Punishment, Stability and Community

In my ordinary daily sequence of reading, prayer and meditation, I’ve been reading the really uncongenial part of the Rule of Benedict, chapters that deal with punshment in the community. To put things in historical perspective, corporal punishment was universal in the sixth century, and Benedict’s use of it minimal compared to contemporaneous sources. The Rule is not designed to absolutise the disciplinary practices of its age any more than the Parable of the Good Samaritan is designed to make people beat up Samaritans.

However, it is interesting to note who gets punished in the rule. Unlike our age, Benedict does not punish incompetence, human failing, ignorance, lack of spiritual intensity, failure, or saying the wrong thing openly. The rule does punish subversive grumbling, and sabotage of the community life. He expects dissent within the community, indeed encourages it as an expression of repect, but takes its toxic forms very seriously. A stable community cannot grow without basic respect, humility and realism all round. Community is not a syrupy and largely meaningless synonym for “everybody”, but a testing ground for character and motives.

So farewell then, if we want to walk in the way of Benedict, to email firestorms, hypocritical finger wagging, control by threats and manipulation, angry cynicism, and ego driven community sabotage. These need to be exposed for what they are, not tarted up with Conservative, or for that matter Radical suspenders. The community needs to be honest about what is really going on. Nobody gets punished for making bad tea, but however passionately they feel they are right, if they start slipping arsenic into it, three strikes and they’re out (another interesting Benedictine principle)

Sister can you spare an Enzyme?

My Sister’s Keeper is a Weepy, OK, and if, like some of our household, Transformers floats your boat, it probably won’t be your movie of the year. However it combines superb acting, beautiful cinematography, and clean, sensitive direction. The film delivers some very special things — characters you care about who dance deftly round the edge of an emotional precipice without falling off. The big question throughout is the one New Yorkers thronged the docks asking as new installments of Dickens arrived in 1848 — “Is Litttle Nell dead yet?” Somehow they bring it off without seeming grossly manipulative.


A brilliant film then, but what’s missing? I can’t quite work out what it is. I haven’t read the Jodi Picoult novel. It may be that this movie lacks a twist at the end, but I doubt it. A version of Titanic that ran for an hour until the captain said “I gather there are Icebergs about. Let’s heave to for the night” would gain a twist, but who would want it? Something's not quite there about this movie on a deep, tectonic level.

The whole test tube baby manufactured life theme is a bit weird. How did wonderful people like Brian and Sara manage to bring a child into the world for the sole purpose, apparently, of providing their older daughter with spare parts? Perhaps they would never have come up with the notion without their family Dr Frankenstein in his wacky kiddie-doctor ties. It’s pronounced Frunken-steen, definitely, but the whole notion is a wee bit revolting, and leaves me wondering how little Anna grew up so normal under such a cloud. Being played by Abigail Breslin, the greatest, most gifted and empathetic kid in Hollywood, must help. She does deep as well as cute, and this is good news. It could be we just don’t know quite enough about how life would have been for this golden family if little Kate had never gotten cancer in the first place.

Perhaps this is a pro-Life versus pro-Choice pediatric Kramer versus Kramer, with an assistance dog thrown in. If so, it’s a new genre anyway. If I had more basic and extreme views in terms of the US life/choice thang, I might have sat closer to the edge of my seat. As it is, we know only too well that real life is complicated, usually messy, sometimes random and tragic. Book of Job questions lurk in the background, and without giving away too much of the plot, I was glad that virtues I hold dear, family love, honesty, and mutual respect won a kind of dark victory in the end.

Solar Heating Payback Time

Avid readers of this blog may note that it started on 7 August 2007 with a piece about the new family splash pool — it cost £150 on eBay, and has brought countless hours of joy to various people from all around over the past three years. It gets, to put it mildly, intensive, almost daily use.

The day after it went in (2006), Nick came back with a bunch of friends from school who jumped into the freezing water. I went down to check everyone was undrowned, and a head emerged from the freezing waves to the immortal line “excuse me, mister; have you got a heater for this thing?” Three weeks and various old bits of washing machine linkage later we had heating but the cost of running it was not fun.

