happy ever after?

 

Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ has a happy-ever-after ending, of sorts. But in ‘Theogany,’ Homer’s contemporary Hesiod gives Odysseus a different ending.

Here, Circe bears sons fathered by Odysseus. Eventually, after Odysseus has returned home to Ithaca and been reunited with his wife Penelope, and their son, Telemachus, Circe informs her youngest son, Telegonus, of his father’s identity. Telegonus travels to Ithaca in search of his father, who is away at war (again), but, on discovering this, Telegonus sets about in a rage. Odysseus returns, confronts him, and Telegonus, not knowing who stands before him, kills his father with a poison-tipped spear, given him by his mother for protection.

Telegonus goes on to reveal his identity to Penelope and his half-brother Telemachus. Together, they sail to Circe with Odysseus’ corpse, and he is buried on her island. Circe grants her son, her lover’s son, and her lover’s widow the gift of immortality. On the advice of Athena, Circe married her lover’s son, Telemachus; and Penelope marries Telegonus, her husband’s son by his lover.

It is messy.

And there is no happy-ever-after. Even immortality cannot secure that.

Whether we get a happy ending or not is, perhaps, always a matter of perspective, certainly rather than wish-fulfilment or rushing to wrap the narrative up.

We cannot escape the consequences of our actions. We can, perhaps, together, make and maintain peace. We can rebuild a life, though not one we can control as it impacts the lives of others.

Our stories—which may be told at our funeral if not before—can be told from a variety of perspectives; some more positive than others. We ought to try to listen to whatever story is offered, even those we find hard to hear—especially those we find hard to hear—as they contain an element of common ground we have fought over.

 

pigs

 

In ‘The Odyssey’ Book X, Odysseus lands on the island of the ‘polypharmakos’ (one who weaves many drugs into potions) Circe, who lives in exile without a father, or brother, or male guardian to protect her.

Seeing smoke rising from her chimney, some of Odysseus’ crew set out to investigate. Coming close to her hall, they are drawn by her singing, as she sits and weaves at her giant loom. All but one enter her hall, whereupon she bids them eat and drink drug-infused fare, and then transforms them into pigs, and corrals them in her sties.

This is a pre-emptive defence, based on years of ships’ crews landing, coming to her door, revealing in their eyes intention to take first her body, and then her treasured possessions, for themselves (see Virgil’s ‘Aeneid,’ Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’—and, for a beautiful modern retelling of Circe’s story, see Madeline Miller’s ‘Circe’).

Informed of their fate by the one more wary sailor, and both instructed and protected by the god Hermes, Odysseus confronts Circe and forces her to return his crew to human form.

In Christopher Nolan’s new big screen adaptation, she does so saying, hauntingly, ‘Return to your disguise, Return to your disguise.’

(For a contrasting view, Plutarch’s ‘Moralia’ (Book XII, 67) contains ‘Beasts are Rational’ (Bruta animalia ratione uti) in which Circe permits Odysseus to have a conversation with Gryllus, a fellow-Greek transformed into the body of a pig while retaining the mind of a man, in which Gryllus argues that his life is happier in his present state, and that pigs are more noble than men.)

(An aside: I have written elsewhere about the wider parallels between ‘Odyssey’ chapter X and ‘Luke’ chapter 8.)

In ‘Journey to the West’ the General of the Heavenly Navy-soldiers, or marine commandoes, is thrown out of heaven for drunkenly attempting to seduce the moon goddess. Falling to earth to be (re-)incarnated, he lands in a well for watering pigs, and takes on a monstrous half-human, half-pig form. Many years later, this lazy, gluttonous, lustful being encounters the personification of Mercy, and is given the name Zhu Bajie, or Pig Awakened to Abstinence—that is, to the power and ability to exercise self-control.

Both stories, one 3,000 years old from Greece, the other 500 years old from China (though each sits within traditions that weave them into both earlier and later texts) employ zoomorphism to explore the shadow personality we try to hide; the true, or noble, form of a healthily integrated life; and the possibility of transformation—in either direction. Neither story arises within a Christian context, but both speak to the Christian concepts of vices—including lust, gluttony, and laziness—and virtues—including chastity, temperance and diligence.

