True Christianity?

   

True Christianity?

(Note: this is not a new blog, but one that I've made some changes to.) 

Even today a person who lives wholly in the present — a person who goes with the flow and is fully committed to life — is spoken of disapprovingly as ‘materialistic’.
A bizarre word…

Don Cupitt, Mysticism after Modernity

I have on occasion been “accused” of being an atheist or a materialist—as if I had “magicked up” these words specifically to fling a pot of paint over the sentiments of those who are of any religious persuasion whatsoever. Yet I truly do not want to call myself anything; and I am quite serious when I say that I would like to think of myself as a part of the natural order of things, as much as a blackbird, a squirrel, or what you will—and I found out from Springwatch that we share a remarkable number of genes with the humble worm: 70%. And it is an illusion to think that we are free to believe whatever we like. We can, for example, choose whether to holiday in Berlin, Paris, or Rome. But is that not the limit of (deliberate) human choice? It is true that I may undergo a revelatory experience which is so extraordinarily numinous that I have no choice but to believe that which I feel has been vouchsafed to me. But here equally I have no choice in the matter. So, if someone asks me what I believe, I can only say that I believe that life is a profound mystery; that the question “what is the meaning of life” is not a legitimate one to ask; and if there was a meaning in the sense implied, it would be beyond belief that we have not by now discovered what that was—or why indeed we have been kept in the dark since the dawn of consciousness! ¹ And then, as Loren Eiseley writes, “The why of things eludes us, and as long as this is the case, we will have a yearning for the marvellous, the explosive event in history. Indeed so restless is man's intellect that were he to penetrate to the secrets of the universe tomorrow, the likelihood is that he would grow bored on the day after.”²

“Ah, so that's what it's all about . . . [yawns] . . . anything good on the telly tonight?”

But seriously, I do not yearn after the why of things at all. I think it must all remain a mystery—except occasionally we are vouchsafed some moment of understanding which, alas, we can never explain to anyone else. And what the poets and painters give us is not verisimilitude, but something which is different to the world—and which haunts us with a certain frisson, which we can, if we are so minded, be happy to experience for the rest of our life.  

But to give flesh to the title of this piece: I owe a great debt to Harry Williams,³ and in particular to his book The True Wilderness (comprising sermons given when he was Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the late 1960s). I read that book over and over again, and if I say it changed my life I am not exaggerating (and, like a child totally absorbed by some enchanting story, no solitude was at that time too great for me). In one of William’s sermons he describes a scene from the film, ‘Never on a Sunday’, in which the “Beautiful Ilya . . .  a corrupt, sociable, sensitive, independent, happy-go-lucky streetwalker in the bustling Port of Piraeus” is visited one evening by a young and painfully shy sailor. Effectively he is paralysed by a fear of not knowing what to do—just as we teenagers of the 1950s were crippled with the notion that we had to acquire a ‘technique’ (while being sadly unaware of the kindness and understanding of so many girls and young women). But Ilya is one of those latter, and she softly sings to the sailor, who loses his inhibitions, and . . .  in William’s words, is redeemed. This has nothing to do with morals, and everything to do with the lifting of one of those things that were preventing the young sailor from fulfilling a natural part of his life (and we do not always have such means readily at our disposal).

There is then a Thought for the Day which I will never forget, given by Jon Bell of the Iona Community—and which would not have resonated with me so deeply had I never read Harry Williams. Bell had been visiting a single mother in a Glasgow flat, and he asked: “Morag, how do you manage?” She told him that there was a gay couple in one of the other flats, and that they did shopping and ran other errands for her—and how once a week one of the men would babysit for her, while the other took her dancing. This was true kindness, true charity—freely given, and healthful to all involved. And the man who took her dancing was of course also well able to protect her. And I believe that Christ – as I glean his character from Williams’ interpretation – would have seen this in exactly the same light.

Finally, there is something that I would not relate had I had the slightest intention of effecting a particular result—which was anyway impossible because I was entirely ignorant of the circumstances that obtained. I must explain!