This year with the help of Ken the Swimming Pool man in High Wycombe we have bitten the bullett and upgraded to Solar Heating. The first day temperature was up to 21 degrees. After the sun today, the water reached 31 degrees, far higher than anything we have ever achieved with electricity. Going on Ken’s calculations, that’s payback in 6 weeks. Is this a record?

And this afternoon the pool sprung a leak. But that’s another story.

Michael Jackson Dead

The Death of Michael Jackson is a significant milestone, if not quite a Kennedy moment. Thriller remains the highest selling album and video ever, and cutural historians may well see him as the Elvis of his generation.

However repellent and bizarre the Sun’s “Wacko Jacko” had come to look and sound, with his strange colour, weird childish ego and nose jobs, Jackson was an astonishingly able entertainer. For all his undoubted personal and musical eclipse, he still managed to sell out a run of 50 O2 concerts next month.

Jackson’s stage act defined a central strand of a whole generation’s culture. His seamless song and dance fusion and OTT stage effects had astonishing visual impact, delivered to audiences at one fell swoop and largely without computer graphics, fusing talent, hard work and meticulous craftsmanship. Fred Astaire once phoned him to compliment him on his dancing. Along with Freddie Mercury’s performances, Jackson’s were the popular entertainment phenomenon of their age, and his videos defined the field for a new art form.

Parents may well wag their fingers and draw attention to the ludicrous aspects of Jackson’s strangely blessed and stangely cursed fifty years — they certainly give pause for thought to any pushy mummy tempted to shove her little darling onto the stage at age 6. Good news — you become an icon. Bad news — your whole life is messed up. Just say no.

Driven by a desperate need to be loved, combined with an inability to grow up, Garland’s Law still applies, in good ways and bad: “Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” Jackson’s ability and inability to do that, musically and personally, were the rub. It’ll make a hell of a movie, someday.

Join Facebook, Get Raptured

Something very weird is going on. Yesterday Dave Walker put on his blog some interesting figures about people and interests on Facebook, establishing

18,623,700 people live in the United Kingdom and are on Facebook. 4,123,460 say they are 'single', 3,722,720 'in a relationship', 873,780 'engaged' and 3,228,320 'married'. Of 8,442,940 men, 3,566,820 say they are 'interested in women', 106,400 say they are 'interested in men'. Of 9,422,220 women, 3,200,880 say they are are 'interested in men', 281,800 say they are 'interested in women'.

Interests
1,220,280 of these people like 'sex', and an almost identical number like 'sleeping' (these were the single biggest numbers I could find for any interests, though there may be other very popular interests I haven't thought of!) 909,940 people like 'school' 663,580 people like 'pubs'

Religious interests
95,400 people like 'Christ'
90,860 people like 'the Bible'
77,020 people like 'Islam'
31,820 people like 'praying'
24,440 people like 'God'
15,740 people like 'prayers'
8,860 people like 'church'
6,560 people like 'Christianity'
3,740 people like 'confession'
1,820 people 'going to church'
440 people like 'Bible study'
240 people like 'Anglican Communion'

Church Mouse added figures for 'Jesus,' 108,240, and 35,500 'Jesus Christ'

Well, having an hur on a train this evening I thought I'd check the figures for myself. Today the whole population seems to be shrinking in a frightening and mysterious way:

(Yesterday) Today
Population (18,623,700) 15,514,660
Singles (4,123,460) 3,118,260
Relationship (3,722,720) 3,283,520
Engaged (873,780) 852,520
Married (3,228,320) 3,097,020

Men (8,442,940) 7,264,480
into women (3,566,820) 3,060,120
into men (106,400) 95,160

Women (8,442,940) 7,264,480
into men (3,566,820) 3,060,120
into women (106,400) 95,160

Get the idea? Something has happened to over 3 million, who are no longer among us. Even more disturbingly, only 6,834,220 claim to speak UK English. Even more unexpectedly, with only 4,620 Roman Catholics, 38,940 claim to be “Monks.”

Shome Mishtake?

