So we hope that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani will escape death by stoning in Iran, though they still might find some other way to kill her.
John’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus confronted by a righteous mob about to stone a woman accused of adultery. “The law says we should stone this woman,” they say to Jesus, hoping to trap him, “what’s your opinion?” Jesus says nothing, just sits there doodling in the sand. They press their question until Jesus finally looks up, says, “That one of you who is faultless shall throw the first stone,” then returns to his doodling. Sheepishly they all drift away until Jesus and the woman are left together. I can imagine Jesus looking round with mock surprise before saying with a twinkle in his eye, “Oh! Where are they all? Haven’t they condemned you?” “No, sir,” she replies. “Nor do I,” says Jesus, “Go, and do not sin again."
What is not so well known about this story is that the early Christians were worried about it. They didn’t know what to do with it. These days it appears in the 7th chapter of John’s Gospel beginning at verse 53 but in some of the very earliest manuscripts it is missing, or is placed in chapter 21; in others you find it in Luke’s Gospel at chapter 21, verse 38. Fortunately most of them were too honest to cut it out but clearly the startling moral liberality of Jesus was a problem for them. Of course, the story lacks the depth and subtlety of the actual human encounter between Jesus and the woman. A little bit of explanation might help us anxious moralists. What we’ve got are clues in some of the stories or parables Jesus told, like the one usually called ‘the prodigal son’. (Luke’s Gospel chapter 15 verse 11)
The ‘prodigal’ goes off to a foreign country and squanders his inheritance in riotous living. When he reaches rock bottom he has a change of heart and decides to go home. On his way he rehearses what he’s going to say to Dad when he gets back: “Father I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.” His father, who has been longing for his home-coming, rushes out to greet him with hugs and kisses. Son tries to go through with his stiff, formal, rehearsed statement but Dad interrupts him with delighted preparations to celebrate his return.
At one level the point of the story is pretty clear: God loves us and will always welcome us when we ‘repent’ and return. However, it’s not ‘the parable of the prodigal son’: it’s the story of two sons. The second one never left home and he resents the celebrations laid on for his feckless brother. Dad says to him, “Look, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours.” So apparently, you can stay at home physically and just not get it: just not understand what home really is. There you are, keeping all the rules (even ones which say that adulterous women should be stoned to death) and somehow it’s not a happy place to be. Sticking to the letter of the law sows the seeds of resentment and anger because others are ‘getting away with it’. “I have to be hard on myself to keep these rules and there you are going off and just doing what the hell you like!”
No wonder they crucified Jesus! You can’t live like that can you!
Or can you?
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Lost in translation?
For the next edition of A History of the World in 100 Objects, they are going to translate something from English into French, from French into Greek and finally from Greek back into English using a standard internet translator thingy. The idea is to show how garbled things can get in such a process.
I ended my last blog with the word ‘compassion’. I’m reading a book with that title by Christina Feldman who is a Buddhist. It occurs to me that perhaps ‘compassion’ is more a Buddhist than a Christian word so I turn to my New Testament Greek lexicon. My computer skills don’t run to printing the Greek word which is translated ‘compassion’ so here’s a rough transliteration of it: splagxnizomai. It occurs five or six times in Matthews Gospel, four times in Mark and three in Luke (for example the Good Samaritan in the famous parable has compassion on the mugged traveller). There’s a dramatic use of the associated word ‘splagxnon’ in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter one) where some unfortunate has a serious fall so that ‘he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out’! So compassion in New Testament Greek is a matter of the guts: it’s visceral. When Oliver Cromwell said, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”, he was trying to have an argument in a compassionate way.
