Category: Making things whole

Making things whole (in a crumbly world)

With a cherry on top. Photo by Nik on Unsplash

We are all at it. It’s extraordinary.

I’m willing to guess that whatever you do, making things complete and whole is a big part of it. The passion unites hotel bed-makers and people not burning toast and people launching space probes. Or doctors or plumbers or interior designers or teachers or graphic artists or anybody.

It’s so deep inside us: make things, perfect things, complete things, tidy things up, sort things out. Make things whole. The meal isn’t cooked (as I am sometimes reminded) if the surfaces aren’t wiped and peelings have fallen into the cutlery drawer. A bike isn’t fixed until it’s fixed. A life isn’t complete if it didn’t end well. The baby needs a clean nappy and nice clothes and to look cosy and happy. The books aren’t complete if they don’t balance. All over the world, if we could just hear it, is the sound of things being sorted out, done properly, made neat and tidy, finished, polished, dusted, double-underlined, with a cherry on top.

This is all the more odd because we live in world where everything crumbles, wears out, has its day, breaks, tarnishes, rots; or is anyway deeply flawed, provisional, partial, compromised and just not quite completely whole.

I’ve been reading the Old Testament scholar John Walton and his take on creation is that God’s involvement in it, as described in Genesis, is giving it form and function and then co-working with humans to turn back the chaos. It’s a bit of a setback when humans imbibe the chaos and become both part of the problem as well as part of the solution; a solution finally only resolved by, and in, Christ.

Here’s a fun thought though: when we (attempt to) make things whole, nothing speaks more loudly of God’s image inside us. Nothing is as fulfilling, as satisfying, as purposeful, as setting out to do something properly and succeeding. Nothing is so good for our mental health. Even if it’s just getting dressed. Every time, it’s like we’re answering some distant call from God.

Green old age

Photo by Joseph Corl on Unsplash

Last spring we held a party for three 90-year-olds in our church. In the months since, two have died and the third lost his wife of many years.

It was, perhaps, a good shout that we had the party when we did.

I was thinking about them the other day. I liked them very much. The thing that stood out, I think (particularly in the two who have now passed on) was their zest and enthusiasm for life. They gave life to people, rather than sucking it out of them (as an introvert I am sensitive to this). Bits of them were falling off into the grate, as it were, but the flame was still burning bright. I remember joshing with each of them, weeks, as it turned out, before the end.

A life-filled, green old age can’t be easy, and perhaps doesn’t always happen even with God’s saints. The Bible describes old age as ‘the clouds return after the rain’ (Ecclesiastes 12:2): it must be hard not to be depressed at yet another medical appointment, yet more health-related indignity, yet further limitation. Yet their record stands. This life, this life-givingness, is that what healing looks like in old age and decline?

Following Jesus into the darkness

‘Seeking the one who is higher than us’: photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash

When I was a student seminarian, a group of us went camping the high desert in California. I am a timid sort, but a couple of our number wanted to explore some disused gold mines. Miles from anywhere, following the map, we climbed down into one.

At the bottom of the mine was a narrow passage leading to further workings. You needed to crawl through the rubble. No way was I going there, but one of our companions did, crawling into the claustrophobic darkness, and found a further chamber. When he got back, I asked if anyone else had a headache. Everyone did. Mindful of carbon dioxide accumulating in old mine workings, we left.

I do not think too many people in their right minds would follow Jesus into a similar dark hole, dark, closed in, rubble-strewn, deserted and miles from help. We wouldn’t chose it (unless you were my camping companion). And yet sometimes we are taken there.

I was thinking about this during a jet-lagged night recently, and praying for various people I know wh0 themselves had been required by Jesus to follow him into the darkness. They did not have a choice, except perhaps the choice to see Jesus there with them.

Why does Jesus lead us into the darkness? I think because he wants to show us something.

What does he want to show us? (If we could figure that out, maybe we wouldn’t need to go into the darkness at all, saving much trial and effort). I think it depends.

  • Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones and God showed him how Ezekiel’s words could turn it into living army.
  • Hosea saw a ‘Valley of Achor’ (is that bitterness or despair) leading to a door of hope
  • Caleb’s daughter-in-law, in words that resonate down the centuries, asked Caleb, ‘if you give me the desert, give me also streams of water. ‘
  • Joseph, exiled, jailed, and then part of the Egyptian government (led where he did not want to go) called one of his children ‘fruitful’ because ‘God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering. ‘
  • Peter was told ‘you will be led where you do not want to go’ . In the darkness of a prophesyed martydom, Jesus dealt with Peter’s deepest insecurity, his fear that he would again let Jesus down again at the last.
  • Paul despaired of life but emerged with a deeper realization that God raises the dead.

No-one emerges unchanged. Following Jesus into a claustrophic mine shaft, dark, isolated, cutting your body up rough and with bad air? You would rather not. But he has something to show you.