Appetite is common to humans and other animals. To become fully human is not to transcend appetite but to learn mastery—leadership, captaincy—over our appetites, which can make for good companions but sometimes make unwise choices (such as Odysseus’ men letting the wind that had carried them to within sight of home out of the bag, blowing them back from where they had come, before they arrive at Circe’s shore). There is a nobility to this, that does not arise from status among men (or pigs) but is inherent to every creature—human, pig, otherwise (so, at the end of the ‘Journey to the West,’ Zhu Bajie, who has not yet fully embraced the virtues of Abstinence, is not given back his divine form but remains half-human, half-pig, and is restored to the lower, earth-bound, rank of Cleaner of the Altars).

We are also more than capable of debasing ourselves and becoming what we are not (whether or not pigs are more noble than humans; whether or not men make very good pigs). Of needing to be saved from our own actions, or intentions—even unacted on—by Mercy intervening to protect others and to send us into an experience of desolation and of consolation—of coming to the full, terrible, consequences of our lostness, and to the re-orienting, re-conferring promise of grace, that points us towards the homecoming we long for, and strengthens us for the still-long and at times arduous journey it will take to get there.

Every culture has to wrestle with such things. And every tradition—including faith traditions—has a framework for this work.

Where have you seen yourself, with newfound clarity, for less-than fully human?

And where have you experienced the intervention of Mercy, to restore you to humanity?

What practices have you found helpful in engaging with this process?

 

zoomorphism

 

The west window at St Nicholas Church, Sunderland depicts Jesus on the throne of heaven, surrounded by the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who are traditionally depicted as a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle.

I am thinking about the representation of human character, and of the transformation of character, through animals (zoomorphism.

In the sixteenth-century Chinese epic Journey to the West, the monk Tang Sanzang is accompanied on a pilgrimage by the Monkey King, Sun Wukong (Monkey awakened to Emptiness); the pig demon, Zhu Bajie (Pig awakened to Abstinence; also known as Zhu Wuneng, Pig awakened to Power, or Ability), formerly general of the Heavenly navy, disgraced for attempting to seduce the goddess of the Moon; the fish demon Sha Wujing (Sand awakened to Purity), formerly bodyguard and attendant to the Jade emperor, disgraced for breaking the Queen Mother’s crystal cup; and the dragon prince transformed into a white horse, Bai Longma, disgraced for setting fire to a pearl gifted by the Jade emperor.

These represent different shadow aspects of human character—avarice (the attempt to fill internal emptiness by hoarding knowledge) (I am a Monkey); lust, gluttony; anger; pride, ambition—which are transformed, through self-inflicted suffering (a desolating experience) and then being shown Mercy (a consoling experience), into enlightened characteristics of wisdom; companionship; purity; and service to others. Each character receives a measure of reward, though the pig demon remains a work-in-progress by the end of the tale.

In my own faith tradition, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John accompany Jesus in the forms of a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle.

Matthew is also known as Levi, the tax collector. He has chosen a path in life that places him outside of the community, considered a sinner, one to be shunned. He has chosen to gamble on his own skills to survive, believing that he will get farther alone (or, at least, in the company of like-minded others) than in the matrix of community. When Jesus finds him, he is alone, sitting in his tax booth. Yet Jesus calls him out from there, back into community—into a community, the Twelve, that explicitly harks back to the family of Israel. It is only in community that our humanity is given form. So, Matthew composes his account of the life of Jesus in a five-fold structure that mirrors the five books of the Torah, the account of a people, often unfaithful to one another, shaped, together, by divine instruction.

Mark is cowardly. We first meet him as a young man (albeit unnamed) who wriggles out of his clothes to run away naked from the scene of Jesus’ arrest. We meet him again running away from accompanying Paul and Barnabas on a journey to carry the good news into Asia Minor. Yet, Barnabas, the Son of Encouragement, encourages him—literally, builds up his courage—until the scaredy-cat becomes a lion, who writes down Peter’s memoir in Rome, a stone’s throw from where Christians were fed to the lions.

