I DON'T DO VOICES

The other night, I awoke around 3 a.m. as one tends to do at my age, for a natural function, and couldn’t get to sleep again. I was turning over in my mind a situation that was deeply bothering and full of complications, and that the hour of night was (as so often happens) making worse. I tried every meditative technique I know to chase it and go back to sleep, but with no success. Then, after about an hour of this, I turned to God and said, “Lord, help me to stop thinking about this”; and on the instant I heard a smiling voice – really: it was a soundless voice, but a voice – in my head that said “What took you so long?” Five minutes later I was asleep, and awoke refreshed at 7:15.

OK, I said to myself, being a fidgety intellectual: what does this mean? Autosuggestion? I know several people who from time to time hear voices, but I never had, and I figure I just don’t do voices. But if it was autosuggestion, why didn’t all the other techniques work that I’d tried? Yoga, breathing, even some Biblical meditations taken from St Francis de Sales -- so it wasn’t a turning to religion that changed things. If one is prepared to accept the existence and the possible presence of the Deity, then the key in this case was perhaps the simplicity.

I think that sometimes we over-complicate the deeps of our life. We twist and turn, mentally; we confuse conscience and consciousness (very easy in French, as they are the same word); we worry about theology, and morality, and the resistible rise of R*ch*rd D*wk*ns; we stress out about never being quite good enough, not being able to explain the ills we see in the world around us, not spending enough time and/or money on the less fortunate, not going to church, so forth. What we forget is the five-year-old who, crossing the road beside her mother, automatically and without looking sticks her hand up, knowing it will be grasped by a large parental one.

This, I think, is what is meant when we are told to be like children. And when, on occasion, we do react with that simplicity in dependence, when we stick our hand up or say “Lord, help me do this, or not do that”, it sometimes happens that we hear a voice saying “What took you so long?”

DISCIPLES OR GOOD BREAD

Mary's Well, Nazareth, photograph ca. 1900

Reading the Gospels, I’ve often wondered about the ordinary people. After all, in the three years of Jesus’ travelling ministry, there were hundreds who were physically healed by him and thousands who were spiritually healed, touched or influenced. And there were only 12 disciples, and 72 apostles. What happened to the others?

One assumes they got on with their lives, but with a difference. A huge difference for some, a subtle difference for others. And the long term must have been varied also: remember the parable of the seed falling on various kinds of soil. Yet – to cite a different parable – the leaven was in the dough, and working quietly. I’m not referring to the early Christian communities, like those in the book of Acts. I’m just thinking of the Jews and Samaritans and Galileans in whose town he had stopped, in whose house he had had dinner, in whose synagogue he had explained the prophecies of Isaiah. Or the ones who had crowded on the shore of Lake Kinneret to hear his powerful voice speak from a fishing-boat offshore. Or the ones who had sat on the ground on the Mount of Olives, heard him talk, and had then been fed bread and fish in surprisingly adequate amounts.

What happened to them afterwards? They weren’t in Jerusalem that terrible Friday: even most of the disciples weren’t. They were getting on with their lives, in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in Caesarea, and on the banks of the Jordan. Here a carpenter, there a widow supported by her eldest son; a woman who was no longer hemorrhaging, leading a normal life with an imperishable memory; a man who could now see that the walking trees were in fact people with faces; a young student who had heard the prophets and the Psalms unforgettably explained; a couple of sisters who were forever persuaded that they had seen the Anointed One, the Meshiach, awaited by all Israel since forever.

But normal lives. Getting and spending they laid waste their powers, like all of us. They dealt with poverty, bereavement, love, unruly kids, difficult employers, and all the other vicissitudes of life. Yet behind, through and in everything there was a new dimension. The Kingdom, the Reign, was in one sense already here; the Law had been radically simplified and simply radicalized; instead of myriads of commandments there were now two huge ones; and they knew they were loved.

There is a relevance here that the rhetoric of the churches is missing. They constantly tell us that we are all called to be disciples. This of course cannot be true: the disciples gave up their fishery business and their tax office to follow Jesus wherever he went; the apostles travelled all over the Near East, preaching. Their successors are today’s priests and ministers. The rest of us have a part to play, but don’t call us disciples. We are the ordinary people touched by something unforgettable. Getting on with our lives, but with a difference. Not the leaven, but the leavened dough. In France they say of someone, Il est bon comme du bon pain: ‘he is good like good bread’. And yeast reproduces.  

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD (AGAIN)

UNDERDOGS UNDER GOD

            All over the Western world, the Near East, the Middle East, what in Britain is known as South Asia, Australia and elsewhere, there is a marked rise in various forms of populism. I remember asking my father, when I was a teenager, why populism was such a Bad Thing. After all, we believe in democracy, which means rule by the people. So why is finding out what people really think and want, and ruling accordingly, not to be countenanced? And my sainted father (whose intelligence, good sense and limpid explanations I still miss 12 years after his death) patiently explained that people in the mass and their ideas (feelings, usually) in the raw all too easily constitute a mob; and that proper democracy provides the filters of representation and time: elections and the interval between them. It also entrusts the actual responsibility of governing to those who, we hope, are better educated for the task.