Now, the writer of John’s Gospel is not interested in the guts – never once uses the word. He’s your man for ‘agape’: one of the New Testament Greek words for ‘love’. Two of the others are, ‘eros’(from which comes our word ‘erotic’) and ‘philia’ (sort of ‘family love’). So you might be forgiven for thinking that love in the Christian tradition is somehow more of a mental attitude than a response of the whole person – body as well as mind and spirit; and you’d be in good company. Down the ages us Christians have been suspicious of our bodies; treacherous things leading us into lust; not at all helpful when it comes to loving our neighbours (never mind ourselves). But suppose we got it wrong from the beginning? Jesus spoke Aramaic not Greek. What was his word for love? Did we lose something in translating it into Greek? If there’s an expert in Aramaic out there who can help me I’d be very grateful.
Does it matter? It matters to me because, as my body begins to remind me that I am entering old age, I am coming to appreciate more deeply that it’s the only one I’ve got. With my discovery of contemplative prayer has come a much more respectful attitude to my body, including its aches and pains. I realise that there is no other way to the 'eternal' than through this transient physical form. It’s the only way to the attitude Wordsworth was exploring in the poem I quoted last week:
Is that best described by the word ‘love’ or by ‘compassion’? Given our mangling of the word love, I prefer compassion.
I ended my last blog with the word ‘compassion’. I’m reading a book with that title by Christina Feldman who is a Buddhist. It occurs to me that perhaps ‘compassion’ is more a Buddhist than a Christian word so I turn to my New Testament Greek lexicon. My computer skills don’t run to printing the Greek word which is translated ‘compassion’ so here’s a rough transliteration of it: splagxnizomai. It occurs five or six times in Matthews Gospel, four times in Mark and three in Luke (for example the Good Samaritan in the famous parable has compassion on the mugged traveller). There’s a dramatic use of the associated word ‘splagxnon’ in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter one) where some unfortunate has a serious fall so that ‘he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out’! So compassion in New Testament Greek is a matter of the guts: it’s visceral. When Oliver Cromwell said, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”, he was trying to have an argument in a compassionate way.
Now, the writer of John’s Gospel is not interested in the guts – never once uses the word. He’s your man for ‘agape’: one of the New Testament Greek words for ‘love’. Two of the others are, ‘eros’(from which comes our word ‘erotic’) and ‘philia’ (sort of ‘family love’). So you might be forgiven for thinking that love in the Christian tradition is somehow more of a mental attitude than a response of the whole person – body as well as mind and spirit; and you’d be in good company. Down the ages us Christians have been suspicious of our bodies; treacherous things leading us into lust; not at all helpful when it comes to loving our neighbours (never mind ourselves). But suppose we got it wrong from the beginning? Jesus spoke Aramaic not Greek. What was his word for love? Did we lose something in translating it into Greek? If there’s an expert in Aramaic out there who can help me I’d be very grateful.
Does it matter? It matters to me because, as my body begins to remind me that I am entering old age, I am coming to appreciate more deeply that it’s the only one I’ve got. With my discovery of contemplative prayer has come a much more respectful attitude to my body, including its aches and pains. I realise that there is no other way to the 'eternal' than through this transient physical form. It’s the only way to the attitude Wordsworth was exploring in the poem I quoted last week:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”
Is that best described by the word ‘love’ or by ‘compassion’? Given our mangling of the word love, I prefer compassion.
Friday, 25 June 2010
Planets, plants and people.
I don’t know who Edmund Spencer had in mind when he wrote the following sonnet in 1595 but even if it was simply a woman, like all good poetry it means more than it says.
We look in lots of places (even in monasteries and churches) for the truth about ourselves and then finally, if we are lucky, we find it in the depths of ourselves; and this leads, not to introspection, but to a sense of our being one with all that is: ‘planets, plants and people’ as someone said to me only this morning.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”. He coined the words ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’; ‘inscape’ meaning, “....that individually-distinctive form (made up of various sense-data) which constitutes the rich and revealing ‘oneness’ of the natural object....”; ‘instress’ meaning, “.... that energy of being by which all things are upheld...that natural (but ultimately supernatural) stress which determines an inscape and keeps it in being .... but not only the unifying force within the object; it connotes also that impulse from the inscape which acts on the senses....”