Turnaround heads, renewed schools

Good to see the Times celebrating success at Highcrest School in High Wycombe today, rightly praising the hard work that has transformed it. One of the highlights of my week has been a visit with fellow governors to the building site at Cressex Community School, also in High Wycombe.

For years Cressex was very much down the wrong end of the Buckinghamshire educational food chain. When I first visited Cressex a couple of years ago, I was, quite honestly, horrified by the utterly appalling state of buildings that had received no serious attention in years. Students encompassed a range of abilities and motivations, from pretty basic to frustrated. One or two staff were fantastically committed Cockleshell heroes, but the general picture was of containment, failure, disrespect and frustration.

When I asked a group of year 11 students how their school could be improved, I expected an obvious answer about buildings or facilities. The answer I got was completely different. “Our school would be worth going to if the staff had some continuity.” This sounded to me like students who actually wanted to learn, but had been badly let down. As a former numeracy governor (in another life), I also saw some inspirational extended numeracy work going on in year 7 — frankly a much higher standard of teaching and learning than I had seen that year in one County Grammar School.

So there was hope. Katy Simmons (Chair), fellow governors and friends in the community fought hard to have the whole site renewed, and after much struggle, Cressex is to be entirely renewed as part of the Government’s Building Schools for the Future Initiative. It’s really good to see a new school taking shape. There has been an evolving relationship with Wycombe Abbey, a centre of excellence, and one of the world’s highest achieving schools, where I am also a council member. This has involved a very high level of mutual engagement and earning, including a fantastic summer school week.

But of course renewing Cressex is about people, not buildings. Especially since David Hood, present head, arrived a year or so ago, the whole place is beginning to come together in a new way. Visiting earlier this year, I saw a couple of students who didn’t know I was watching spontaneously pick up litter. It’s noticeably more interactive, respectful, engaged. Attendance is up now, generally in the high nineties. There’s a proper and effective senior management team. A particular individual student problem was running, but I could see a team response. A larger number of parents offered places at Cressex next year are actually committing to coming to the school. These are all straws in the wind, but cumulatively the way things are going is the way they’ve got to go, if our students are to ever to receive the excellent learning experience the group of year 11’s I met three years ago never had.

So, watch this space, as the new school shapes up, physically and as a community. Kudos to Highcrest and the great work Shena Moynihan has done there. As a governor in a school that is working hard to turn around, one or two sour notes do sound, however:

1. The Government giveth, and the government taketh away. Whilst acknowledging all that is good, the National Challenge programme commits a major folly by bagging up all schools below a certain academic achievement line (30%) in one bin. There are, of course, schools that should close or merge. There are bad teachers and learners. Publicity-seeking sales puffs like National Challenge actually make it harder to turn things round, by waving the cane at everyone in the class. Crass one-size-fits-all assumptions about the process of renewal don’t actually achieve as much as our Political Wonks think they do.
   
   
2. We have a great leader in David, and the trends are visibly beginning to turn around. But he’s the first to say it’s a whole school community process, and climate does affect growth, as well as the gardener. I can guarantee renewal won’t happen without an able and dedicated educator leading the process, who's plugged in and up to the job. However, serious attention needs to be given by government at all levels to the rest of the process and the context they provide. Why will things renew? What people do you need, doing what and how? As in other selective authorities, the theory used to be that naff secondary moderns didn’t matter anyway, because their pupils would make their way in life, if they ever did, pretty much regardless of anything that had happened to them at their basic grotty schools. The strategy for anyone who showed any promise, against the odds, was to jet them out into a proper (= Grammar) school. Staff could struggle against it, students could bail out in frustration, but that unacknowledged pathetic philosophy oozed out of every rotten brick of the school I visited three years ago, every hole in the wall, every broken window, every collapsing roof. Changing that involves a different philosophical context and assumptions, as well as getting a new leader and trusting they will somehow just row the Atlantic single-handed. Staff, students, parents and governors need headroom and trust, resource and commitment as well.
   

Devil Gets Knotted in Stone

Whilst out leading the patronal festival at St John the Baptist, Stone, this morning, I couldn’t help noticing the font. Heavily restored as it has been, it is still one of the most remarkable pieces of Norman Carving I’ve ever seen.