Luke is a Greek, perhaps a sea-going captain of ships (traditionally identified as a doctor, but that may refer to another Luke; his knowledge of ships is informed as only an insider would know). Luke ploughs his furrow through the Great Sea, rudder in hand. And at some point—most likely through Paul—he encounters the story of Jesus, and is captivated. Drawn back to land. Searches out Mary, the mother of Jesus, living with John in Ephesus. Sits at her feet and listens as she takes out the treasured memories of her son’s birth and holds them up to the light. Luke becomes the ox whose manger becomes a crib for the incarnate Word. His words—the two-part work, Luke-Acts—will carry the story further, all around the world.

John is the youngest of Jesus’ disciples, his mother’s golden boy for whom (along with his brother, James) she wants special recognition. He is the one who shines like the noonday sun in response to love, but whose countenance darkens with anger when he perceives a sleight. John will remain at the foot of the cross; will outlive all his fellow companions; will have to hear news, again and again, of their untimely deaths by execution. John will endure; and be purified by love until he can gaze into the sun of love’s light without being blinded. John will write his good news of Jesus from a very different perspective, a sweeping overview. John will become an eagle.

And what of you? What animal represents you, and the transformation you have experienced through life, and the transformation you have yet to know?

 

Monkey King

Many of my friends are writing about Odyssey, but [1] I wrote extensively about the parallels between The Odyssey and the Acts of the Apostles—the voyage of Odysseus and the missionary journeys of Paul and his companions—last summer, and [2] I have yet to see Nolan’s Odyssey, so instead I will say something about the sixteenth-century Chinese epic Journey to the West (Book 1) and the enigmatic Monkey King, Sun Wukong, born from a stone egg nurtured by both heaven and earth.

Having been appointed Protector of the Heavenly Peaches of Immortality—the fruit by which the gods gained their longevity—the Monkey King eats them himself, and sets about a rebellion against heaven. When no one in the Heavenly realm can defeat him, the gods appeal directly to the Buddha, who entraps the vain Sun Wukong with a wager: if he can leap out of the Buddha’s palm, he will be given the throne of heaven.

The Monkey King accepts, for he can travel 34,000 miles in one leap, and also fly. And so, he jumps onto the Buddha’s open palm, and leaps out again, travelling to the very end of the universe. There he comes to the Five Pillars, writing ‘Great Sage, Equal of Heaven’ on one, and urinating against another, before returning all the way back to the Buddha...whose fingers bear a tiny inscription—‘Great Sage, Equal of Heaven’—and smell monkey urine...

Before he can escape, the Buddha slams his palm on the ground, transforming it into a mountain, under which the Monkey King is held captive for 500 years, until the personification of Mercy offers him an opportunity for growth and transformation of character, accompanying a monk on a pilgrimage, along with a pig demon and a fish demon as fellow disciples, and a dragon transformed into a white horse, on which the monk rides (each companion represents a human shadow side, that will be transformed: impulsiveness to wisdom; gluttony to faithfulness; hatred to purity; ambition to service).

There are obvious parallels here with both the heavenly rebellion of a third of the angels led by Lucifer, and of the taking and eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil by the first humans, Eve the Mother of all the Living, and Adam who is both animated earth and Keeper of the Heavenly Garden on earth. But there is also a parallel with Paul’s engagement with the philosophers of Athens.

Paul tells the Athenians that no one is far from God, for, as one of their own number had said (that is, a story from outside of Paul’s Jewish faith tradition; just as Journey to the West is outside of my Christian tradition) ‘in him we live and breathe and have our being.’

Just as the Monkey King cannot leap out of the Buddha’s palm, so no one is far from God.

‘Sin’ is the illusion of separation from God—and ‘hell’ is the awareness of that illusion, and disillusionment that necessarily precedes re-enchantment (Jesus tells a parable—a made-up story, an analogy—in which Abraham says that the gap between hell and heaven cannot be crossed. The point is not that the gap can never be closed, but that torah, the instructions given though Moses that includes the story of Abraham, the ‘father of faith,’ cannot bridge the gap. A different enlightenment is needed).