It’s relatively easy to appreciate the beauty of the so-called ‘natural’ world without allowing that human beings are part of it. (Planets, plants and people.) Wordsworth, another poet deeply moved by nature, allowed the inscape and instress to lead him into the depths of himself:
(From ‘ Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.’)
To ‘see into the life of things’ (including people) is to be aware of their instress (their ‘thisness’) and their inscape (that which holds them, as well as me, in being) and this awareness constitutes the beginning of compassion.
Lacking my love I go from place to place,
Like a young fawn that late hath lost the hind:
And seek each where, where last I saw her face,
Whose image yet I carry fresh in mind.
I seek the fields with her late footing signed,
I seek her bower with her late presence decked,
Yet nor in field nor bower I her can find:
Yet field and bower are full of her aspect.
But when mine eyes I thereunto direct,
They idly back return to me again,
And when I hope to see their true object,
I find myself but fed with fancies vain.
Cease then my mine eyes, to seek herself to see,
And let my thoughts behold herself in me.
We look in lots of places (even in monasteries and churches) for the truth about ourselves and then finally, if we are lucky, we find it in the depths of ourselves; and this leads, not to introspection, but to a sense of our being one with all that is: ‘planets, plants and people’ as someone said to me only this morning.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”. He coined the words ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’; ‘inscape’ meaning, “....that individually-distinctive form (made up of various sense-data) which constitutes the rich and revealing ‘oneness’ of the natural object....”; ‘instress’ meaning, “.... that energy of being by which all things are upheld...that natural (but ultimately supernatural) stress which determines an inscape and keeps it in being .... but not only the unifying force within the object; it connotes also that impulse from the inscape which acts on the senses....”
It’s relatively easy to appreciate the beauty of the so-called ‘natural’ world without allowing that human beings are part of it. (Planets, plants and people.) Wordsworth, another poet deeply moved by nature, allowed the inscape and instress to lead him into the depths of himself:
“Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: - that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, -
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”
(From ‘ Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.’)
To ‘see into the life of things’ (including people) is to be aware of their instress (their ‘thisness’) and their inscape (that which holds them, as well as me, in being) and this awareness constitutes the beginning of compassion.
Friday, 18 June 2010
Promises, promises
Like the debris which now floats in space the internet is littered with abandoned blogs. I am aware of not posting anything for weeks now. If anyone out there actually likes to read what I write, I apologise for disappointing you. But what to do? My wife, Yvonne, suggests promising just one posting a week. I’ll try it!
We’ve just returned from two weeks on the Greek island of Symi. Above the magnificent harbour is the church of Evangelismos with its tessellated pavement and tall cypress trees, each surrounded by a little wall exactly the right height to sit on. There, in the shade, with a gentle breeze to cool me, and a view across the water to the tumbled mountains of Turkey, as the yachts of the rich came and went below, I took to settling down for a daily meditation. I use a prayer word (or mantra) to help me focus: ‘Be still’, with ‘be’ on the in-breath and ‘still’ on the out-breath. It’s a phrase which has echoes of Psalm 46: ‘Be still and know that I am God’, and of Jesus’ words in calming the fears of the disciples when caught in a storm on lake Galilee. After a while I noticed that the pigeons on Symi have a simpler coo to those in London. It’s a three note call: a short beginning, a longer middle, and a much shorter third note – coo-cooooo-co. I heard, ‘be s-t-i-l-l now’. There was no need for me to repeat my prayer word. The pigeons were doing it for me!
The word ‘holiday’ comes from ‘holy day’ in the days when Christian festivals provided the only available break from work. Holidays on Symi are a bit like that. Life is simplified; no newspapers or television; and not much in the way of ‘entertainment’. I had taken with me, Martin Laird’s book ‘Into The Silent Land’. I know it well; in fact I had become over-familiar with it. This time, I read it slowly and mindfully, re-discovering its hidden treasures, and understanding, for the first time really, what he means by ‘the liturgy of our wounds’.