As well as various characteristic rope patterns, it carries a strange picture of a man (Adam?), his son crushing the serpent’s head, and representations of the Holy Trinity with fish & dragons.

It came from Hampstead Norreys in Berkshire, and has only been in Stone since 1845. E. F. M. Watson described the design thus in 1906:

The Monster on the Left is the Evil One with open mouth and unknotted tail, free to destroy and hinder the free course of the Fish, that is the Christian Faith. On the right is the same Evil power, but a Hand is in its mouth and the tail is knotted; it is being subdued by the might of the Three Persons in the Holy Trinity, though it still holds in its claws a human head, whose expression is one of hopelessness and terror.

The Church guide is a bit more down to earth:

The font which is Norman is richly carved all around the bowl, with scenes thought to depict the conflict between Satan and the Trinity. A dragon representing Satan is baring his teeth and waving his tail. We then see him muzzled by the arm of the Father, pecked by the Spirit in the form of a Dove, and having had his tail knotted by the Son.

Reeling from this encounter with things fantastic, among other fine flower arrangements, I noticed a windowsill display containing Pitcher Plants — hardly your standard bunch of daffs, but they looked rather triffid-like and unusual. I imagine they also keep the flies down in the summer.

Tyrants Quake: the Twits are coming

or How new media, ubiquitous, social and global, can make monkeys out of repressive regimes ‚ incuding, perhaps, Old Media Barons’ fiefdoms. Here’s Clay Shirkey:

Two Real World Interludes

As someone who leads a strictly non-profit, but I hope not entirely unproftable, life, I don’t do advertising, but my eye was caught by the Trail of Hope. In a year Slumdog drew attention to Indian Streetkids, two friends from South Africa have hatched a vision for creating a community of Capetown’s homeless young people, under the auspices of the MyLife foundation. Albert Arcona and Tendai Joe are riding motorbikes from Capetown to London this autumn, taking in various sights along the way — the HIV/AIDS context mkes the need particularly acute, and anyone interested in Streetkids, Zimbabwe, South Africa, could well want to be part of this project.

Meanwhile, Beyond the Fringe taught us there is a time in any struggle when a pointless gesture is called for. As thousands take to the streets of Tehran, there are not many oogedy boogedy Ayatollahs using Twitter, but we know many democracy campaigners are. If they open the main Twitter stream, which we know they are using as a significant tool in getting and keeping their act together, and see a large number of green avatars, they know they are not alone, and have an instant database of overseas friends and allies.

The proposal is that anyone anywhere else in the world who supports Iranian democracy can “Green their Avatar” to show solidarity and support to people who need it, when they need it. So, that’s my futile gesture for a bit. I'm greening my Twitter Avatar for a while in support of Iranian Democracy. If you’re a Real Twit, why don’t you?

If you could see him with my eyes...

Many of us were disturbed by the bizarre way the BNP tried to twist Christian imagery in their recent election campaign to leverage decent people into Fascist ideology. It comes as no surprise that exactly the same thing was done in Germany in the 1930’s. Susannah Heschel logs the process at the highest levels in her study The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Jesus the Jew was rebranded by Eisenach Institute theologians, bizarrely, as an icon of Aryan racial “purity,” reflecting the Nationalist, Racist fantasies of the age.

But what knocked me off my seat was a Christian Century review of the book by Holocaust Studies Centre director Henry Knight, contending that we still have unfinished business with the Holocaust, and giving profound food for thought in these memorable words:

Jesus is Christianity's burning bush. His presence beckons to his followers in each generation, calling them to stand before him fully present and attentive to the rule and realm of God brought near in each encounter with the neighbor.

Like the summoning bush of Moses, Jesus' searing presence calls forth without being consumed by the transcending nature of the call. He declares with that presence, "Here I am. Where are you?" He remains who he is, Jesus of Nazareth, even as he manifests to subsequent generations the fullness of the One who calls us out of ourselves into full and responsible engagement with every other...