The church and mental health (some more)

I had the privilege recently of meeting and having lunch with a clinical psychologist, who was soon to retire. In our brief time together I was interested in what (if anything) Christian communities could do to take some steps towards tackling the crisis in mental health that seems to be all around us.

Dismiss for a moment the claim that we don’t have a blooming of mental health problems so much as a blooming of mental health terminology. And dismiss for another moment the further thought that previous generations had it much worse (think, World War I or the great plague) and just got on with it.

Ask instead, if the lived experience of many today is struggles with mental health (anxiety and depression say), can Christian communities do something to help?

Interestingly, my lunch companion thought ‘yes’. I hope I am not misquoting her in that she said many mental problems—wider than just anxiety and depression—are essentially chronic conditions, that is, life-long and to be managed rather than cured as such. But she said she could get good outcomes if her work with people was combined with their participation in community things. If there were two aspects to managing an illness, one was her work, the other was a community.

This was fascinating. But, I asked her, wouldn’t this community themselves need to be trained in mental health issues? Not really, she replied. Essentially they would just need to be able to spot a mental health crisis and know whom to contact. What was more important was normal, non-judgemental acceptance and human interaction.

We have seen this in our own church, and I suspect so have most churches. Most congregations I have belonged to have contained some marginalized people who have hung onto normalcy in large part because Christian communities have accepted them and welcomed them in.

We can do this. The same congregations that, in the 1960s say, hosted large Sunday Schools, or in later decades ran parent and toddler groups and youth groups and foodbanks, can intentionally set stuff up that will give the lonely something to belong to and the anxious a welcome.

Our church started a food hub, and we noticed that people turned up way earlier than the opening time. It wasn’t just to get the first dibs on the food. Some brought garden chairs. It turned out that as much as needing food, they needed community. They enjoyed the queue.

As time went on, entrepreneurial people in our congregation downgraded the food supply and opened a cafe instead. During the recent crisis in energy costs, we got money from the City Council to run a designated ‘warm space’ for people.

And then our little church extended the cafe idea to community lunches and a monthly ‘cafe church’.

This is slow mission but it is also the Kingdom leaking into the community around us.

The small is big

It’s striking what is, and isn’t, emphasized when St Paul decides what to write in his short letters to churches. There isn’t much about fame, achievement or celebrity; nothing about goals and milestones. Not much that I can see about strategy, or mobilisation, or changing the world.

Quite a lot about relationships, though, about families, about employers and employees (well, slaves and slave-owners). It reminds me of the story of the founder of a world-wide Christian charity. Apparently there are two biographies about him. There’s the corporate biography, country after country entered, cash-flow problems addressed, new initiatives started, new staff hired, horizons falling away as the ministry soars, as it were, into the sky.

Then there’s the second biography, written by the daughter about a father who was never home.

It’s easy to criticise someone second-hand, and to simplify a complex thing to make a point. Big parts of Christian discipleship are getting our attitudes and our close relationships right. That’s a place to put effort and is a true arena of service. It’s also super-revolutionary, overturning priorities. The big is small; the small is big.

Voting

I write this after voting in our General Election but it will be published after the results are known. As any faithful readers will know, I love voting, and I love General Elections. I’ve bought some snacks to sustain me when I start watching the results in the middle of the night.

Voting in my world involves a short walk to our 12th century church, through the sunny graveyard where an old friend or two are buried, saying hello to the people at the polling station (at the back of the church), voting, checking I voted for the right person, and slotting my ballot in the box. Every part is wonderful. As the American Senator Raphael Warnock said (and wouldn’t he make a good president, methinks):

‘Democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea, the sacred worth of all human beings.’

‘A vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire.’

Such a privilege, and so simple. Not an idea, sadly, that has caught in China or North Korea, nor in a whole bunch of other countries, too many to number, where the current leaders fix things beforehand; or whine and worse after the event.

A couple of further things.

  1. The most effective prime ministers since the war, I would argue, are those who’ve led their party to replace the former lot as the governing party (think Atlee, Thatcher, Blair, Cameron; not so sure about Wilson and Heath though). This is quite rare, and so today’s vote is worth cherishing perhaps.
  2. ‘Righteouness exalts a nation’. I’m not too excited by culture-war stuff. But wouldn’t it be good to be good with poor, the broken, the left-behind? Wouldn’t it be good to fix the environment? Wouldn’t it be good to have basic common good things in place so that everyone can thrive, everyone under his own vine and fig tree? Let justice flow like rivers.
  3. The new lot will fade and die. Mrs Thatcher had the poll tax; Mr Blair, Iraq; Mr Cameron, Brexit. Let’s hope someone good is ready to replace them.