That is not to say that sin is of no consequence. An illusion can be deadly—think of the illusion of an oasis in the desert. Sin needs addressing, and in the person of Jesus, God does so address the problem of sin. But the nature of that problem was never separation from God.

If sin separates us from God, God could not have dwelt in the tabernacle in the camp of the Israelites who had come out of Egypt. Could not have dwelt in the temple in Jerusalem—nor risen up and departed from the temple to accompany God’s chosen people on their Exile into Babylon. Could not have taken on our humanity and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus. Yet our tradition insists that God did all these things.

Sin does not separate us from God. Indeed, Paul insists that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus—ours, before we recognise it, being under the illusion of separation.

And this love is key. Our not being able to remove ourselves from God’s presence is not to say that we are under constant surveillance, not that we do not possess genuine freedom. It is to say that we are held; that we are safe. Sometimes, even, kept safe—saved—from our own actions.

Jesus is the Light in whose light we are enlightened. In union with whose life our lives are transformed. Without him, much of reality is distorted to us. We see, but not with confidence. Chinese folk tales, as much as Greek—or any other culture; epic stories that belong to humanity—point to truth. Jesus is the truth to which they point.

You are not far from God. Never far from God. Nothing, good or ill, can keep you apart. This is good news. And it can be your story, your journey, your transformation.

 

on the ecology of community

 

The Gospel passage set for this Sunday is Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23, see below. [We are not following the Lectionary at St Nicholas at the moment—we are in the middle of a summer sermon series on the Psalms—but I am covering at another church this weekend.]

In this passage, Jesus tells a parable about a sower. If we are familiar with the parable, we most likely view it through the lens of individualism, and a culture that promotes polarisation. We are invited—tempted—to view ourselves as ‘good soil,’ and label others as compacted, stony, or thorny soil. Or, we compare ourselves unfavourably with others, lamenting the poor quality of the soil of our life in contrast to their greater worthiness.

But, in common with the majority of human experience, Jesus lived in a society that was more communal, where neighbours lived in greater interdependence.

Most lived in villages we would consider hamlets. While families owned land—and if you found yourself needing to sell it, you did so to the nearest possible relative, and with a return clause—each village also had its common field. This field was divided into strips that different families took responsibility to care for, alongside their primary role in the community (e.g. building, fishing).

The Holy Land is hilly, and cultivated land is terraced. Agriculture requires certain features. Places where the bedrock is close to the surface are necessary, providing the foundation for the stone walls that create the terracing. The perimeter of the cultivated land was surrounded by thorny plants, necessary to keep wild animals away from food intended for humans. The field also required paths, allowing access to each strip without trampling the entire field.

A sower scattering seed on the ground would inevitably send some seed into those areas. But in the parable, the field produces a one-hundred-and-ninety-fold return. The compacted, stony, and thorny ground contribute their part in that, as does the good soil they encompass and bisect.

As well as the common field, the village also had a common granary. The harvest was pooled, and distributed according to need, not according to the yield of the strip your family had tended. The family whose strip included thorny ground received what they needed, as much as the family who had only good soil to tend. And from the common granary, next year’s seed for sowing also came.

(And yes, there were privately owned fields and granaries too; and elsewhere Jesus tells another parable about a man who seeks to increase the size of his private granary.)

So this is a parable about a common field—think, the community listening to Jesus. We might call that common field a church congregation. Within that congregation, there are different kinds of ground, necessary for its survival. Note that nowhere does Jesus say, break up the stony ground, or root out the weeds. (How tempting it is, for those of us who scatter seed, to believe we must break every hard ground, without discernment.) This is, in fact, the ecology of community—of any kind of community.

In our congregations there are those whose service, over time, has enabled us to live together in relative harmony, not trampling over one another’s lives. Who have created, and maintain, habitual paths, or ways of doing things. Think governance. Yes, there may be times when they get stuck in their ways—when the path becomes the most important thing, where paths become barriers, where way-makers become toll-keepers unhelpfully restricting access. But the paths themselves, and those who tend them, play an essential part in the whole, even if it doesn’t look directly fruitful. Even if they miss out on the opportunity to produce a harvest, they don’t miss out on being fed.

