Statements on the EU Referendum result

On the St Martin-in-the-Fields website, Sam Wells states:

'We now face a new future grateful to be in a democracy where the people’s voice speaks – even when it says what many experience as horrifying. The decision means the nation will leave the EU; it doesn’t automatically mean a war on immigration or economic catastrophe; it must not be allowed to bring about a rise in intolerance and exclusion. It’s up to the whole country now to show that what we have in common is greater than what divides us.'

Angus Ritchie asks some apposite questions of those of us who voted to remain and view the prospect of Brexit as horrifying:

'By far the best piece I have read on the referendum is John Harris's extended essay in The Guardian. Harris, who voted to Remain, warns at the "deep anger and seething worry" which has gripped so much of the country, outside the economic powerhouse of London ...

Harris demands that we listen to a world beyond the metropolitan and middle-class. It is easy to denounce the "bigotry" of the Leave campaign without acknowledging one's own social and economic location. Remainers need to be careful not to fall into our own Pharasaism, for we have sins which require repentance. We speak of social solidarity now, but how much has it inspired us to action on behalf of those in our own land who have been left behind by capitalism? And, when we have acted, have we been motivated by a genuine desire for change or by a shallow self-righteousness - more interested in signalling our virtue than in achieving genuine change?

It is tempting to respond to this week's vote with shrill denunciations, flattering ourselves that this counts as a "prophetic" response. But Harris's essay suggests a more appropriate reaction. We need, first of all, to listen - and to listen in particular from the Nazareths of England and Wales; the unglamorous, left-behind places, which modern capitalism does not value.

For, as these areas will soon discover, the triumph of the Leave campaign is unlikely to address their plight. The challenge for Christians (however we voted in the referendum) is to listen to their genuine and justified grievances, and to help them organise for justice - making common cause with the migrant communities which the worst of the Leave campaign encouraged them to scapegoat.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beth Rowley - Nobody's Fault But Mine.

Paying attention: Ethics

"All this should make us think a bit harder about how we as Christians approach the whole business of ethics. . . . if the desert literature is right, then we all need training in listening and attending almost more than anything else. Unless we are capable of patience before each other, before the mysteriousness of each other, it’s very unlikely that we will do God’s will with any kind of fullness. Without a basic education in attention, no deeply ethical behavior is really going to be possible; we may only keep the rules and do what is technically and externally the right thing. but that 'doing the right thing' will not be grounded yet in who we are, in the person God wants us to become, and it may not survive stress and temptation. It may also be quite capable of existing alongside attitudes and habits dangerous to ourselves and each other; it may not bring us life with and through the neighbour. Our Christian codes of behaviour quite rightly tell us that some sorts of action are always wrong - torture or fraud, killing the innocents or the unborn, sexual violence and infidelity - but to see why that is so requires us to go back a step or two to see why this or that action is bound to speak of inattention, why this or that action makes it impossible to listen for the word in another person. Unless we can grasp something of that, our ethics will never really be integrated with our search and our prayer for holy life in community."

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes: The wisdom of the desert

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jennifer Warnes - Joan Of Arc.

A listening gaze: Paul Martin and Idris Murphy

Edgelands is an exhibition of new work by Paul Martin and Idris Murphy at The Warburton Gallery:

'Idris Murphy and Paul Martin, who exhibit together here for the first time, met in London at the age of 22; they met again in Perth, Western Australia at 65, a meeting which planted the seed for this show. The intervening years were spent painting and making, teaching and learning, seeking an understanding of the nature of nature and a sense of which what Martin has called“the gritty sacredness of places and things” ...

Paul Martin’s most recent exhibition was in part inspired by his reading of Rilke, who wrote that “in order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon, which through your laborious and exclusive love is now placed at the centre of the universe”. Idris Murphy, in the introduction to his 2013 show Everywhen, quoted the words attributed to the 1st century churchman Ignatius of Antioch: “We each carry our own depth of silence, a human kind of silence, not found anywhere else…silence is a presence, a receptivity, a readiness, a waiting, a listening.” It is perhaps here that Murphy and Martin find their greatest point of convergence, in the understanding that the environmental challenges we face necessitate our developing this readiness and receptivity, this capacity for concentration, for laborious and exclusive love, this ability to regard nature with a steadiness of gaze that we might equate with the aesthetic gaze, and that this, ultimately, might be what constitutes the work of art.'

The works on show are complemented by a series of texts from leading Scottish and Australian writers reflecting on the ecological and environmental challenges we face across the world. This strand of the show is collated and introduced by the renowned novelist and short story writer Tim Winton.

Winton writes:

'Here are two painters who’ve learnt to look at natural forms so keenly and humbly that theirs has become, each in their own way, and in separate hemispheres, a listening gaze. Their reverent attention seems to have left them open to the steady returning stare of a creation that groans in travail even as it feeds us. The world we see in their recent work has been transformed and illuminated through their loving attention and in turn, over the decades, as artists, they have clearly been changed.'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Midnight Oil - Dreamworld.

