Jobs: He being dead yet speaketh

Ever since I went on telly suggesting Apple was in some sociological respects a religion, people have asked me about Steve Jobs as Messiah. So today’s sad news does call for some comment, perhaps.

This may be time to stop all the clocks and disconnect the telephone, but I do not anticipate a literal resurrection.

Howbeit, quite apart from anything of historic import Mr Jobs may have achieved in his garage with Woz back in the eighties, he did resurrect a corporation.

I sometimes encounter the idolisation of business leadership, even among those appointing vicars. I never quite want to drink this particular kool-aid. When I was a lad the UK had the third or fourth greatest trading economy in the world. Its slippage to the low twenties has to have something to do with the quality of its business leadership since the sixties, that has not always been stellar. The Church hath little need for more of the UK's often class-ridden, stale, vain, self-indulgent business leadership. It’s already riddled with that stuff.

Furthermore what passes for business leadership often turns out to be no more than grumpy old men sounding off about their control fantasies, or low grade Pelagian boasting about their deservings, or saying nice things about a religion that is no more than top dressing for their own greed and prejudices.

Not so Mr Jobs. As well as providing a creative context in which the world’s greatest designers, men like Jonathan Ive, could flourish he did provide genuine moral leadership on occasion, rooted in his own experience, and free for all. In the often murky world of business leadership it shines out, as a Monty Python character once said of Oscar Wilde’s wit and wisdom, like a stream of silver bats’ pee in a dark cave.

So here, in memoriam, are two passages for pondering from Mr Jobs’ famous Stanford Commencement Address:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart..

Not to labour the point, he went on to discuss his own diagnosis of terminal cancer and say:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

as dying, yet behold, we live!

Xavier Beauvoir’s Of Gods and Men is a beautiful, extraordinary achievement. Understated at all times, highly sophisticated and understanding of its subject, beautifully scripted, it explores the life and death of the Tibhirine Trappist community in Algeria in 1996, during the civil war. The monks live a simple, self-sustaining life of prayer, kindness and service. As the political situation deteriorates, they find themselves caught in a shooting war, driven by Islamist fundamentalists. The army offers protection of a sort, but this raises other questions for the monks - questions of calling and integrity as well as a basic issue about whether life in an armed camp is actually compatible with what they believe their community should be. Do they stay or do they go?

Shrewdly, kindly observed and impeccably acted, this is a tale of tragedy and hope way beyond the scope of Hollywood blockbusters. Very few films about religion reveal as deep an understanding of their subjects as this.. Given our distribution system that gives fifteen screen multiplexes with the same film playing in 10 of them, you are unlikely now to catch the film at a proper cinema, but when it comes out on DVD in May you would be insane not to get it. Five out of five stars.
A couple of additional pieces for reflection. As he contemplated what may happen, the real Brother Christian composed in 1994 a letter to his family in case the worst should happen, that is worthy of careful reflection. Excuse my schoolboy French off the soundttrack album, but here goes:
If a day should come, and it could be today, to fall victim to the terrorism that seems to be engulfing foreigners in this country today, I would love my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and this country and also that the sole Giver of all life was no stranger to such a brutal ending. They should also associate my taking off with so many other equally violent but anonymous deaths. My life is no more valuable than any other, nor less. Anyway, it lacks the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I myself am part of the evil which, sadly, seems to prevail in the world, even the evil that could suddenly befall me. I could not seek such a death, and I could not die happy to see these people, whom I love, indiscriminately blamed for my death. That would be too high a price to pay for what could be called the grace of martyrdom by an Algerian, whoever he may be, above all if he is motivated by what he may believe Islam to be. I know the contempt in which natives of this country are already held around the world. I also know caricatures of the kind of Islam that encourages Islamism. For me this country, and Islam, are something very different. They are body and soul. This is what I have always said publicly, as I believe it and have known and seen this theme in the gospel I learnt in my first Church, at my mother's knee. This I have practised in Algeria, and always from the start in respecting Muslim believers. My death could, plainly, give substance to the arguments of those who think I am just naive, or a starry-eyed idealist. But they need to know that this will finally liberate my most ardent curiosity, in that I may be able, God willing,to submerge my vision in that of the Father, in order to see his Muslim children just as he sees them. In this thank you letter, which says everything about my llife from now on, I want to include you all, friends of yesterday and today, and even you too, friend of my last moments, who will not understand what you are doing. Yes, even for you, I genuinely want to thank you and bid this Adieu, commendation to God, May we one day meet again, in Paradise, as happy thieves, if it pleases God, Father of us both. Amen.