The confessional task of letting Jesus be who and what he is remains a critical and a persisting concern. Jesus can never not be a Galilean Jew. But the temptation to leave him behind in pursuit of an ideologically configured Christ beckons to each generation that sets out to find him. The Aryan Jesus reminds us of what is at stake.

(h/t Paul Walton)

Just what was Handel on?

Out in the car yesterday, I managed to catch, by pure fluke, a repeat of the best radio programme of the year so far — a quirky Radio 4 piece by the composer Jocelyn Pook, who compoased creepy atmospheric music for Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, on the word Hallelujah. She considered its origins and inherent properties as a singing word, visited Jeremy Schonfeld, a Jewish Cantor and teacher from Cambridge, who sang a beautiful inpromptu Hebrew Psalm 117, before heading out through Leonard Coehn, to the Hallelujah Chorus, both in its original form and jazzed up excellently by a Gospel Choir from Tottenham.

“It means more than what you’re trying to say,” said one enthusiastic Gospel choir member. Leonard Cohen himself put in an appearance to talk about an 80’s working lunch in Paris with Bob Dylan, at which he told Dylan it had taken him two years to write ‘Hallelujah,’ although in fact, he confided to us, it had actually taken rather longer. Cohen then asked about his favourite spiritually loaded Dylan song, “I and I,” and Dylan revealed writing that had taken him... er, fifteen minutes. Don’t you just love it when that kind of thing happens to you?

She also discussed Handel’s alleged religious experience whilst composing the Hallelujah Chorus, where he was found by a servant in tears, having “seen the face of God.” Anyone who can copose two and a half hours of oratorio in three weeks must be on something interesting.

Whilst this was going on Pook composed for the programme a stunning atmospheric short piece of her own around the word “Hallelujah”, with strings and a female singer weaving music around the Cantor’s recitation of Psalm 117. The result, now available on iTunes, was rather magical — the kind of radio they only really do in the UK, as it is of zero commercial interest, but 100% soul food. God bless the BBC!

iPlayer users can catch the programme for a week here.

Shrinking the Footprint

The Church environmental campaign (Website and resources here) held a launch day at Lambeth Palace, led by the Bishop of London and Joan Ruddock, UK Minister for Climate Change and Energy. People were there from every part of the country, with interesting local presentations from Exeter, Newcastle and London dioceses. This took me back to our various awareness raising sessions in the diocese in 2007, and reminded me how far we have to go.

It’s now over 30 years since the Lambeth Conference called for “Urgent and Instant Action” on this one. That call was followed by 20 years of doing almost nothing! These were the days of Mrs Thatcher, with her famous ignorance and antipathy about alternative energy. The outlook now is entirely different, as exactly the events the scientists indicated would happen are unfolding around us.

There has been real progress in the past 10 years, and scientific arguments which seemed so notional in 1978 is obvious and almost universally accepted now. This is a whole world issue — the UK only contributes 2% to the whole, but someone's got to give a lead. Copenhagen is absolutely crucial. To get it right world leaders need to pitch something real, but also doable. After years of childish denial and idiocy from US Governments, Obama is on the case, gathering the 16 nations who account for 80% of global emissions. This has to be encouraging.

People stick heads in the sand because they fear the consequences of confronting our fantasies about infinite growth and consumption, which has been the only show in town. Theologically, Christians have a rich tradition. It’s not just our measured pattern of feasting and fasting. There are big Scriptural concepts there — Shabat, Noachite Covenant, Shalom, Jubilee, Proportionality in reaping, Usury as a sin, Stewardship, and the vision of a whole earth groaining in futility for redemption. These are core messages of our theology, even if we’ve rather lost sight of some of them in the last century. It’s obviously time to focus on them again.

So what do we do? As well as joining anyone willing to come along on a public awareness changing exercise, the Carbon Trust, with whom the Church has been working closely, has developed a 5 Stage response model:

1. Mobilisation
   
2. Case for action
   
3. Opportunity assessment
   
4. Implementation Plan
   
5. Manage Implementation

We need to run several cycles of such processes at every level in our operations, building numbers of Eco-congregations, backing change in our schools (which account for a huge proportion of our emissions), managing buildings in new ways, changing our ways of life.. People need a bit of leadership and it’s all hands to the pump. Actually, there’s an immense amount of awareness and common sense in the UK about this, and the Climate Change Act was carried through with careful cross party preparation on the basis of common understanding.