Lent: Confronting us with reality

This was my Ash Wednesday sermon, based heavily on materials from Call to Change:

"Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: 'Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.'

"Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, 'God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.'"

Jesus commented, "This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you're going to end up flat on your face, but if you're content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself." (Luke 18. 9 - 14)

The prayer of the tax man opened him up to reality – the reality of who he really was – while the prayer of the Pharisee was an exercise in unreality because it was designed to make him look better than he was by comparison with others.

This is one of the reasons why Jesus says in Matthew 6. 1 - 6 don’t perform your religious duties in public and don’t pray where everyone can see you. If our religious duties and our prayers are performed to gain the praise of others then they are not opening us up to the reality of who we are, instead they are poses designed to escape from, hide or mask that reality.

God’s judgment confronts us with reality.  His word pierces through our layers of self-deception.  It pierces through the false gods of profit, popularity and status on which we set our hearts, and through our shell of self-protecting cynicism.

Under the loving judgment of God, we see ourselves as we really are.  We see the futility of our self-deception, the emptiness of our false gods and the destructiveness of our cynicism.  Why does God force this painful truth upon us?  For this reason: it is only when we face the reality of our lives that change and growth become possible.

The prayers and practices of Lent exist to open us to reality.  Their words of penitence urge us to face the truth about our sins and their impact on others.  For example, the chastening words of the Ash Wednesday liturgy ‘Remember thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return’ force us to face the truth of our mortality.

We won’t go on forever.  The choices we make each day mean there are paths down which we have decided not to travel, possibilities we have shut down, perhaps permanently.  We need to ask what kind of values we will affirm, in our deeds as well as our words.  As we face our mortality, we are forced to ask: what do I want this life to say?

This question needs to be considered alongside an honest examination of what my life currently says.  What would you say my values and priorities were if you looked, not at the beliefs I profess, but at the ways I spend my time and money, the things that preoccupy and vex me, the ways I treat the people around me?

Lent helps us to explore the gap between the answers we give to these two questions: what does this life say? and what do I want it to say?

These are questions we can also ask of our common life.  In The Rock T.S. Eliot asks:

What is the meaning of this city?

Do you huddle together because you love each other?

What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together

To make money from each other?’ or ‘This is a community?’

Today, many people are asking these questions with a new intensity.  There is a large and growing gap between rich and poor, one which politicians of all parties say they want to see reversed.  And we all live with the ongoing and unpredictable consequences of the global financial crisis for years to come. In the midst of a recession – and the yawning gap between the richest and poorest in our society – there is a growing sense that something needs to change.

So this Lent, two Christian social action charities – The Contextual Theology Centre and the Church Urban Fund – are issuing a Call to Change.  (This is online at www.calltochange.withtank.com and on Twitter at @calltochange.)  It builds on decades of ministry by churches in some of England’s poorest neighbourhoods.  It seeks to draw more people into their work of prayer, of listening and of action for social justice by use of the season of Lent to achieve real change in our local and national life.

The Call to Change is not a call to scapegoat someone else – be they a ‘benefits scrounger’ or a banker.  Each of us is called to open ourselves to reality.  We do this through prayer: as we encounter the ultimate reality of God in Scripture, worship and personal devotion.  We do it too through listening: and in particular, a serious engagement with the voice of England’s poorest communities.

Words are not enough.  They need to take flesh in action.  The experience of churches engaged in their local community points to concrete things every Christian and congregation can do – to tackle poverty, and build an economic system that works for poor as well as rich.

Lent is traditionally seen as a rather gloomy time, when we turn inward in tortured self-examination.  The truth is very different.  The deeper purpose of this season is to draw us outward – into a deeper communion with God and with neighbour. We actually need Lent now more than ever, so that mind, body and spirit can be released from the self-indulgence of a consumerist, individualistic society. The ‘Good News’ of Lent is how much more we believe there is to life than this. This is God’s reality which Lent enables us to encounter.

Lent is mirrored on the way Jesus’ own ministry began: with forty days of prayerful discernment. Only then can our action be part of God’s transforming work. Without prayer, we will not discern God’s purposes or act his power. Without listening, we will not discover our neighbours’ concerns - or be able to harness the power of common action.

Both prayer and listening help us see that Christian discipleship involves a challenge to the values of our broken world. In Lent, we are called to remove the idols of money and power from the thrones they have in our hearts and in our society. In Lent, we are challenged to face up to the reality of our self-indulgence in a consumerist, individualistic society and remember that money and power are to be placed at the service of Christ, and of his Kingdom of justice and of peace.

It is through changes like these, individual and corporate, that we can grow together into ‘life in all its fullness.’ That is the message of Lent. And, more importantly, it is the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s word of love made flesh.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keane - Everybody's Changing.