In our congregations there are those who respond to everything with enthusiasm, that does not last. They may be ADHD, needing a different structure, but also bringing a different—and needful—gift or perspective. They—we—may be looking at the wrong metric, for what being part of the village, the field, the community looks like. They may be shoring up a defense against the odds in their personal lives. They may be discouraged that their presence in the community is taken for granted, or not valued as highly as that of others. They may have a valid point. They certainly have pastoral needs. They, too, should not miss out on being fed.

In our congregations there are those whose lives contain many cares, including financial worries. The elderly, whose bodies have begun to betray them. Their adult children, simultaneously being there for aging parents and their own children. The parent who is concerned about the bad actors who have influenced their children for harm. The one who is struggling to pay the bills, to keep food on the table and a roof over their head. These are legitimate concerns—and we rightly look to maintain both safeguarding and practical pastoral care, as a framework within which all can flourish. But it is hard work. This is one reason why in some places the strip within the common field that each family tended would be reallocated year on year, so no one had to maintain the wall or the hedge for too long. It can be disheartening work. Those who have many cares deserve special attention and care; and to not have additional burdens of judgement placed upon them. Jesus does not identify them for our censure but for our compassion.

Within our congregations, everyone has a part to play; everyone has a gift to bring; and, yes, no one is uniformly receptive to the word of the kingdom. And yet, overall, the field and the seed together produce a harvest.

So, where do you find yourself today, in relation to the common field? (Which could be, entirely outside of it.)

Whatever your answer, you are part of a village.

Where there are well-worn paths, boundaries, defence mechanisms, and a good harvest in our personal lives, may all be offered and shared to the common good.

 

good

 

The first reading set for Morning Prayer today is Judges 11.1-11.

The Book of Judges tells the story of the loosely federated tribes of Israel, after they settled in Canaan and before they were united into a kingdom. Throughout this period, various of the tribes were in conflict with various of their neighbours, who were either already living in the same territory or also seeking to take control of it. The Book of Judges presents a cycle of defeat to and oppression by neighbouring peoples, followed by successful uprising and temporary liberation under the leadership of a usually flawed hero.

Judges 11.1-11 introduces Jephthah, whose story (spoilers!) will ultimately end in tragedy. Jephthah is the child of an adulterous relationship, and though he grows up to be described as a mighty man of valour, his half-brothers drive him away, determined that he will not share the inheritance with them.

What interests me is that the account tells us that Jephthah flees to the land of Tob. Tob, or towb, means good, or pleasant. It describes an environment where healing from abuse can take place. Where someone who has been wronged might be seen, and affirmed, for who they really are. And as Jephthah removes himself to such a place, we are told that others gather to him. Men described as worthless gather to a man described as being of valour.

It is worth reflecting on who has assigned these descriptions. Jephthah himself is considered worthless by his brothers—indeed, at least for now, by his wider community; though they will come to fetch him back when they think his skills as a warrior might serve them: this, too, is abuse—though the narrator clearly has a different perspective. Likewise, the worthless fellows, or outlaws, who gather to him are outlaws because they have been driven out by their families or communities.

And in the place of Tob, the good and pleasant place, they experience healing and come to see themselves not as worthless but as skilled warriors. As a thorn in the side of the communities who drove them out.

Sometimes families can be toxic, and sometimes the wisest and bravest course of action is to cut ties (though to be clear, Jephthah will go on to make some disastrous decisions as a parent: trauma can beget trauma, even where there has been a measure of healing). But healing doesn’t happen in isolation. We need the land of Tob, the good and pleasant place. The community that honours our stories, that sees us without rejection, that is good to us. That chooses, again and again, to love someone who, because of their brokenness and baggage, resentment and bitterness, or simply because their response to potential danger is stuck on high alert, may be hard to love.

Whatever your story, may you know a ‘land of Tob.’

 

on Psalm 65

 

Our summer sermon series at St Nicholas’ explores the Psalms. This coming Sunday, our psalm will be Psalm 65 (text below).