            He was right, of course; and yet the problem of populism, and the problems that underlie populism, remain. Most obvious among is the frustration, even the anger, that fuels this current. A French journalist recently showed that in his country this anger, which pushes an increasing number of people to the far-right National Front, aligns with a certain demographic: the “petits Blancs”, the “little white people”: those who have little education, who are in the front line for job loss, who have small and precarious incomes, and who see not just the world but their world changing from year to year. (NB: in other parts of the world, these look different – the “Arab Street”, for example – but their feelings are the same.) They don’t understand the changes and even when they think they understand them they don’t like them. Their children or grandchildren don’t do well in school, but nobody accords them the indulgence and the extra help that (they feel) the children of dark-skinned immigrants get. And when they express these frustrations, the “cultural elite” – not just the politicians, but the intellectuals, academics, and media -- just looks down on them, calls them reactionary or fascist, and basically tells them to shut up. The political Left and Far Left, which used proudly to represent the underdogs, no longer represents them, so they drift off to the Far Right which at least tells them it’s listening and that they aren’t always Wrong.

            What can be done about this? The first thing, from a Christian point of view, is to recognise that they are people, that they are God’s children, that they are hurting, and that they are in need. When we do that, we realise that the next thing is to listen, without impatience and without arrogance. Once we have listened, we can perhaps begin a conversation, since they will have noticed that we don’t look down on them. And in such a conversation, certain points can perhaps be gently raised. Example: almost everyone who dislikes a certain group of people – an ethnic group, a nationality, a social class, a professional group – will make an exception for one or two individuals, or families, from that group that they know personally. That’s a start. Perhaps some volunteers running ultra-cheap and cheerfully friendly courses on specific and practical modern-world problems would help: these already exist, here and there. Priests and ministers can help, by on the one hand showing that the Others are images of our Saviour, who died for them, and on the other hand being extremely firm about certain kinds of behaviour among their congregations. (In the Central African Republic, the Catholic Archbishop and the Imam work together closely, but I haven’t yet heard the former thundering against the murderous militias who call themselves Christians.)

            As for the problems of the economy and job losses, they too may need an approach that allows for some additional values. To cite my father again, his field of interest and research was “the Social Responsibility of Business”. (He was both an economist in a multinational and a university professor.) Nothing could be more topical in this day and age. The business of business is business, true: but as a French thinker wrote recently, perhaps today’s business people should be more involved in politics. Then they could help work out a model of society that manages to maintain well-run corporations without “downsizing” at the drop of a share, and that can create new technologies that do not always end up replacing manpower. That, as the World Council of Churches has long recognised, merits the creation of serious thinking on “Church And Society” which, if goodwill can be created on all sides, could replace the corrosive antagonisms that pollute the air.

            Sometimes the underdogs are not (only) who we think they are, or who the media have selected for the role. And charity, i.e. love, should go where it is needed.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me bring love;

Where there is offence, let me bring pardon;

Where there is error, let me bring truth;

Where there is doubt, let me bring faith;

Where there is despair, let me bring hope;

Where there is darkness, let me bring light; 
And where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

A GREAT LADY

 

Today is the feast of St Scholastica. I first learned of this in Oxford, where her feast-day in 1355 gave rise to a stupendous riot that left over 80 people dead and the city’s narrow paved streets running with blood.

Scholastica herself, I later found out, was the sister – some say the twin sister – of St Benedict of Nursia, the founder of cenobitic monasticism, in other words, monks living together instead of on their own in a desert. He wrote the great Rule which became the basis for all such communities; and it is said that his sister adapted it to found the first convent for Benedictine moniales or nuns. There is a delightful story about her and her brother, who were very close and used to visit once a year and have lengthy talks about God and the Holy Spirit. One year, when Benedict was visiting, they had talked until supper and beyond. When, finally, Benedict said it was time for him to leave, she protested, and begged him to stay with her for the evening so they could continue their discussions. He refused, insisting that he needed to return to his cell. At that point, Scholastica closed her hands in prayer, and after a moment, a wild storm started outside of the guest house in which they were housed. Benedict asked, "What have you done?", to which she replied, "I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery." Benedict was unable to return to his monastery, and they spent the night in discussion. According to Gregory's Dialogues, three days later, from his cell, he saw his sister's soul leaving the earth and ascending to heaven in the form of a shining white dove – which reminds me of the lovely Spanish song “La Paloma” sung memorably by Caetano Veloso in Almodóvar’s film Talk To Her.

            If you are a 21C non-monastic person, what do you do with someone like Scholastica? I think that first of all you give thanks that such people still exist. On this blog I have once or twice mentioned the admirable Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, that great intellect of the faith, who is one of Scholastica’s successors, having started as a Benedictine moniale and graduated to being a Benedictine hermit who translates works from the English and writes fine meditations. The religious, as they are properly known, are what you might call the salt of the salt of the earth, the leaven in the bread of the faith.