I was attending the last class of a course at Homerton, College, Cambridge, entitled ‘Doing the right thing’ (moral philosophy).⁴ The last thing we discussed was abortion. It’s not something I take lightly, but I abhor the “pro–life”, single issue extremists—those who harass staff at Planed Parenting clinics in America, and have killed at least eleven people since 1993. All I can remember is, that I spoke with sincerity to the effect that it is extremely difficult to form laws in this area, because each case had to be handled with great sensitivity, and that judgement had better take a back seat—or absent itself altogether.

Well, that was that, the class ended, and I made my way to the bus stop. I had hardly reached the stop, when a girl from the class came running after me, calling out my name. She just reached me as my bus pulled up, and we stood for a few seconds simply looking into each other’s eyes, without a word being spoken by either of us. I knew, and she knew that I knew, that at some time she had an abortion, and that at some level she was deeply unhappy about it. And what I said in the class had helped lessen the burden for her—all unbeknown to me. This happy remembrance can still make my eyes water when I recall it.

________________________________________

1/ I'm a member of a Humanist group, but I am not a Humanist. Which is to say that, I have not read any of the literature put out by Humanists UK, the National Secular Society, or of any other Humanist group or association. (Though I did, way back in the day, read Corliss Lamont’s The Philosophy of Humanism, which I much enjoyed, though without any idea that humanism was anything other than a synonym for a non–believer—in God). Also, I do not believe in proselytising of any kind. It is no business of mine to try and change the mind of anyone else, or to pour scorn on their beliefs (even though my past “copybook” contains some fairly egregious expressions of just this kind). However, I do think that such cults as the Moonies and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are fair game. And if anyone thinks I'm a Nihilist or a Cynic, they’re barking up the wrong tree! There is only one categorisation that I do not particularly mind, which is “freethinker”—which is how my mother had the courage to describe herself on admission to hospital to give birth to me: in the Salvation Army Hospital for Mothers! (Of course, to be a freethinker requires discipline, but it is in no danger of hardening into doctrine—and so freezing the warm stream of thought, so to express it.)

2/  From The Firmament of Time

3/ I do not know who wrote William’s obituary in The Guardian (January, 2006), but the last paragraph reads: “Had he been able to compose his own funeral address, he might, true to form, have taken its theme from Edith Piaf's Je Ne Regrette Rien. But there may be many thousands who regret that we never found the opportunity to tell him how much we owed him, and how much we loved him.” 

A few years ago – travelling to Rye by train – my wife and I found ourselves sitting opposite a man with twinkling eyes, who was wearing a cross which we soon discovered consisted of silver–plated nails recovered from the rubble of the ww2 bombed Coventry Cathedral. The man was travelling with his wife and a small dog to spend time at a retreat in Burwash (also in Sussex). I know that at least two readers of this piece will have guessed the identity of the man! He was the former Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Reverend Simon Barrington–Ward. He was one of the most delightful men that my wife and I have ever met. In the course of our conversation, I told him how much I owed to Harry Williams’ writing and that I wished I’d written to him to express my gratitude. “He’ll know”, he said, “He’ll know.”! 

I was saddened to see from the obituary that Simon Barrington–Ward died just this year. For some years he lived in the same street as us, and we did have the occasional short conversation with him – usually when he was walking his dog – but I'm sure he would not have minded if I’d knocked on his door once, and asked him if we could talk more about Harry Williams—and I have no doubt, many other things. It’s taken the lockdown to show us how much we let go by that would have enriched us if we had lifted our eyes from the pavements. We've had W H Davies, Hazlitt, and Wordsworth to teach us this; and if we haven't learned now, I seriously wonder if we ever will—and a return to supposed “normality” is the least desirable of all possible outcomes. Yet I have hope. I remember some moss which had made happy purchase on a window sill. It dried out one summer, turned brown, and seemed dead. But then it rained for a day or two, and when I next looked it was as verdant as if it had ever been situated by some flowing brook!         

4/  These lessons were given by Dr Russell Re Manning, and they were so inspiring that – after the first evening – we took no further coffee breaks. And at the end of the last class we gave him a spontaneous round of applause.