Psalm 65 is written for the person who presides over the public worship of the gathered community, which makes it very appropriate for this weekend, when my colleague Katherine will step into that role for the first time.

It is a ‘David psalm’—a psalm composed in the tradition of David, with a David outlook, from a David perspective. And it speaks of the temple, which, at the time of David, did not exist. It is future-oriented.

For Christians, that future orientation points to Jesus—who claimed that the temple was a ‘type’ fulfilled in his own body—and to the community who proclaim him as Lord—as the rightful heir of David—those whom the disciple Jesus gave the nickname ‘stone’ imagined as living stones being built into a temple.

Psalm 65 speaks of people rooted in place, a community close nearby, or surrounding, the temple. We might call that a parish. A community, of young and old, of many different kinds of people, who find their lives blessed by proximity to the temple, or to the community who is rooted in both this place and that Lord Jesus.

We are told, in our neo-liberal world, that there is no such thing as community any more, only (increasingly polarised) individuals. But, in fact, we are created as persons, who only find the fullness of identity in relation to other persons—not just like-minded persons, but in the diversity of persons found in, and committed to, the place we are found. This diversity is the glory of a parish; and the tragedy of many a local church congregation has been their inability to embrace certain identities as divine gift. The local congregation, within the local parish, should function as a community that holds us, grounds us, nurtures us, such that we discover who we are—whom God has created us to be—and are able to flourish. Too many people have felt that they have had no choice but to leave the community behind in search of a more nurturing one.

But Psalm 65 goes on to speak of salvation, of God at work to save, to bring us into a place of healing and wholeness. To calm the storms that rage, within us and around about us. To usher in something new: morning and evening; fruitful creativity and harmonious order, and joyful celebration and rest.

Hard ground softened. Barren ground swollen with good things.

Again and again, in time, in season.

There’s a hymn often sung at funerals and cup finals that says, ‘change and decay in all around I see; O, thou who changest not, abide with me.’ But this is, at best, only part of the picture; for God is continually bringing about change, drawing life out of death, hope out of hibernation.

And it is the role of the one called to oversee the worship of the community to notice that which is not yet; to call the people back to a future-orientation; to remind us of hope that is grounded in God’s faithfulness in every age before us.

Psalm 65

To the leader. A Psalm of David. A Song.

1 Praise is due to you,

O God, in Zion,

and to you shall vows be performed,

2 O you who answer prayer!

To you all flesh shall come.

3 When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us,

you forgive our transgressions.

4 Happy are those whom you choose and bring near

to live in your courts.

We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,

your holy temple.

5 By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance,

O God of our salvation;

you are the hope of all the ends of the earth

and of the farthest seas.

6 By your strength you established the mountains;

you are girded with might.

7 You silence the roaring of the seas,

the roaring of their waves,

the tumult of the peoples.

8 Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;

you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.

9 You visit the earth and water it;

you greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water;

you provide the people with grain,

for so you have prepared it.

10 You water its furrows abundantly,

settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

and blessing its growth.

11 You crown the year with your bounty;

your wagon tracks overflow with richness.

12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow;

the hills gird themselves with joy;

13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks;

the valleys deck themselves with grain;

they shout and sing together for joy.

 

smile

 

I had my hair cut this morning. It takes me about twenty minutes to walk there, and twenty minutes to walk back.

I smiled at everyone I walked past on the street, and some stationary drivers. Some intentionally looked down or away, before I smiled, to avoid eye-contact with a stranger; but everyone who saw me smile, smiled back. That’s a human response; it says nothing about my lop-sided smile, or how comfortable or otherwise I may be in my own skin: such hang-ups are mine alone.

If I smile at someone approaching me, walking in the other direction—not because I know them, but simply in recognition of another human being going about their day, just as I am going about mine—and if they smile back in return—the smile continues after we have passed each other, eventually fading after about 20 seconds—and then immediately triggering a second smile, caused by the remembrance of the first, lasting perhaps another 10 seconds. Every time.