            Secondly, Scholastica teaches us that it is not only pleasing but good to discuss religion, and to do so intelligently among spirits who fundamentally agree. This is not the same as the difficult and occasionally maddening task of discussing it with those who deny not just its truth but its value: it is the inspiring activity of collaboration between like minds, allowing them to reach further than each would on its own.

The illustration is "St Scholastica" by Andrea Mantegna, from the San Luca altarpiece in Milan.

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD

Sir Thomas Browne, recounting the (mildly) heretical beliefs of his younger years, mentions this: “A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practice, but have often wished it had been consonant unto Truth, and not offensive to my Religion, and that is the prayer for the dead; whereunto I was inclined from some charitable inducements, whereby I could scarce containe my prayers for a friend at the ringing of a Bell, or behold his corpes without an oraison for his soule: 'Twas a good way me thought to be remembred by Posterity, and farre more noble then an History.” This came into my mind – as it often does – when my sister-in-law died a few days ago after what the press not unjustly calls a long battle with cancer. (Curiously, the same press never mentions such a battle as having been won, though an increasing number are.) It is a natural impulse, if one is in any way religious, to pray for the dead.

Catholics have no problem doing so: it has always been part, not only of private devotion but of the Mass itself. It is based on two doctrines: the existence of Purgatory and the Communion of Saints.

Purgatory, between Hell and Heaven, is the Church’s answer to the very natural question, “If I have faith in Christ’s resurrection and saving grace, but am still far from Heaven-ready when I die, how is that contradiction solved?” You will, says the doctrine, spend time – perhaps a very long time – in an intermediate dimension where, as the name suggests, you will be purged, purified, cleansed, and made ready for the eternal Presence of God.  And that purging will undoubtedly be painful. Reading Book I of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, one sees the protagonist, Redcrosse, being purged, at his own request, in the House of Holiness by the wise physician Patience, and a dire experience it is:

In ashes and sackcloth he [Patience] did array
  His [Redcrosse’s] daintie corse, proud humors to abate,
  And dieted with fasting euery day,
  The swelling of his wounds to mitigate,
  And made him pray both earely and eke [also] late:
  And euer as superfluous flesh did rot
  Amendment readie still at hand did wayt,
  To pluck it out with pincers firie whot,
That soone in him was left no one corrupted jot.

And bitter Penance with an yron whip,
  Was wont him once to disple [discipline] euery day:
  And sharpe Remorse his hart did pricke and nip,
  That drops of bloud thence like a well did play;
  And sad Repentance vsed to embay [bathe]
  His bodie in salt water smarting sore,
  The filthy blots of sinne to wash away.
  So in short space they did to health restore
The man that would not live, but earst lay at deathes dore.

In which his torment often was so great,
  That like a Lyon he would cry and rore,
  And rend his flesh, and his owne synewes eat.
  His owne deare Vna hearing euermore
  His ruefull shriekes and gronings, often tore
  Her guiltlesse garments, and her golden heare,
  For pitty of his paine and anguish sore;
  Yet all with patience wisely she did beare;
For well she wist [knew], his crime could else be never cleare.

For Catholics, praying for the dead in Purgatory helped them both by shortening their stay and strengthening their patience and hope.

            But Redcrosse’s purging takes place during his lifetime: the Reformation abandoned belief in Purgatory on the grounds that as we are saved not by our efforts but by God’s freely-given grace, those who are saved will be admitted to Heaven at once. (Hence Browne’s slightly embarrassed insistence that his impulse to pray for the dead was a youthful folly, later corrected.)

            Anglicans, as usual, walk a middle way, and do so in a carefully-maintained fog. The first Book of Common Prayer, of 1549, contained prayers for the faithful departed, but in the more radical 1552 version, and subsequent ones, these were dropped. Anglo-Catholics, however, do pray for the dead, and in a number of middle-of-the-road Anglican and Episcopalian churches this is practiced.

            One of the reasons this can continue to be done is the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, which states that there is – here, now, and always -- a continuum, an essential unity, beteen the faithful of all times and generations. This enables us to address both St Francis de Sales, say, and our recently-departed loved ones: we are in “communion” with them. Of course, this raises the question “What kind of ‘prayer’ can we address to anyone other than God?”

            Again, Catholics have no problem here: we can ask those who have gone before, especially those whom the Church has recognised as models of faith (the “Saints” with a capital S), to intercede for us, put in a good word for us, with God. Again, the Reformation refused this and claimed that while we can venerate the Saints, we cannot pray to anyone but God Himself.  What does this mean in “praying for” the dead? Muslims say, when mentioning the departed from the Prophet downward, “Peace Be Upon Him”.

            What we tend to do – and it is a pretty widespread impulse – is to think, or say, something like “Lord, take this person to You, receive him or her to Your presence and into your love.” And I think that most of us don’t do so with any sense of danger that if we don’t pray for X, X will not be received by God; I think we do it in the trust that X will be so received, but also with the desire to be there for X in these final moments, to add the extra energy of our love and affection to the progress of that soul. Which is really what all prayer for others is and does.