and to be a sign of hope that new life can be found, as we rebuild broken relationships and seek to create community together.




Friday 24 June 2016

Through the Wall

It was back in 2013 that we set sail on a cruise to the Baltic. My father was nearing the end of his life and, somewhat to our surprise, he offered to pay for us to go on a cruise. So we chose this one, which took us to St.Petersburg in Russia. The star visit, while we were there, was to go to the Hermitage, which is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world and the largest collection of paintings anywhere in the world. Not only is the place filled with millions of pieces of art, but the building itself is a work of art. In one room alone we were told that, if they stripped all the gold-leaf off the walls, the weight of gold collected would be 9Kg. The Rembrandts require a whole hall for their display. Before we set off, my father commented that once we had seen the place we would understand why there had been a revolution. He was right. The extreme wealth represented  by what we saw was in stark contrast to the plight of ordinary people in pre-revolution Russia. This was never a situation that could be sustained indefinitely. The wonder is that, after the revolution, the people kept their museum.

It was on this journey that we stopped off in what had been East Germany. We went on the Molli steam railway. As is so often the case on such journeys, as enjoyable as seeing the sights is the opportunity to talk to local people. We found ourselves sitting with the guide and we asked her what life had been like in the old days and what had brought down the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. She told us some of what the old days had been like. There had been a constant fear of informers and the secret police. Many would take their driving licence at the age of about eighteen, after which you could put your name down for a Trabant car. By the age of about thirty, some twelve years later, you might reach the top of the waiting list and actually get your car. What brought down the divide between east and west, she said, was television. They were not allowed to watch western TV, but everyone did. Seeing there was so much better a life the other side of the wall was what eventually turned the tide until a tipping point was reached and the barrier could no longer be sustained.

I have started reading the book 'End Game', by Professors Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly. Their argument is that is any system there may be a tipping point in which sudden change occurs. Not much might have been seen to be happening beforehand, but many elements of the system were reaching their limits until, very suddenly, change comes. One element in their argument is that population size is out of control and we will suddenly reach a point at which the human species can no longer thrive or even survive. We already find that there is more traffic on the roads, greater competition for such things as jobs or college places and growing tensions over who owns which of our planet's resources. Extreme differences in wealth are creating instability within our society and we may be reaching a tipping point in which such injustice becomes unsustainable. Migration has become a global challenge, with more the fifty million displaced people in our world today. It seems to me that what exacerbates this situation is not television, as was the case in East Germany, but smart phones. We live in a complex world in which many factors affect people's lives, including overcrowding, war, famine, poverty, lack of water and so on. If it appears that there is a better life to be had the other side of the wall, then dissatisfaction can spread as instantly as social media allows and suddenly a lot of people are on the move, searching for that new life. It appears to me, in such a situation, that trying to limit immigration simply has no hope of working. Barriers exist to help the richer country maintain its wealth, often at the expense of the poorer country. The situation becomes a question of justice and what is unjust simply cannot ultimately win.

We have just voted to leave the EU and one of the major factors in that decision has been people's worry about immigration. Maybe we will be able to cope better with the challenge by having more control over our own borders, although we risk increasing isolation by doing so. However, if we think we can keep ourselves safe (and isolated) behind our walls, we are kidding ourselves. Thanks to social media, the 'others' can see what is on our side of the wall and, one day, the wall will come down.




Sunday 5 June 2016

Europe

For all my ordained ministry I have been very much involved in ecumenism. I suppose I have been lucky, for I have experienced at first hand the vibrancy and excitement of working with others to establish something new and to do it with people of very different traditions, whose very difference brings new riches to the partnership. Difference becomes a blessing. What unites us is not being the same, but bringing our difference to a common creative vision. I once heard someone say that, in any organisation, what is needed is both pioneers and settlers. The Wild West could only have been won by pioneers, but then people needed to put down roots and settle. Both the pioneering and the settling had their part to play. There would be nothing to settle without the pioneering, yet people need to put down roots and establish systems and conventions, if culture and society is to flourish.

I find this a helpful perspective. Yet, in terms of ecumenism, we cannot just see this in linear terms of pioneering leading on to a calmer time of settlement. My experience is that, ultimately, that never works. I believe that the Church comes alive when its members are drawn together in a common task which fires the imagination and releases creative energy. The best of ecumenism comes when churches together are drawn into such a shared endeavour. What epitomises such creativity is leadership (clergy and lay), whose shared vision is both infectious and inspirational. That has been my experience and that is why I am an enthusiastic ecumenist. It draws us into that oneness that was Jesus’ prayer for us and it is through such oneness that the Spirit is known and the mission of the Church comes alive. Settling, by which I mean putting down roots and establishing shared ways of doing things, is an essential part of any such endeavour. It is about building for an ongoing future. Yet, when that future arrives, it can found that the spirit has gone out of what was once so life-giving. Those who had led the vision have moved on and others have taken their place, others who were never part of that vision. Ecumenism then becomes a matter of sitting around in committees and keeping structures going. What once had been so creative, vibrant and energising has now become time-consuming and something that eats up energy. We ought to keep channels of communication open, but the life has gone out of that shared enterprise we once found so exuberantly life-giving.


As I ponder how I might vote at the forthcoming referendum over our future in Europe, I feel a number of emotions. I am confused by the wild rhetoric of the two sides and their various hidden (or not so hidden) agendas. I am angry at political leaders, who seemly are failing to set out the issues in a calm and rational way that might help people to make this decision. I do not feel that we are being well served by the manner of this ‘debate’. Indeed, a good deal of wounding is going on, from which it may take our nation a long time to recover. But then I wonder whether the confusion of these days is simply a reflection of a society which has lost its way. The vision of what Europe might be, with any sense of us being drawn into an enterprise which gives purpose, or leads us into life-giving new possibilities, seems to have given way to a edifice in which managing the structures have become the very purpose of our shared life together. That has long ceased to be an attractive and energising thing. Rather, the energy (and money) eaten up, by what is no longer seen to be a worthwhile enterprise, has come to be resented. What is missing is a shared vision of what is could mean to be European and the shared leadership that could give form and direction to that vision.  Calculating how to vote, by asking what we might get out of this situation, is simply symptomatic of how far we are from the kind of shared vision that would make the European project a dream that empowers us and leads us to discover an exciting future.