30 seconds is actually quite a long time. Certainly, as a physically active, ambulant man (even if I can’t walk in a straight line) who is just over six foot tall with the stride that you’d expect from that height, even at a leisurely pace I can cover some distance in that time. But regardless of how far apart we move—the other person and me, walking away from each other—30 seconds is long enough to have an impact on our outlook. Whatever nonsense we are carrying—whatever resentment at the behaviour of someone else, who is not present—whatever conversation we are rehearsing or grudge we are nursing in our mind—it is hard to maintain this in the face of the smile. The smile does a work of softening our heart, as rain softens sun-hardened ground.

And this is only half the story. What can I say about the other person, whose presence in the world—simply going about their own business—initiated my smile towards them? All other things being equal, they too will smile, and have a subsequent shorter smile recollecting the smile as soon as it fades. But a smile can have an even bigger impact. I smiled at one person this morning as we stood on either side of a pedestrian crossing point waiting for the break in the traffic, and they beamed and beamed as if I was the only person who had smiled at them that day. Which I might, or might not, have been. I have no way of telling. And that is the point. A smile could just save a life—that is not an exaggeration, it could literally make the difference between someone giving up on life and their keeping going—and you have no way of knowing. So—for love of God and neighbour—smile. You’ll be showing loving-kindness to yourself at the same time.

 

MIND THE GAP

 

I took a photo on the westbound platform at Limehouse station (Docklands Light Railway) of the words MIND THE GAP

Of the ten letters, five—D, T, H, A, P—were partially worn away. Two—T, H—were significantly erased; one—T—almost entirely obliterated. (Almost, and yet still making its presence known. Mind the gap.)

And yet the words were still readable, still made sense. Though only because of a shared alphabet, and understanding of the context, the other letters around each letter, and what they communicate together.

Indeed, the very fact that these letters were not pristine adds interest, makes them noteworthy, not simply as a warning but as something storied. Since these letters were laid down, how many feet, how many buggy wheels, suitcases, wheelchairs, have passed over them, on and off trains, on their way to or from work or home or meeting a friend?

These letters, fully fifty percent impaired, spoke to me of people. Able-bodied and disabled. Neurotypical and neurodivergent. Privileged or marginalised—sometimes erased—for a host of different reasons: gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background...

We are all human. And the truth is that all of us—whether we fall into a category of cultural ‘perfection’ or ‘imperfection’—only have meaning in relation to the rest. (One of the foundational divine statements is that it isn’t good for humans to consider themselves complete on their own.)

All of us fall short of some narrow ideal, that does not embrace genetic mutation or wear-and-tear. (Or, fall short when we insist on such a narrow definition of who is, and who is not, fully human.)

All of us are storied, increasingly so over time, and that is part of what makes us interesting.

And so we need to be reminded to MIND THE GAP. To attend to the spaces—the bodies—that interrupt our expectations, and present us with a richer reality. To be broken open, ourselves, into a beautiful vulnerability.

 

Mammon

 

Yesterday I travelled to London by train. We were informed that our journey could be delayed (in the event, it was not) due to emergency services responding to an incident between Peterborough and Stevenage. The last time I travelled home from London, three weeks ago, my train was delayed, twice, for the same reason.

On average, someone in the UK takes their own life every 90 minutes.

There is no performative outrage.

On average, between one and two women are killed by their partner or ex-partner every week in this country.

Again, there is no performative outrage.

We have a crisis in this country.

It is not a crisis of the presence of immigrants.

It is a crisis of the absence of hope.

Of belief in any purposeful future.

We have collectively said ‘yes, yes’ to the idea that the purpose of business is to generate maximum profit, for the benefit of the few—rather than to create opportunity for everyone to contribute to society, and in return to be paid enough to live well on.

To this end we have pared work to the bone, in the name of efficiency. We are left without the capacity to cover for one another when we are sick; or to train people into a role—which is a key reason why it is so hard for young people to find work. If a young adult gives up after sending 200 applications and not even getting a rejection letter back (we do not have the capacity to write those) it is not their moral fault.

We have turned our backs on a God of generosity and compassion, and looked to Mammon, the deification of money, to save us.

And Mammon demands human sacrifice.

And this is a price we willingly pay, without question.