Stuff is stored away in our brains from earliest times and it’s the painful bits which seem to float up (or sometimes erupt) into consciousness; it’s the persistent annoying mental tics which never seem to give up, especially when one is trying to ‘be still’. I learnt this time to be compassionate with all that; to let it be, to forgive myself; to understand that this human body with its marvellous mental apparatus, its persistent weakness and failure and, ultimately, its death, is also the vehicle of – what? Some call it God but that word presents so many difficulties. Martin Laird is fond of paradoxical statements like ‘depthless depth’ and ‘the groundless ground that is the core of all being’. He writes, “The very attention that gazes into this vastness is itself this vastness, luminous depth gazing into luminous depth. You are the vastness into which you gaze.”
Buddhists can describe this sort of thing somewhat less paradoxically but then they don’t have to cope with a tradition of God as an object out there. Still you cannot be much more direct and simple than Martin Laird’s, “God does not know how to be absent”.
See you next week, I hope (promises, promises).
We’ve just returned from two weeks on the Greek island of Symi. Above the magnificent harbour is the church of Evangelismos with its tessellated pavement and tall cypress trees, each surrounded by a little wall exactly the right height to sit on. There, in the shade, with a gentle breeze to cool me, and a view across the water to the tumbled mountains of Turkey, as the yachts of the rich came and went below, I took to settling down for a daily meditation. I use a prayer word (or mantra) to help me focus: ‘Be still’, with ‘be’ on the in-breath and ‘still’ on the out-breath. It’s a phrase which has echoes of Psalm 46: ‘Be still and know that I am God’, and of Jesus’ words in calming the fears of the disciples when caught in a storm on lake Galilee. After a while I noticed that the pigeons on Symi have a simpler coo to those in London. It’s a three note call: a short beginning, a longer middle, and a much shorter third note – coo-cooooo-co. I heard, ‘be s-t-i-l-l now’. There was no need for me to repeat my prayer word. The pigeons were doing it for me!
The word ‘holiday’ comes from ‘holy day’ in the days when Christian festivals provided the only available break from work. Holidays on Symi are a bit like that. Life is simplified; no newspapers or television; and not much in the way of ‘entertainment’. I had taken with me, Martin Laird’s book ‘Into The Silent Land’. I know it well; in fact I had become over-familiar with it. This time, I read it slowly and mindfully, re-discovering its hidden treasures, and understanding, for the first time really, what he means by ‘the liturgy of our wounds’.
Stuff is stored away in our brains from earliest times and it’s the painful bits which seem to float up (or sometimes erupt) into consciousness; it’s the persistent annoying mental tics which never seem to give up, especially when one is trying to ‘be still’. I learnt this time to be compassionate with all that; to let it be, to forgive myself; to understand that this human body with its marvellous mental apparatus, its persistent weakness and failure and, ultimately, its death, is also the vehicle of – what? Some call it God but that word presents so many difficulties. Martin Laird is fond of paradoxical statements like ‘depthless depth’ and ‘the groundless ground that is the core of all being’. He writes, “The very attention that gazes into this vastness is itself this vastness, luminous depth gazing into luminous depth. You are the vastness into which you gaze.”
Buddhists can describe this sort of thing somewhat less paradoxically but then they don’t have to cope with a tradition of God as an object out there. Still you cannot be much more direct and simple than Martin Laird’s, “God does not know how to be absent”.
See you next week, I hope (promises, promises).
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Speaking personally
Pentecost!
Listening to a ‘homily’ this morning, I am reminded of Harry Williams’s dictum: ‘I am not speaking theologically unless I am speaking personally’. Too many sermons are confined to rehearsing the ‘facts’ presented in a Bible passage, together perhaps with reference to what the church has, over the centuries, made of these ‘facts’ liturgically. Thus the possibility that this episode might speak to me - now is missed. This kind of talk tells us nothing much about the speaker and conveys little of immediate value to the hearer.
Whatever else it was that the author of Luke/Acts was trying to express, it was certainly about conveying an experience; communicating it in a penetrating and exciting way to people of many different cultures and languages. This kind of ‘talk’ is only achieved through presence in the most profound sense of the word: Presence which transcends words.