Finally for contemplation, a summary of the teaching of St Paul from Richard Rohr: “Brothers and sisters, remember that your life situation will not last. It is only that which you fall through so that you can fall into your actual Life, and that Big Life ironically includes death (which is the falling).”

Grim Reaper picks up sticks

Last of this year's Stick Insects has now curled up its toes. MacLeay’s Wraiths weren’t discovered until 1828, but if they had been, they’d have been popular in the Middle Ages, as reminders of slow and constant mortality. They develop papery, blotchy skin, lose their grip, and finally start falling to pieces, when, in the course of nature, something would snaffle them up, no doubt.

Bits of Tinky Winky II started falling off a week or so ago, and she ended up doing a kind of Byronic deathbed scene on leaves at the bottom of the tank, because she couldn’t hang from brambles any more but was obviously still just alive. We hope she died happy.

We should have provided piped Mahler for a kind of Death in Venice effect. Try that next year. Woodland burial out the back was this morning. We have 600 eggs for next year, expected to start hatching this autumn. MacLeay’s Wraiths live just under a year, so anthropomorphically minded fans will be glad to know that each Stick Insect Year is about 4 days....

So farewell, then: Jade Goody RIP

Some may scoff at the considerable outpouring of warm feeling for Jade Goody, but her story has touched and inspired millions of people at a gut level. Why not respect love, courage and passion for life in someone else, just because they came to public attention as loud, brash and crude? The doctrines of the Incarnation and Grace, rightly understood, make it obvious that it is possible to be both.

The old Prayer Book Litany had us praying to be delivered from dying unprepared. As we have become increasingly insulated from death it has become the great taboo, something to pretend about, rather than inescapable reality. Surely anyone fair-minded will agree with Archbishop Cranmer, who usually pitches around the phlegmatic or even sour end of the Conservative blogosphere,in his conclusion that “in her living she was vibrant and in her dying she was authentic.” Mark Russell writes:

Like the late Pope, John Paul II, Jade Goody has lived and indeed lived out her death live before the world. In doing so, she has shown courage, fortitude, guts and sheer peace. As she stared death in the face, the world watched as she got her affairs in order, and put the financial arrangements in place for her little boys. I watched her wedding on tv, and found myself deeply moved by her sheer gutsy determination. She was a remarkable person, and I have prayed for her these past weeks. I was struck by her desire to be married, and to have both herself and her little boys baptised. Today, on Mothers Day, Jade has passed away. My thoughts and prayers are with Jack her husband, and her boys Bobby (5) and Freddie (4). I am sure they had their mothers cards ready for her. I hope today those little boys know how proud their mum was of them... and they should be very very proud of her.

I was struck by Ruth Gledhill’s thoughtful, humane and compassionate response, quoting a song by Anselm of Canterbury:

Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you;
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead,
your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us;
in your love and tenderness remake us.

In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness,
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

This morning’s C of E gospel from John 20 pictures Mary standing by Jesus’ cross, wanting it to stop, but unable to do anything for her son, then being given away, as it were, into the care of Saint John. Cecil Day-Lewis descrbied such love like this:

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show --
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

So, a funny old Mothering Sunday, as we celebrate the love that over and around us lies. Life is, in fact, a precious gift, and the measure of it is the quality of our living, not external judgments or length of days.

Millions will also pray for Jade Goody, that she may rest in peace and rise in glory, and that God will give to those she leaves behind courage, hope and the precious gift of love strong as death.

Love and Death — and coming alive

Bishop Stephen brought a fabulous love poem to today’s senior staff Eucharist. Reflecting on the physicality of Anglo-Catholic worship, and the propensity to kiss altars, books, even human beings sometimes, this poem somehow made sense of breaking bread — a kind of St John of the Cross thing. The poem is from Carol Ann Duffy’s extended exploration of love’s moods and realities, Rapture.

If I was Dead

If I was dead,
and my bones adrift
like dropped oars
in the deep, turning earth;

or drowned,
and my skull
a listening shell
on the dark ocean bed;

if I was dead,
and my heart
soft mulch
for a red, red rose;

or burned,
and my body
a fistful of grit, thrown
in the face of the wind;

if I was dead,
and my eyes,
blind at the roots of flowers,
wept into nothing,

I swear your love
would raise me
out of my grave,
in my flesh and blood,

like Lazarus;
hungry for this,
and this, and this,
your living kiss.