Doing fun things with old people

The world is ageing fast. Every day, 10,000 American baby boomers turn 65. Figuring out what to do with them (/us 1) is something we need to think about. Better yet if it can increase well-being across the world.

Photo by Janosch Lino on Unsplash

A recent Economist article described how some university campuses in the United States are building retirement homes. I hope they will forgive me quoting large parts of their article.

Most residents are having a ball. They get a university pass, which allows them to attend the same classes and cultural events as students, but with the distinct benefit of not having to take exams. Golf buggies can drive them around the sprawling campus, though many are still fit enough to mountain bike.

In their dorms, four restaurants serve better food than college grub and amenities include an art studio, a pool and gym, and a games room. Only the second floor feels institutional, with a memory-care centre and rooms for residents who need round-the-clock attention …

This is part of a wider trend. An estimated 85 colleges in America are affiliated with some form of senior living. The idea sprang from two college presidents who wanted to retire on campus in the 1980s. Today, universities from Central Florida to Iowa State to Stanford offer senior-living arrangements. Andrew Carle, at Georgetown University, estimates that as many as 20,000 older Americans live like this …

Bill Gates—not that one, but an 80-year-old former newspaper editor—moved to [one of these communities] with his wife, who has a PhD in chemistry, two years ago. They have made friends with residents but also, to their surprise, with younger students. “Being among young people is really invigorating,” says Mr Gates. At “pizza and a slice of future”, a discussion group about AI with pizza served halfway through, one of the topics was whether a lifespan of 200 or 250 years would be desirable. “The 20-year-olds were enthusiastic,” he reflects, but those in their 70s and 80s “had some reservations”, he chuckles.

When I saw this, I thought it was a downpayment on heaven. Being in community, attending lectures and discussion groups, surrounded by young people … oh man … what a fantastic way to spend your life’s teatime.

I heard another example from the UK. Our church used to run a day centre for the elderly. I heard of a similar day centre that had combined with a toddler group. So instead of the elderly looking at each across a circle of high-backed chairs, the elderly were looking at each other across a circle of high-backed chairs over a space filled with toddlers doing toddlery things. I can’t imagine how this wouldn’t be fun, perhaps even for all concerned.

Old people are changing. But the picture I have had of them so far in the UK is people on the edge of things, and unbelievably lonely, and deprived of the things that really matter, namely purpose and people. How astonishing and lovely it could be if they were folded back into new forms of extended families and communities; such healing, such wholeness.

The big slow: unwrapping the narrative

A few tweaks, and the Biblical story makes sense

Patient revolution needs an intellectual framework and for those of us who are Christians, our understanding of the Christian picture of God and the world can give us one.

You have to work a bit, though. The Bible isn’t an easy book and plenty of it sits uncomfortably with our 21st century cultures. Not the least of the problems is the book of Genesis, which sets up the whole story but definitely does not sit all that well for those of us brought up on the kind of reporting that checks facts, balances opinions, and prizes cool-headed objectivity.

Which is where Biblical scholarship can, at least in theory, help. And perhaps the most refreshing set of studies I’ve come across were written by John H Walton, now emeritus professor at Wheaton College.

Walton comes from the conservative and evangelical wing of things — twenty years at Moody Bible Institute for example –but his take on the ancient literature is refreshing and helpful.

I’ve just read a book co-authored by him about Noah’s flood. Which is a topic frequently avoided in polite company, but he is arguably rehabilitating it. A few points:

  1. It is, in someone’s poignant words, ‘before theology.’ This is how people in that cultural flow learnt who they were and who God was. Abstract, propositional theology had yet to be invented.
  2. It was written in a different cultural flow than the one we inhabit, and written to different conventions.
  3. The author is not ‘describing an event’ but ‘authoritatively interpreting what God was doing’. Genesis’ flood account is ‘a rhetorically shaped account of an ancient flood tradition’. You can’t reconstruct what actually happened from it in the same way you can’t write the story of Guernica from Picasso’s painting of it.
  4. It uses hyperbole. As the authors point out, if I say ‘this suitcase weighs a ton’, I am using hyperbole. People of a literalist cast of mind would wonder if I am lying. But I am not lying. They just haven’t grasped the idiom I’m using. Similarly with cataclysmic events in the Bible. To show their cosmic significance, hyperbole is deployed. If the flood really happened, it was not universal, but in the Genesis interpretation, it is described in universal terms so that we see its cosmic significance.
  5. The big picture it paints is of
    • God bringing order to chaos, so that the whole of creation becomes his dwelling-place
    • Death as God’s judgement on sin, sometimes through catastrophe, sometimes through old age, but always and everywhere, ‘death reigns’, with sorrow and sadness always following.
    • But that’s the backing music. The melody is that God reigns even more supremely through kindness and mercy, in and through his care for his people, who are themselves (or are supposed to be) order-bringers and enjoyers of his company.