But also, one doesn’t always need to get excited about it! Joy and excitement or enthusiasm are not inseparable. There is a deep still, silent joy as well as a wild enthusiastic one.
Listening to a ‘homily’ this morning, I am reminded of Harry Williams’s dictum: ‘I am not speaking theologically unless I am speaking personally’. Too many sermons are confined to rehearsing the ‘facts’ presented in a Bible passage, together perhaps with reference to what the church has, over the centuries, made of these ‘facts’ liturgically. Thus the possibility that this episode might speak to me - now is missed. This kind of talk tells us nothing much about the speaker and conveys little of immediate value to the hearer.
Whatever else it was that the author of Luke/Acts was trying to express, it was certainly about conveying an experience; communicating it in a penetrating and exciting way to people of many different cultures and languages. This kind of ‘talk’ is only achieved through presence in the most profound sense of the word: Presence which transcends words.
But also, one doesn’t always need to get excited about it! Joy and excitement or enthusiasm are not inseparable. There is a deep still, silent joy as well as a wild enthusiastic one.
Monday, 12 April 2010
Approach and avoidance.
A passage in ‘The Mindful Way Through Depression’ helps me deal with yesterday’s collapse of the Now Show. As always, of course, it is something I already know but forget when it is needed. In this case a new helpful angle, however, is the distinction between the brain’s avoidance mode and its approach mode. Approach mode is Thomas Keating’s ‘Welcome Prayer’ in Buddhist dress. The heading is ‘Befriending Thoughts and Feelings’.
In the evening I hear Philip Pullman at the Queen Elizabeth Hall talking about his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. He refers at one point to the impracticality of ‘Consider the lilies of the fields .... Take no thought for the morrow....’ He clearly doesn’t know about Keating’s ‘Wisdom’ approach to the message of Jesus. For example in a yoga/meditation session I have a plan, a goal: the sequence of poses – but it is important to take each moment as it comes, each pose and each transition is to be accomplished here and now without anticipation or judgement. Take no thought for the morrow does not preclude plans and goals. It is just that any journey, however long and complicated, begins with one step and continues moment by moment with each step.
“In doing this work, we are learning how important it is to bring mindfulness to those times that we become alerted to the presence of unpleasant thoughts and feelings. It is tempting at such times to switch our attention away as soon as we detect that the thoughts and feelings are unpleasant and to return our attention back to the haven of the breath. But it is more skilful to pause long enough to bring to them a spirit of gentle inquiry and curiosity, an investigative awareness. ‘Ah there you are; let me see who you are’. In this way .... we are in much better shape to become familiar with the content of recurring messages. Furthermore, this sense of openness, curiosity, and exploration will activate the approach mode of the brain. In itself, this will directly counteract the avoidance mode and so provide a further steadying influence that can prevent us from getting caught up in and carried away in all our own imaginings.” (Page 176/7)I love the calm, scientific tone of this, carrying no religious overtones at all. I had walked down the road to Cafe Nero and, having read this there, walked back a totally different person, set free from oppressive and afflictive thoughts. People must have had that experience when they encountered Jesus.
In the evening I hear Philip Pullman at the Queen Elizabeth Hall talking about his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. He refers at one point to the impracticality of ‘Consider the lilies of the fields .... Take no thought for the morrow....’ He clearly doesn’t know about Keating’s ‘Wisdom’ approach to the message of Jesus. For example in a yoga/meditation session I have a plan, a goal: the sequence of poses – but it is important to take each moment as it comes, each pose and each transition is to be accomplished here and now without anticipation or judgement. Take no thought for the morrow does not preclude plans and goals. It is just that any journey, however long and complicated, begins with one step and continues moment by moment with each step.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Getting it wrong!
In meditation this morning: a wave of compassion for Paul of Tarsus who occasionally got it so wrong!
“For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself shall descent from heaven .... then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”It is easy to forget what a different world they inhabited; and yet, and yet: “If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”
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