We just have to get our rear ends into gear. The Enemy is Whinging Pom Cynicism, both corporate (“Anything that doesn’t solve the whole problem instantly is only a futile gesture so we’ll all have a good laugh at it”) and personal (“What I do doesn’t make a difference, so I think I’ll just carry on doing nothing”).

Pragmatically, the choices seem to be

• Mitigate,
• Adapt,
• Suffer.

The fact is we will have to do some of all three. How much of each is, to a certain extent up to us. Inaction like that which followed the 1978 Lambeth Conference call for urgent action will not get anyone anywhere, and there is time to make up.

Evangelism: rewriting the Book

Many thanks to Jonny Baker’s excellent Blog for news about this project by Improv Everywhere — possibly more of a set-up job than appears at first sight, but the gift to a random couple of an off-the-peg wedding reception for nothing, celebrated with enthusiastic strangers. It’s an interesting way of spreading Joy. To go out and enact what we believe it’s all about is surely the heart of mission? If we want to have a real impact on people’s lives in places like Milton Keynes, I wonder if this is the sort of thing we need to be doing, rather than sticking in buildings, flogging dead horses, or conventional “Come and get it” Evangelism?

BNP MEP’s: bring on the clowns?

What about the BNP’s success in the Euro Elections? It’s a wakeup call for all “Hampstead Liberals” (pictured here on the BNP website). Christianity’s inherent Catholicity, an item in the Creed, flies in the face of the whole BNP deal. Their ideology contradicts a fundamental moral law — God hath made of one blood all nations upon earth. The Christian vision of heaven, all nations, kindreds and languages gathered together, is a good description of BNP hell — the last kind of place the BNP would want to wake up and find themselves.

In these terms perhaps the European Parliament could be one of the next most hellish experiences a BNP Man, like this young BNP organiser pictured to the Right, can have, this side of the grave. Our new model BNP MEP’s may just order in a crate of Watney’s Red Barrel and sit it out, or the interactions could be educatonal. We shall see.

They have much to learn. Take a statement of Nick Griffin’s:

From Northern Ireland to Bosnia to Rwanda, sooner or later the majority of multiracial, multicultural societies fall apart in bloodshed. There may be a few, like Singapore, where with an extremely authoritarian state it works for a while, but the lesson of history is that it tends not to.

One longs to shout out the obvious reply: “Nick, there is a nation of 300 million, the largest economy in the world, a global superpower that attributes its success to immigrants building a multiracial multicultural society. E Pluribus Unum. They think it works for them, and they haven’t done badly on it.”

But there’d be little point. BNP fascism only works on a gut level. Will Cuppy observed years ago, “Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood, and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.”

The excellent Channel 4/YouGov BNP Voting intentions analysis shows that, quoting Marx on Religion, BNP ideology is “the sighing of the oppressed creature” if not exactly the heart of a heartless world. People, mostly old style Labour voters, feel frustrated, disenfranchised, anxious and fearful. Fascist ideology, today as in the thirties, taps into anger and offers some kind of emotional release.

The disconnection of the Labour party from its own roots under Blair, Sun style pop Xenophobia, and disillusionment with parliamentarians, produced this result. Politicians must listen, not only pragmatically, but in a way that reconnects with this country’s historic Christian value base, or things can only get worse.

Finally, and this is cause for profound anxiety not complacency, we need to remember the BNP vote actually went down at this election. The BNP got in because Elections go on the proportion of votes cast. The Labour vote collapsed, and unprecedented numbers of voters stayed at home. The answer, as well perhaps as superficial solutions like Internet voting, is for our politicians to understand why, and address big issues about themselves, their values and their working practice. People look to their leaders to cast a vision, to enact compassion, to model Stability expressed in Christian values and so inspire trust and hope. If they’re not getting these things from the present lot, they will look elsewhere, even to clowns like the BNP.
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