So, we can see a picture of God that one day involves

  • God’s whole creation re-formed as his dwelling place
  • Humans, in relationship with him, working towards that final destination
  • Not, it is true, walking a straight line.
  • Us happy to be slow in that work, not seeing its beginning or forcing its end, but fulfilling our bit of the story.

Unveiling the Patient Revolution: 25 Years of Global Transformation

Photo by Duane Mendes on Unsplash

Looking at the news, you have to close your eyes and ears a bit at the moment. But there’s a longer view. As I write it is almost a quarter of a century since 1990. Here’s some of what I came across this week. In that quarter-century:

  • Measured poverty in the two largest countries in the world has declined from 60% of the population in India and 50% of the population in China to 2% in India and O.something % in China 2
  • Solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy have (from almost nothing) joined with hydro (which is much older) to make a third of the world’s electricity generation and a seventh of the world’s total energy use. 3
  • The UK economy has grown by 80% and its carbon dioxide output has halved.4
  • This year (2024) of elections has seen setbacks for those with autocratic instincts in India and Poland, for example, and the ANC in South Africa has been given a good shake and told to swap its self-enrichment and go back to the national enrichment project in the days of Mandela — democracy working.
  • A local charity, the Romsey Mill here in Cambridge, has altered the lives of single mums, autistic teenagers, pre-schoolers, and teens, giving them self-confidence and better life choices and incidentally saving the government a fortune.

It isn’t hard to imagine in the next 25 years, in the UK for example, the mixture of rooftop solar, batteries and electric cars spreading through the nation like double glazing did in the last generation. And just as our forebears build reservoirs in the 1930s that still supply our water today, so we’ll have energy and transport powered by the sun that generations ahead of us, as far down the future as we can see, will no longer have to worry about.

These streams of patient revolution are streams in an ocean full of all kinds of currents. But imagine a Romsey Mill in every town! Imagine the Mill as just one of a swarm, or a hive, of Christian-inspired social transformation initiatives, buzzing through the whole country! Imagine having to go to nowhere and to no-one for the energy to power our lives! Imagine poverty driven back in every place! Imagine reversing the growth of CO2! Patient revolution!

The mistaken things we are taught

Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash

This is a post is about ‘Christian problems’ so it may not be relevant to you, but it is relevant to the theme of ‘slow mission’ or ‘patient revolution’, because the Christian faith is the very essence of a slow-burning, profound revolution in thought and life. (Even allowing for Christianity’s zany twists and turns throught its long history.)

I can’t count how many times I have been encouraged from talks in churches to do the following:

  1. Pray more
  2. Read my Bible more
  3. Introduce others to Jesus and church.

Occasionally there’s a radical addition like

4. Volunteer for things in church

While this is at one level right, at another level it is completely wrong. The really big deal about the Christian faith is the transformed relationships. That is what the letters in the New Testament are mostly concerned with. That’s what the Beatitudes are about, and when Jesus is asked to summarize the law and the prophets, he comes up with love the Lord your God with everything you have and love your neighbour with the same vehemence that you defend, justify and serve yourself.

In other words, if you had a highlights reel of the New Testament, it’s about transforming our relationships.

  • Marriage ceases to be a power struggle (well, ideally) and become, s a place where each partner denies their natural power-seeking instincts in order to lovingly to make the other partner thrive.
  • Child rearing becomes a matter of unconditional love rather than performance-related benefits
  • Employees’ work becomes devotion to Jesus.
  • Employers have to recognize we’re all the same before God and treat their employees as fellow humans rather than machinery.
  • This sense of love and equality then spreads out to the poor and sick

In the story of how the Church has got on with this task over the 50 generations since the apostles, you have to edit out quite a lot of stuff, but (I argue) you are still left with a basic framework which is that this happened. The parts of the world tainted by the Christian faith are seriously different from the (diminishing) parts that aren’t. Even a nation like India (less than 5% Christian officially) has been seriously changed by an encounter with Christian thinking. Despite thousands of years of history and an evanescence of philosophical systems, it was only after a brush with Christianity that Dalits were treated as human beings rather than animals, I believe, for example.

And we wouldn’t have modern-sounding and secular-sounding things like human rights without the virus of Christianity having becoming endemic among us. (That is still why some nations see ‘human rights’ as just another way the West is trying to get one over them; they recognize how alien it is.)

(In this understanding, I like many others, have been influenced by historian Tom Holland’s book Dominion: the Making of the Western Mind)

So all the more impoverishing, if that’s a word, when Christian devotion is reduced to a few performance-management variables like how much Bible you read each day. I suppose it’s true that Bible reading gets you exposed to the important stuff, but we mustn’t miss the inportant stuff itself. In a world of spin and hype, and a coming world perhaps of AI-fakery, transformed relationships sound through the Universe like a great bell.

Humph.