Carol Ann Duffy, 1955-

And then, precisely timed in the great scheme of things, I noticed a quote from Howard Thurman on Maggi Dawn’s blog:

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.

Yes!

French Mists and mellow fruitfulness

A wonderful week at Saint Wandrille, resetting the spiritual clocks. Why has being here been such a major part of my life, spiritually, over almost ten years? It is a beautiful place, but that's merely coincidental. I think the real magic is the way the community just gets on with what it does in a natural, unassuming way. It has, of course, what an older brother once described to me as “nuances de communauté,” and it's important not to sentimentalise or glamorise it. But this is a place people don’t makes a fuss, liturgically or in any other way. It has an unforced generosity, a spring of grace openly available, that is the natural fruit of authentic Benedictine discipleship.

I was able this week to return to the Rule of Benedict and investigate leadership and people issues, as well as revisiting Scriptures that had slipped out of focus. I usually have to speed read stuff. Stopping that for a week and receiving wisdom at a sensible pace, going back over it and chewing it over, really is a very healing thing.

The other great theme this year was Toussaint, which is a public holiday and big thing in France. It was a bit weird to get up in the morning and find the best part of 500 people in Church, including three and four generations of some families!

Praying the Angelus regularly reminded me powerfully of a friend who came to faith on one of our early Alpha courses in Sandhurst, but, sadly, died of cancer at home a year or so afterwards. It wasn’t an easy passing. I remember spending time with her, not quite knowing what there was to say really. The prayer that hit me forcibly, and has always since made me think of her, is the collect for the annunciation, which I was taught to pray along with the angelus years ago:

O Lord pour thy grace into our hearts; that as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an Angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought to the glory of his resurrection.

All in all this has been a week when heaven and earth have been rather close to each other, in various ways...

There is Balm in Richfield, Ohio...

Only 24 hours since my Pet Stick Insect died and I’m missing it already. I know, all it did was eat brambles, lay eggs and fall apart. It was still a pretty damn cool stick insect, right?

This is a job for Pet Tribute Creations of Richfield, Ohio — people who care so much, it hurts. I realise a Giant Prickly Stick Insect may present something of a challenge, but these guys are professionals. All I do is select a theme, Jesus, flowers, doves. Actually I think Doves eat stick insects. Having one of them could be kind of tasteless. Jesus it is, seen here consoling Tiddles for the loss of Mrs Snodgrass. Or perhaps it's Mrs Snodgrass for the loss of Tiddles. Or Jesus for the loss of both? Whatever.

Then, for only $19·99 they will photoshop me Jesus with my former chum into a “small single frame — perfect next to an urn.” Actually there isn’t an urn. We, er buried it. Or perhaps we threw it out. Or the (surviving) cat might have got it. I don’t remember which, I was upset at the time. Actually it didn't even have a name. When our 300 eggs hatch out, next time, we must remember to give them all names. Perhaps I am not yet emotionally equipped to handle this pet-loss-with-Jesus thing. But give it time...

Dah dadadah dada-dadadah dadah

The last of this year's Stick Insects died this morning. Extatosoma Tiaratum — McLeay's Spectre (1827) — the Giant Prickly Stick Insect. They have six green hairs on the backs of their head and winning, ready Simpsonized smiles. They hang around on bramble branches, but will also make do with rose, euclayptus and raspberry. They grow old disgracefully, gorging themselves on leaves as bits of them drop off. We had 2. Now we've got 0. Oh, but there is a circle of life. Ours laid about 300 eggs before dying, so if anyone out there wants some, er, next February, you know where to come...

Love and Death...

Dr Randy Pausch (47) teaches computer science at Carnegie Mellon university, and is a world rated Virtual Reality Guru and Ubergeek. CMU challenges its professors, if you could only give one last lecture about the things that really matter, what would you say? Last Tuesday's “last lecture” was different. Dr Pausch is actually suffering from Pancreatic Cancer, and has only a few more months to live. He talks about his childhood dreams and what happened to them, and what's to live for, and how.
Have you got any “last words” for anyone? What would you say?
OK. If you've got more than six months to live, How are you going to live, and what for?

Above is a very brief extract of the lecture — Here's a higher quality video of the whole lecture, in context — The talk runs for about an hour from 10 minutes or so in — you can scroll through when it's running: