tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635141587480495482024-03-14T10:06:04.038+00:00Diary of a DonkeybodyMND Musings - This is a record of a chronic illness, Primary Lateral Sclerosis, a Motor Neurone disorder, like a slow MND / ALS. My body may not be very cooperative; in fact it's become as stubborn as a donkey, but I'm not dead yet.Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.comBlogger736125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-45487536510933388102024-03-11T18:33:00.002+00:002024-03-12T09:58:56.943+00:00An electoral dilemma<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">As my readers will have gathered, I have reservations concerning legalising assisted suicide. At the last general election, at our local hustings I asked the candidates their views. Rather uninterestingly, all four of them agreed with the idea that people should be able to choose the time of their death, when they were in terminal pain. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">😏😎😌🙊<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">That didn't help me decide, and so I voted with my old inclinations. However the urbane Conservative, David Johnstone, was comfortably elected. But if the same is true this time, I shall face a dilemma. In the wake of Esther Rantzen's comments, Sir Keir Starmer, who is likely to the next Prime Minister, declared that he would give some government time for a private members' bill to legalise assisted dying. And so I wrote to the leader of the opposition. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"Dear Sir Keir</span></span></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"I had hoped to kick the Tories out of this true blue constituency and vote in a Labour candidate, as I believed was achievable. I was at one time a member of the Labour Party when it espoused truly socialist values and policies. However your latest pronouncement that you would make government time available for a private member’s bill and that you were yourself in favour of legalising assisted dying/suicide has been the final straw for me. </span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br />"I clearly don’t know where our election candidates will stand on the issue, though I know our present MP’s views, but I view a change in the law dangerous, both from the precedence set in other jurisdictions and the pressures it would put on the vulnerable, and a betrayal of our past record of upholding the sanctity of life. I know you won’t change your mind in an election year when polling (which depends on the framing of the question - for example ‘Would you prefer a Labour or a Conservative government?’) seems to indicate a majority of voters sharing your view.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"So, anyway, regretfully, I’m writing to inform you that you have lost at least one vote here. </span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"By the way I have Motor Neurone Disease.</span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"Yours sincerely</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>..."</i></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I wonder what the Reform UK Party's policy about it is...!<i><br /></i></span></div>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-18057326625242737412024-02-28T13:09:00.099+00:002024-02-28T20:31:19.214+00:00ITV, please repeat 'Breathtaking'<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpYlIlGj7Ez65q5aWraOxZ_4eebOQ55SyLdO0Ff96RFt49yB_Xedk8HBIsMi3lCNzmatmB76Egj6ZMQJPWOxm0OKFu-22s8UZilG-CqTJbKIcPoVS80QxMf378xes_XVhIa83Ou5vBmZjSSlMK5X4W_0UzNVqflZD_l_m9Z63QMpCwYWWKrys6YH7ygia/s768/BB1iMoju.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="768" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpYlIlGj7Ez65q5aWraOxZ_4eebOQ55SyLdO0Ff96RFt49yB_Xedk8HBIsMi3lCNzmatmB76Egj6ZMQJPWOxm0OKFu-22s8UZilG-CqTJbKIcPoVS80QxMf378xes_XVhIa83Ou5vBmZjSSlMK5X4W_0UzNVqflZD_l_m9Z63QMpCwYWWKrys6YH7ygia/w400-h266/BB1iMoju.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">All photos ITV</span></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Last night, we watched the final episode of <i><a href="https://www.itv.com/watch/breathtaking/10a4089/10a4089a0001">Breathtaking</a></i>, the three-part docudrama based on Dr Rachel Clarke's memoir of being a hospital doctor during the Covid pandemic. Joanne Froggatt gives a <i>tour de force</i> performance as Dr Abbey Henderson, an acute medicine consultant, from meeting the new coronavirus for the first time until the first roll-out of vaccines. Somehow she expresses the whole gamut of emotions mostly with a mask covering half her face and often with a visor as well.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> There are very short counter bursts of complacent politicians (such as a Prime Minister announcing he wouldn't stop shaking people's hands, and a smiling Chancellor handing out dishes in a restaurant at the announcement of the "Eat out to help out" scheme) blandly pronouncing that everything is under control while we watch the continuing reality of the situation in the hospital wards. </span></p><p><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbC3E_y3BG01ln687sTKh7bwF_OFZXMJLOMRtbgW4JCj55pSQA2v1ae0ynCR0IObV70SLhdj7_DmvwNFD4UDI2_yPjc0EBybhgtbk9BDHK0Zf1G_Y5d-3296Kl4FsznRUbA16JI1VzV11fLrbMv9f8uKxdwneMOSW7lej4lQUul-RdtjotOHUeUIna1b-6/s768/BB1iMjId.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="768" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbC3E_y3BG01ln687sTKh7bwF_OFZXMJLOMRtbgW4JCj55pSQA2v1ae0ynCR0IObV70SLhdj7_DmvwNFD4UDI2_yPjc0EBybhgtbk9BDHK0Zf1G_Y5d-3296Kl4FsznRUbA16JI1VzV11fLrbMv9f8uKxdwneMOSW7lej4lQUul-RdtjotOHUeUIna1b-6/s320/BB1iMjId.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><span style="color: #990000;">(<i>The following paragraph has a number of plot spoilers, and so if you've not watched it you may wish to skip it, though the real thing is infinitely more powerful and moving.)</i></span> This episode had many scenes which stick in my mind. For example, Ant, the registrar, pleading by phone with his vulnerable mother to stay at home until she can get the promised vaccine, and her regurgitating social media stories of the mythical disease, empty hospitals and dangerous vaccines; and later Abbey running the gauntlet of shouting and spitting Covid-deniers at the hospital doors on her home after an emotional and exhausting shift. Then
there was the scene of Emma, a student doctor, whom Abbey finds
crouching in emotional collapse and the two of them together silently
sharing their intolerable grief. There's the scene of Abbey smoothing
the brow of a dying terrified patient, and of her having to explain to
the husband of a Covid patient with MS that if she deteriorates her
preexisting conditions means she won't be moved to Intensive Care (on
the assumption that her chances of recovery are compromised - <i>thank God I was spared that</i>, I thought). At other times we see her desperately and furiously arguing with the administrator and senior doctors hidebound by NHS and Government rules and guidelines, and later we witness her whistleblowing radio interview in which she reveals the real situation in hospital dealing with Covid and risks disclosing her name and job. <br /></span></p><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhv3tV6GZF4QNqhOnWcw5Hw1svL5ky99vNapyc5cob484vSnYSKW4lPI8udJ63kO_Fmmot5cV5iS_Mk_fuanJb03dlQJHK4pAs5fEewySgOphs9lJ9Pm8-QIKaYn68uDQyf_gXJd1wm9rMUbw7AhFs2KfseEpWFn3VJIOunrI3Zs3SGLbFRtDDWCEdgI8/s768/BB1iMjI6.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="768" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhv3tV6GZF4QNqhOnWcw5Hw1svL5ky99vNapyc5cob484vSnYSKW4lPI8udJ63kO_Fmmot5cV5iS_Mk_fuanJb03dlQJHK4pAs5fEewySgOphs9lJ9Pm8-QIKaYn68uDQyf_gXJd1wm9rMUbw7AhFs2KfseEpWFn3VJIOunrI3Zs3SGLbFRtDDWCEdgI8/w400-h266/BB1iMjI6.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What are my abiding reactions and conclusions? First it was one of gratitude to Rachel Clarke for writing her memories and for creating the drama with Jed Mercurio, and to ITV for broadcasting it. More it was of overwhelming gratitude to the doctors and nurses of the NHS in whose debt we were and remain. It was eye-opening to see the reality of life inside a hospital during a prolonged emergency - from the staff point of view. It was heart-breaking (yes, I did cry) to witness the stresses and the sacrifices made on doctors and nurses. Having watched all the episodes, I do wish that everyone, including MPs, would watch it and give our medics the honour and reward that they are due. I trust that ITV will broadcast it again - perhaps when the Covid Inquiry publishes its findings, or when it is next in the news. Lastly, I intend to read <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/breathtaking/rachel-clarke/9780349144566"><i>Breathtaking</i></a> myself and Rachel Clarke's other books.</span>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-44043351662790363032024-01-07T16:32:00.002+00:002024-01-08T10:03:29.255+00:00A clarification<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZSCYApP6ujoCpvprjn9SEuqstqHbInEeJM0N3GBae8QA7ciQDJ2H3iN1tAZ4F7XrHWSYhwOPSF9GJ59axG0O-ep77eYiZw9miQvi6aqiotthM1DAanSVuFAHE_wkYr2GWdlNCXmQnoRqK5TjZbHarQ8OWS-tSASDDfAI8SQdIu74EkQcuS-9PmFgJoruN/s300/s-l300.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZSCYApP6ujoCpvprjn9SEuqstqHbInEeJM0N3GBae8QA7ciQDJ2H3iN1tAZ4F7XrHWSYhwOPSF9GJ59axG0O-ep77eYiZw9miQvi6aqiotthM1DAanSVuFAHE_wkYr2GWdlNCXmQnoRqK5TjZbHarQ8OWS-tSASDDfAI8SQdIu74EkQcuS-9PmFgJoruN/w173-h200/s-l300.webp" width="173" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I was upset today to find an email thanking me for "speaking out so clearly" "</span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">in the Christian institute’s weekly email". <i>I don't remember speaking to them, </i>I thought. And so I looked them up on line. I hadn't spoken to them. And if they had asked me to comment on the subject of assisted dying, I would probably have politely declined.<br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Why?</span></span></p><p><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">First of all, it is, I understand, basic journalistic courtesy to ask an individual before you name them in a story. And I wasn't approached. Secondly, examining the Christian Institute's website confirmed to me what I vaguely recalled, <i>i.e.</i> that it campaigns on certain issues with which I am not in sympathy and represents an extremely conservative type of Christianity which I no longer hold, if I ever did. For one example, it appears homophobic, which for me is the antithesis of the Christian good news - which this weekend we celebrate is for <b>all </b>people. I suspect that I could not in all conscience subscribe to all its tenets.</span></span></p><p><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">However I do acknowledge that I wrote a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/01/why-assisted-dying-should-remain-illegal">letter to the Guardian</a> on the subject of assisted suicide and therefore put my views in the public domain, as they are also, of course, on my blog. So I can't complain, but simply dissociate my views from those of the Christian Institute - and hope that if they ever want to quote me again they are polite enough to contact me first.</span></span> </p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-87060464403789605742024-01-06T11:18:00.003+00:002024-01-06T11:18:47.855+00:00Where is love?<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzMSwT-nzkUeJyT7AccwHuWxRchZEH9Mo_1kIxXqcNirqBV6OJmHrjQ3ms5t8J_N9pfjgEzKuo28gNNvwp4BumGN2lU7SHT3v5nalRgQX_NeK4eVjCqCQ84mz-FsOXUpmwKZ6UbqYG2uf1SeDx82bxBfm-3cPYH7WjyOLLocR41zJoxwT6WBBA-hxupnPJ/s1440/E023A421-D0AC-40DC-82F4-D8A3F73411CF_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="1440" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzMSwT-nzkUeJyT7AccwHuWxRchZEH9Mo_1kIxXqcNirqBV6OJmHrjQ3ms5t8J_N9pfjgEzKuo28gNNvwp4BumGN2lU7SHT3v5nalRgQX_NeK4eVjCqCQ84mz-FsOXUpmwKZ6UbqYG2uf1SeDx82bxBfm-3cPYH7WjyOLLocR41zJoxwT6WBBA-hxupnPJ/w400-h223/E023A421-D0AC-40DC-82F4-D8A3F73411CF_1_201_a.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mike Chapman 'Christ Child' </span><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>HOLY INNOCENTS DAY</b><br /><br />The first words we were taught in Latin<br />Were amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant:<br />Verb, transitive; meaning love.<br />Outside the church on Trafalgar Square <br />Stands a great block of Portland Stone<br />With a carved new-born baby soft and smooth <br />Lying not in Christmas card manger<br />But on a rough bed of rock.<br /><br />Round the plinth is inscribed:<br />‘In the beginning was the word…<br />And the word became flesh <br />And dwelt among us’.<br />Look once more at the naked baby <br />His cord has not even been cut <br />He lies without defences and alone <br />Can this truly be the Word made flesh?<br /><br />Naked new borns lie in Mariupol’s wreckage<br />Mothers weep for their Infants in al-Shifa<br />With ash grey dust their only shroud<br />‘What kind of a country is afraid of hospitals<br />and maternity wards and destroys them?’<br />Is it leaders lusting to unleash<br />Their fear full fury while they can?<br />Wounded they see not neighbour but stranger,<br /><br />Not brother but alien, animal, pest<br />To be butchered, mortared, missiled from our land.<br />We are the chosen inhabitants of this place<br />Pity we can’t afford, we dare not open our eyes<br />To the mothers drowning in agony<br />To children scraping away the rubble<br />Wailing for lost baby brother Isa<br />Loved in Gaza’s hell. Are you here, Emmanuel?<br /><br /><i>28th December 2023</i></span></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-63891210299596617122023-12-23T18:40:00.004+00:002023-12-23T20:23:13.114+00:00What do you think of Esther?<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">"What do you make of Esther Rantzen?" asked my brother</span></span>.<span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4WDQy1LMvCmO6jq2dGVMGOiIaal3nJsnb0oEBzQVHPsgGhIpBRH8rHGG1R9EYuJsp85YPMHE7CmsgxlnovWrFJgQAsqQnwsCiGkhVEUe4D-8U0SFQZOhyw02yR_4BazJ9m8kwscQr596UaVPm-iK6ukLaDU_7dxhvByJ2Q3bbRrPNJMpAgY8AmUaf1Dp/s799/747dd2d5-14a2-0ab3-d370-c6f307686154.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="799" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4WDQy1LMvCmO6jq2dGVMGOiIaal3nJsnb0oEBzQVHPsgGhIpBRH8rHGG1R9EYuJsp85YPMHE7CmsgxlnovWrFJgQAsqQnwsCiGkhVEUe4D-8U0SFQZOhyw02yR_4BazJ9m8kwscQr596UaVPm-iK6ukLaDU_7dxhvByJ2Q3bbRrPNJMpAgY8AmUaf1Dp/w200-h133/747dd2d5-14a2-0ab3-d370-c6f307686154.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I knew what he was talking about, as no doubt all listeners of Radio 4's <i>Today Programme</i> would have done. Clearly the advocates of assisted dying, or specifically suicide, have launched the next round of their campaign, even enlisting the late Diana Rigg, whose resemblance to my wife was once commented on by an old welsh policemen, as a witness. The <i>Today Programme </i>devoted a great deal of airtime to the subject on a number of days. My reply to my brother was that I thought it was a good thing if we were more open about the subject of death and dying. After all they are events everyone without exception will come in contact with at some point or another. So the sooner we stop treating it as a taboo subject the better. However the dangers of legalising assisted suicide, are proved by places like Canada and Belgium. <br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In January this year I made a submission to the <span>Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee
consultation on Assisted dying/assisted suicide:
</span></span></span></p><p>
</p><div class="page" title="Page 1">
<div class="section" style="background-color: white;">
<div class="layoutArea"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica;">I am writing as an individual who was diagnosed with a rare form of Motor Neurone Disease
twenty-two years ago and who has experienced the condition’s relentless deterioration since then.
There are a number of my contemporaries who have survived that long. That, and witnessing the
ravages of the disease on friends in our local MNDA branch plus an Ethics qualification from
Oxford, is the extent of my expertise.
</span></span>
<div class="column"><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">"My first observation is how positively my contemporaries, with short or longer prognoses, with the
disease seize hold of life. Clearly there are some who, like Rob Burrows, devote themselves to
fund-raising and creating awareness; while others enjoy the opportunities of life that come their
way. What might have seemed a death sentence has proved a challenge to live.
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">"Secondly, I have recently discovered myself how expert professional care can enhance what is often
portrayed as undignified dependence. Good caring can in fact add to quality of life. The sad thing
however is that it is not something which the state will normally provide. Along with terminal
palliative care, domestic social care must surely be a spending priority for any government that
cares about the well-being of all its citizens. I’m fortunate to live an area of excellent MND
provision and good, though not abundant, palliative care. But I understand that this is not equally
spread through the country. If it were, I suspect it would reduce the fear of dying which must be a
major motivator for assistance to ending one’s life.
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">"Ironically, in MND, according to the Association’s information sheet, <span style="font-style: italic;">How will I die?</span>, those fears
are greatly exaggerated: ‘In reality, most people with MND have a peaceful death. The final stages of MND will usually involve gradual weakening of the breathing muscles and
increasing sleepiness. This is usually the cause of death, either because of an infection or because
the muscles stop working.
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">‘Specialist palliative care supports quality of life through symptom control. practical help,
medication to ease symptoms and emotional support for you and your family.
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">‘When breathing becomes weaker, you may feel breathless and this can be distressing. However,
your health care professionals can provide support to reduce anxiety.
</span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 2">
<div class="section" style="background-color: white;">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">‘You can also receive medication to ease symptoms throughout the course of the disease, not just in
the later stages. If you have any concerns about the way medication will affect you, ask the
professionals who are supporting you for guidance.
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">‘Further weakening of the muscles involved in breathing will cause tiredness and increasing
sleepiness. Over a period of time, which can be hours, days or weeks, your breathing is likely to
become shallower. This usually leads to reduced consciousness, so that death comes peacefully as
breathing slowly reduces and eventually stops’ (<a href="EOL5-How-will-I-die-2018, rev 2021">EOL5-How-will-I-die-2018, rev 2021</a>).
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">"So this is a third and subtle danger of legalising assisted dying/suicide. It would increase people’s
fear of the inevitable fact of death and dying. I think this can be one factor in explaining why, in
jurisdictions which have introduced it, we see it being extended beyond the first strict limits. It is
held out as an answer to this fearful fact, death, whereas in fact death and dying should be talked
about in realistic terms, as normal, as concisely outlined by Dr Kathryn Mannix (<a href="https:// www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/dying-is-not-as-bad-as-you-think/p062m0xt">https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/dying-is-not-as-bad-as-you-think/p062m0xt</a>). As she says, normally
dying isn’t as bad as we think.
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">If the government should be doing anything, the first thing it might well do, is to promote informed
education about dying of the sort exemplified by specialists such as Dr Mannix, as well as
adequately funding her former specialism of palliative care. It should start with schools’ curricula.
After all every child will have encountered death at some stage.
</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Fourthly, the dangers of coercion, in my experience, are not so much external as internal. It’s often
rightly observed that prolonged pain is worse for the engaged spectator than for the sufferer. If you
care for someone, seeing them struggling is barely tolerable. You may wish to see their struggle
over, but underlying that wish is your own desire to be spared more of your own horror show. The
person who is ‘suffering’ however has that </span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">EOL5-How-will-I-die-2018, rev 2021 </span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">strong survival instinct, common to all humans, and is
more concentrated on living than dying. Having said that, when you are depressed, as might be
natural, that instinct gets temporarily eclipsed. Then you need protection from your own dark sky. It
is at such times that your other inner demons emerge: your sense of being a burden - to your family,
to your friends (if you have any), to the NHS and to the state purse; your fear of losing your savings
and of leaving nothing to your loved ones; your fear of pain and of dying (exaggerated by popular
mythology), and your sense of suffering, heightened by your depression. </span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">"For most of us with long
incurable diseases, it’s these internal perceptions that are most coercive, although they can be easily c</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: helvetica;">ompounded or even exploited from outside. I don’t see any way to protect us from such coercion,
internal or external, except to demonstrate through legislation that every life, however tenuous, is
equally important to our society and worth caring for. ‘Any man’s death diminishes me...’ and so
we will value it to the end."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm grateful that when I received my 'motor neurone disorder' diagnosis, which was initially frightening, I couldn't be tempted to opt for an early death. Instead of <u>one</u> Christmas with my family (as I warned them), I've enjoyed 22 more Christmases. That was the law against suicide fulfilling its safeguarding function, protecting the vulnerable, as I was then. Contrary to my preconceptions, my form of MND (PLS) is very gradual and I've been able to live a full if increasingly limited life, thanks to my wife, Jane, who cares for me 100% 24 hours a day seven days a week. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">My view is still that legalising assisted dying/suicide has more cons than pros. The better choice is to invest in hospice and palliative care, so that everyone may have access to pain and symptom care in the last years of their life.<br />
</span></span>
</p></div></div></div></div>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-62776612555845632762023-11-22T12:15:00.001+00:002023-11-22T12:19:12.672+00:00The Gordian Knot<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigy5Y60-JPRcNH93q2-9Nkdj0gvLsjt_diCSgeTiJH7oVZx3GS7_Z7htfMpJeHUs6x57CdxND8Xrn5gekOo0SD2tYPOiIAjsBsLsR89b-4shEfy9LbeWso9osRC8rym2LcOMiLLhheM8ezwzagdmPXClm0HQlgyriO8wE-1rYwRS2DSd74hCQMH_CxQC4Y/s1195/800px-Alexander_cutting_the_Gordian_knot_by_Andre_Castaigne_(1898-1899).jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1195" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigy5Y60-JPRcNH93q2-9Nkdj0gvLsjt_diCSgeTiJH7oVZx3GS7_Z7htfMpJeHUs6x57CdxND8Xrn5gekOo0SD2tYPOiIAjsBsLsR89b-4shEfy9LbeWso9osRC8rym2LcOMiLLhheM8ezwzagdmPXClm0HQlgyriO8wE-1rYwRS2DSd74hCQMH_CxQC4Y/w268-h400/800px-Alexander_cutting_the_Gordian_knot_by_Andre_Castaigne_(1898-1899).jpg" width="268" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The legend of the Gordian knot concerns the former kingdom of Gordium in present-day Asian Turkey. There was an ox-cart attached by a complex knot. The oracle said that whoever was able to untie the knot was destined to rule the whole of Asia. In 333 BC Alexander the Great (from Macedonia) arrived in his military campaigns and according to the most popular version simply solved the puzzle by slicing through the knot with one stroke of his sword. Well - he did in due course proceed to conquer all Asia as far East as India and Afghanistan. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Of course today untying the Gordian knot is a metaphor for solving a seemingly insoluble problem. As my previous post indicated, the Church of England has succeeded after many years in creating such a problem. It concerns irreconcilable differences concerning same-sex relationships, in particular those of lifelong commitment. For once this <i>is </i>a moreorless binary split, between those who quote individual categorical verses from the Bible condemning homosexual relations and those who believe that same Bible needs to be read within its cultural contexts and in the light of message of Jesus. Last week's General Synod's vote apparently satisfied nobody, 'progressives' considering it a fudge and 'traditionalists' considering a sell-out. As a result the CofE looks as though it's heading towards schism. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Is there any way to avoid it? I think there is, but, as I hinted before, it's as radical as slicing a knot with a sword. It means the established church relinquishing its privileged position of solemnizing the institution of marriage and leaving all marriages to the state, preserving for itself the honourable service of those who come asking for blessing for themselves. I imagine that this would be a matter of conscience for clergy, with some saying, "I'm sorry, I can't bless you, because...", for example, you are of the same sex, or you've been living in the same house, sharing the same bed, you've been married before etc. (To be clear, there were times when as vicar I refused marriage to divorced individuals, and offered them a service of blessing instead. Not an easy decision or conversation but in accordance with the then existing rules of the church.) Other clergy no doubt would welcome couples asking to be blessed. And this could be allowed for, as it does in other realms of the Law.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Undoubtedly such a change would require acts of Parliament and legal contortions by ecclesiastical lawyers and therefore would take a long time. Yet the prospect of both this endless diversion from the central role of the Church, to present the great good news of God's love in Christ, ceasing and the modelling of the fulfilment of Christ's great prayer for his followers, that they should demonstrate his love for world by their love for one another, beginning should surely be enough to sustain us. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Might we one day see wedding parties going joyfully from the registry office to be welcomed by their priest and dedicating their new life together to the God whom they worship? I hope so. And might we see a humbler Church of England answering Christ's prayer for us: "</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="text John-17-20" id="en-NRSVA-26769" style="font-family: verdana;">I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, </span><span class="text John-17-21" id="en-NRSVA-26770" style="font-family: verdana;">that they may all be one." I pray so. That is surely an imperative which all of us must heed.<br /></span></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-74842532916489045682023-11-14T15:46:00.007+00:002023-11-15T09:41:15.018+00:00Unholy irony<p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SHL5tq7W_4mWblbkTbfi0D6o0zFdbEv6CNgaaKPqg3p4sIxyDFrPQHw_oh04nj3aHJ9EpfJ6HfBh3e0TH10D1xKi6I-QePAmukTxVzhMJhGSLgx91uWecasBrI3yOvjlqC9xOOR9unD-UV0kv2WS9m_J83-ruXHvBRQ61Gj1akwEYgEoWVDa4frjSIWI/s1440/Screenshot%202023-11-14%20at%2015.47.59.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1440" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SHL5tq7W_4mWblbkTbfi0D6o0zFdbEv6CNgaaKPqg3p4sIxyDFrPQHw_oh04nj3aHJ9EpfJ6HfBh3e0TH10D1xKi6I-QePAmukTxVzhMJhGSLgx91uWecasBrI3yOvjlqC9xOOR9unD-UV0kv2WS9m_J83-ruXHvBRQ61Gj1akwEYgEoWVDa4frjSIWI/w400-h250/Screenshot%202023-11-14%20at%2015.47.59.png" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>Yesterday,
eclipsed by events on the domestic political stage, the whole Church of
England General Synod, after a passionate address by the Archbishop of
Canterbury and a shorter message from the Archbishop in Jerusalem, stood
for two minutes in reverent silence praying for peace and
reconciliation in Israel/Gaza. It was ironic therefore it was followed
by a series of questions, some clearly barbed, on the subject of
sexuality, which simply exposed how deeply and indeed bitterly divided
the Church's Synod is over the issue. I suppose the people who stand for
Synod, as for Parliament, will be activists by inclination, as it might
be front-line warriors. Perhaps this is good for sharpening policies
(to use political terminology). However I'm not sure the Church is meant
to be a political body. I don't mean that it should not comment on or
be involved in civil politics. But that's not its essence. That is to be
a community of love, a community which models what loving and living
together looks like. As its founder said, "</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span class="text John-13-34" id="en-NRSVA-26654"><sup class="versenum"> </sup><i>I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. </i></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span class="text John-13-35" id="en-NRSVA-26655"><i><sup class="versenum"> </sup>By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.</i>"</span></span><p></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Well, this afternoon will no doubt see the major engagement when the debate concerning the blessing of same-sex couples is scheduled. It's not something I should look forward to. I don't suppose many, if any, will change their views. I have my own hopes for the outcome - which is that </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">the proposal for a stand-alone service of blessing as well as prayers for use in other services should be approved. </span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Personally I'd like our present pattern for weddings completely shaken up and reformed. It wouldn't of course solve objections to blessing same-sex relationships, but it would create room for more flexibility for differing traditions without doing away with the joys of church celebrations. Let me explain...</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br /></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Time was when one of our pleasures was travelling to Europe, in the halcyon days before Brexit of course. One particularly bright memory was sitting of an evening witnessing a wedding party emerging from the <i>mairie</i> on their way to the church for the priest to bless the happy couple. “What a good arrangement!” I thought. The legal bit done by the mayor, the religious bit left to the priest. </span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Much as I enjoyed doing a “good wedding” when I was a vicar, I was always aware of a tension between my role as a registrar - which came with the job - and my role as a pastor. Of course the civil bit brings in a useful revenue stream for the diocese and the parish, and all the extras like the organist, bellringers, verger etc, who are all worthy of their hire. The clergy earn nothing in addition to their stipend except maybe an invitation to the knees-up afterwards. At some point in our history the Church bagged a monopoly of celebrating weddings which lasted until the last century, I imagine. I suppose it was part of its campaign to take over all the levers of power - benevolently naturally, such as the right to 26 "Lords Spiritual" sitting in the House of Lords, which was once more significant than now when absurdly there are as many as 800 peers (plus one as of yesterday). No doubt this would involve difficulties concerning Canon Law - the minutiae of which resemble, it seems to me, the laws of the scribes and pharisees about which Jesus had something trenchant to say. <br /></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">However, now it is really time to escape the magnetic attraction of our own importance and to make real our calling to serve the society in which we are placed. And like it or not our country now solemnises marriage between couples of all sorts. We can either refuse to acknowledge the fact, or bless all those that reflect the covenant relationship of enduring love that God has demonstrated for broken humankind. After all, who would deny communion or burial or the baptism of their child to someone who had been married in a registry office?<br /></span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-77289917631879192372023-04-08T12:24:00.000+01:002023-04-08T12:24:30.806+01:00Guilty, or not guilty<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Did I hear right, Wednesday morning, on the <i>Today</i> programme? A Republican congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, outside the New York courtroom to which Donald Trump, under arrest, had been taken to face 34 felony criminal charges said, "Well, he's in good company," she said, citing Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ as others who'd been arrested. I see that her modus operandi is to court controversy and follow conspiracy theories; so maybe the comment wasn't entirely out of character. Yet even so, during Holy Week when Christians remember Jesus' crucifixion, it was an extraordinary parallel. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">She could have used other characters from the trial of Jesus such as ... Barabbas </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">("</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mark and Luke further refer to Barabbas as one involved in a στάσις (<i>stasis, </i>riot)" <i>Wikipedia</i>), or the two criminals or rebels hanged on either side of Jesus, one of whom correctly told the other, "</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="text Luke-23-40" id="en-NRSVA-25966" style="font-family: verdana;">Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Luke-23-41" id="en-NRSVA-25967">? And
we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we
deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Whatever else can be said of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson facing tribunals - or indeed any of us in the final analysis - it's not that "we have done nothing wrong". Which is, mysteriously, theologians tell us, the point of the crucifixion. He has done nothing wrong, and is crucified so that we, who have all gone wrong, may escape the divine gallows and go free - or if not, at least be offered the prospect of paradise. </span></span></span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIZC3agFBgN6_zHBwpoy3wQCtgPg-aR9Kzp1FKsMwrsytkPybFVZNrwNrn7Wrnpc8aLXj4YSXHxZXXMC9VHc1lfVCaVXjQzY_eon_Z_avu5v7mfvfkLWGCikMxRFq8UnlXmy8Zm3prOcqzudWd-nVVdnNv2E8PWIL-pr6VtGXzNE5AQpAK_epk6M3btA/s700/NightTomb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="700" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIZC3agFBgN6_zHBwpoy3wQCtgPg-aR9Kzp1FKsMwrsytkPybFVZNrwNrn7Wrnpc8aLXj4YSXHxZXXMC9VHc1lfVCaVXjQzY_eon_Z_avu5v7mfvfkLWGCikMxRFq8UnlXmy8Zm3prOcqzudWd-nVVdnNv2E8PWIL-pr6VtGXzNE5AQpAK_epk6M3btA/s320/NightTomb.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-small;">Night in Garden Tomb, Jerusalem <br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Luke-23-41" id="en-NRSVA-25967">I'm not sure I agree with those theologians, superficially attractive though that theory is. I prefer to think that the life and death of Christ who is the human face of God demonstrate that no part of human experience is outside God's own comprehension and empathy, not even the most acute torture and the worst dying. As that most popular of Hebrew psalms puts it, "</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="text Ps-23-4" id="en-NRSVA-14240" style="font-family: verdana;">Even though I walk through the darkest valley </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="indent-1"><span class="indent-1-breaks">(or valley of the shadow of death) </span><span class="text Ps-23-4">I fear no evil;</span></span><span class="text Ps-23-4"> for you are with me...." <br /></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Ps-23-4"></span></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Ps-23-4">As Archbishop Justin Welby wrote on his Facebook page today (Saturday):</span></span></span></p><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 x1l90r2v" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":rbr:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xdj266r x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">"Holy Saturday is a day of silence. Profound, deathly silence. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"> It is the day after the worst possible thing has happened, and now there is only living with the consequences. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">All of us have our own Holy Saturday moments that mark our lives. Perhaps, like Mary, we have seen a loved one die and we live with that empty space. Perhaps, like Peter, we have forever lost a chance to apologise for a mistake and repair a relationship. Perhaps, like Judas, we have done something very <span></span>wrong and the consequences have been disastrous. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">It isn’t possible to control the outcome of such moments. We can wait and see what happens. We can distract ourselves, and try and ignore the pain we feel. We can carry on with our normal lives, tinged with lost hope, fear and uncertainty. This is what the disciples must have faced the sabbath day after Jesus’ death. All is lost. For with Jesus so much else has died. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">They had no idea the resurrection was coming, no clue that their sorrow would be transformed to joy. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Holy Saturday is a day like no other. A day of holding the pain and failure and uncertainty. A new dawn is coming. The promise is true that all will be well.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">But today, on this day, as we remember Jesus lying in the grave we sit in silence together with the disciples, weighing the absence and praying for a miracle that will transform our lives and our world."</span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">And although we don't yet see the miracle, we do discover that even death is not outside God's experience and we therefore have hope.<span class="text Ps-23-4"></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-41277085779509542612023-03-25T18:54:00.006+00:002023-04-02T18:49:19.808+01:00Osted - in need of special measures<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">When I was a teacher (which was a long time ago), I only once had an Ofsted (</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills)</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> inspector observing one of my lessons. Mr C was, in my memory, a large man. He had taught modern languages in a grammar school. My class was what was once known as a ROSLA year (students compelled by government dictat to stay on a year longer than before). They were students who had not done well enough at GCSEs to take A levels, and so we had to devise a curriculum for them, which would give them decent qualifications when they left. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As head of English, my part was steering through the innovative vocational Royal Society of Arts 'Basic Clerical Skills' module (at a similar level to NVQs). It was one of these lessons that Mr C came to witness. My students were a bunch of Oxford east enders. They were rough diamonds whom I liked. The lesson, I seem to recall, was quite mundane but very orderly. No one left their seat. No one kicked up a rumpus. I was able to go round the room with appropriately encouraging and helpful advice. With that group, it was a triumph. Not as exciting as our trips down the canal or to local historic buildings, but a triumph of self-restraint on the part of the students. Well, that was my view at least!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">However Mr C didn't see it that way apparently, as the headteacher told me after. Mrs Storrar was a remarkable woman who had returned to teaching following a time in industry. And she had more faith in most of her staff, including me, than in the inspector. I can't remember what status this inspection had, but it was certainly not a whole-school inspection. As the head and I observed, Mr C had (or appeared to have) no experience of teaching our kind of students. I assume his verdict had been that my lesson had been inadequate. Since then I have been governor of a number of schools and have witnessed the more recent Ofsted régime in education - and at second-hand in social work.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I've long relished what Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright, said about critics: "</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><i>Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing of
the soil. The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings
on a double-bass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and
buzzes. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself;
simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: 'Look, I too am
living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything.'</i>" A word of comfort to teachers when irritated by inspectors, who criticise them.... </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>But the truth is that Ofsted is far worse than an irritation. Schools were once given a week or more's notice of an inspection. I believe notice now is the day before. I suppose the idea is to prevent schools rustling up paperwork to impress the inspectors arriving seven days later. "Keep them up to the mark!" In my experience in the areas of public service with which I'm familiar, there is little more than a scintilla of evidence for lack of dedication. It's true that Baroness Casey's year-long review of the Met Police revealed enough going wrong for her to describe it as institutionally sexist, racist, and homophobic, but it is a huge unwieldy institution which is asked to do too much.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFXu9B6_q4jNkc9vjzcu3eEjLsDUPLRUD84sa8dwrxtDqpxafBclIrc0YO-jNh3dKSVp_z3wOVJP34ywbyeZNPiJzgak2NJi4ewE-0CGgvTlf6bypUBSyTB_xlGPOuSGObjdd9lElJyFoDM7MucfVD_rAFd_vP8JEbd_lQ7V9w5bc3K3zZgY_0pWxHLA/s708/02da-545-main-0-1-708x472.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="708" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFXu9B6_q4jNkc9vjzcu3eEjLsDUPLRUD84sa8dwrxtDqpxafBclIrc0YO-jNh3dKSVp_z3wOVJP34ywbyeZNPiJzgak2NJi4ewE-0CGgvTlf6bypUBSyTB_xlGPOuSGObjdd9lElJyFoDM7MucfVD_rAFd_vP8JEbd_lQ7V9w5bc3K3zZgY_0pWxHLA/s320/02da-545-main-0-1-708x472.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>But why am I writing about Ofsted now? You'll notice that I began to comment about it at the beginning of this week - this was because of the delayed local news concerning the suicide in January of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham Primary School, in anticipation of a negative Ofsted one-word verdict of her respected school: "inadequate". </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span> A single word gets repeated on estate agents' details. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>The reaction from local heads was to take Ofsted rankings off their websites and to threaten to keep inspectors out of their schools. and to demand Ofsted suspended inspections out of respect for a good headteacher. Since then it has hit the national news, first with the head of Ofsted, the upper-crust, Amanda Spielman, whilst expressing her sympathy with Mrs Perry's family, refusing to pause inspections, and then the eye-wateringly wealthy, privately educated Rishi Sunak backing Ofsted as giving parents the information they need. I wonder whether his parents would have been satisfied with a single-word summary of his years at Stroud School. Even if it had been "Outstanding" or "Requires improvement", they would have deserved more. And that is the problem with Ofsted. "</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ofsted inspections 'provide independent, up-to-date evaluations on the
quality of education, safeguarding and leadership, which parents greatly
rely on to give them confidence in choosing the right school for their
child,' a Department of Education spokesperson said." </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>Maybe... However, it does not really give parents a true picture of a school or organisation - because although the report is many pages long, that's not what parents look at and neither is it what teachers hear. They see and hear only the headline. </span></span></span></p><p class="ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph eq5iqo00"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>Ruth Perry's sister, <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2023-03-21/sister-of-ruth-perry-says-ofsted-report-was-deeply-harmful-to-late-headteacher">Professor Julia Waters </a>of Reading University, had no doubt why her sister took her own life. The Caversham report was sensationalist and drawn from scant evidence. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“In our (family's) opinion, the findings of Ofsted were disproportionate, unfair
and, as has tragically been proven, deeply harmful in their (implied)
focus on one individual.” I suppose the theory behind Ofsted inspections was a good one; indeed school inspectors have a long history. But the idea of publishing grades in order to "push up standards" dates, I think, only to 1992. It is just one example of governmental obsession with targets, like SATs, instead of education. The only competent Secretary of State I've known was Estelle Morris (now Baroness) whose term in office was far too short (2001-2). Her virtues were honesty, humility and that she had been a state school teacher. She was a breath of fresh air. Here at last was someone who knew what they were talking about. Others tend to use the position as a step up the political ladder. There seems to be an idée fixe among others to set out to oppose those they should be championing - as was revealed in the disgraceful WhatsApp exchange between the Secretaries of State </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> for Health and </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">for Education and during lockdown. As the BBC reported, "</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">In other WhatsApp messages released by the paper, Mr Hancock described teaching unions as 'absolute </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">arses'. "Sir Gavin replied that they hated work" </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">One feels that Estelle Morris would have been on the side of teachers - which is, as every teacher knows, is the best form of pedagogy. And it is without doubt the best form of inspection. Collaboration and encouragement would be a far better way to raise educational standards than the present emotionally draining regime, which drives conscientious teachers to mental ill health and even to despair (as I have witnessed). Ofsted needs to look at itself if it really seeks to be a force for good. If its effect is drive teachers out of the profession, it is clearly of no help to children and is failing. Otherwise it should be replaced. Maybe, like the Met, it needs to be reconstituted. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A good article on this subject can be found in the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/24/punishing-ofsted-regime-driving-out-education-school-leaders">here. </a></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-75457238867721553922023-03-22T11:51:00.007+00:002023-03-22T11:59:59.902+00:00Devaluing unpaid care<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Seldom do I wander into the field of politics..., but sometimes something provokes me to put pen to paper (as we used quaintly to say). And two things have recently done that. One was the budget, and the other has been Ofsted. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7bDvMZI9FQMOJe3g3zCvJqXb36FBKSbcKcLxxzX8sb2KsduExOoXFuawj6MeXbQUL4Ms7XQM9REC-zJtQDLU-TKdX7B7QcS0jgNbo7XqNzeQJ9sC80WnB_djrYI1uHBE7JWFJ7KhMEHn-lnpdp_vKnnKXT_e1xdJjIitxILsH7Gho62GROrINePRYQw/s465/s465_Jeremy_Hunt_profile_picture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="310" data-original-width="465" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7bDvMZI9FQMOJe3g3zCvJqXb36FBKSbcKcLxxzX8sb2KsduExOoXFuawj6MeXbQUL4Ms7XQM9REC-zJtQDLU-TKdX7B7QcS0jgNbo7XqNzeQJ9sC80WnB_djrYI1uHBE7JWFJ7KhMEHn-lnpdp_vKnnKXT_e1xdJjIitxILsH7Gho62GROrINePRYQw/s320/s465_Jeremy_Hunt_profile_picture.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">HMG profile</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The urbane Jeremy Hunt's first <b>budget</b> contained some favourable news for me and some news which I welcomed for my family (until I learned the date of implementation for one particular measure). I suppose I should welcome the confirmation of the triple-lock on pensions, but that doesn't seem to me a priority (except as a vote catcher), but the section of the population that is really suffering from the cost of living crisis at the moment are young families - two of whom are represented in my family. So when the extension of childcare funding was trailed before the budget, I was pleased. However in the event it won't fully come into effect until September 2025 - which will not be of much use even to my youngest grandchildren. Of course the extension of the energy price cap for another three months, by when we all hope the price of energy will have come down, will help them and us. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">However my principle objection to the budget is its back-to-work agenda. It seems to me to be a move away from the family - which is the best basis for a society. We really did shoot ourselves in the foot with Brexit, didn't we? Our nurseries and hospitals, to say nothing of the farming and food industries, were dependent on EU citizens, for whom Brexit has created a hostile environment. Unsurprisingly they are reluctant to push through the barriers we've erected to keep them out. Now we desperately plead for workers from further afield to come, usually depriving domestic service sectors where their local needs are far more severe than our own. And so, while patting itself on its low unemployment level, the government is equally deperately seeking to suck every adult into the paid workforce. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And what's the consequence? In due course every single child from the year dot will be entitled to funded care away from a parent for 30 hours a week. That will mean that, along with four others, they will have care from one adult. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Now I have nothing against parents pursuing their own careers and fulfilling their own talents. Quite the contrary. But I do object to my government failing to reward parents caring for their own children. Had Mr Hunt included a provision to <u>pay</u> stay-at-home parents, acknowledging home care is quite as valid a contribution to the nation's good as nursery provision, I should have applauded him. And while he was about it, he could have properly funded baby and toddler groups and sure-start groups, instead of falsely "economising" on yet another social benefit. There's no doubt that this was an improvement on the autumn's kamikaze financial event. But, with its pension reward for the richest, who can afford to pay £60,000 (!) every year into their tax-free pension pot, it remains a monument to right-wing dogma. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/22/jeremy-hunt-universal-credit-benefits-mothers-30-hour-weeks"><b>A very important article</b></a> related to the Budget proposals has appeared today. '</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Charities and academics criticised the move as “unconscionable”, saying
it “devalues unpaid care” and would disproportionately impact single
mothers, driving families into debt and vulnerable children into
poverty.'</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Ofsted must wait until my next post.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-51766006104043818232023-02-13T16:52:00.005+00:002023-02-14T12:03:39.360+00:00Fear and trembling (part 2)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOXr_sCfWxMKn2KTfrxnx9ka5TWN4nHsBhxto4brUI5wJqy6s7K5QnixgnrO6pF6A3KDe6qnc0AfdkFfKiUm44Qwwt-tQnAj4uk3Z0BctEP_4dkqf6eqUOxhoYsz7ATj2LgRd2d-nAwHf3rHDmzS-x3XtEL3l51dZoKz4-7a6ENKmxegI-nvOyCgrFQ/s785/welby_gs_080223-5436.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="785" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOXr_sCfWxMKn2KTfrxnx9ka5TWN4nHsBhxto4brUI5wJqy6s7K5QnixgnrO6pF6A3KDe6qnc0AfdkFfKiUm44Qwwt-tQnAj4uk3Z0BctEP_4dkqf6eqUOxhoYsz7ATj2LgRd2d-nAwHf3rHDmzS-x3XtEL3l51dZoKz4-7a6ENKmxegI-nvOyCgrFQ/w400-h272/welby_gs_080223-5436.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="credit js-form-wrapper form-wrapper">Max Colson/Church of England</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">And so, now that I've had time to reflect, what are my conclusions? Have my views shifted at all? </span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I suppose to be truthful they have moved. With 28 amendments, nearly all of them debated, as you can imagine, there were a lot of speeches. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sadly there's no Hansard for General Synod and so these are my aging recollections. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The one speech which might have reversed my view came from a chap called Ed Shaw, a "pastor" from Bristol, who seemed to me to demonstrate the most loving approach from an opponent to the Bishops' motion. He talked about seeking to find common ground between those who want to bless same-sex couples and those who decry it on the grounds that it goes against the Bible's and the Church's historic teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman. He seemed to me to have a more positive tone than the more anecdotal or aggressive speeches of others in the debate. Unlike others whose hidden agenda seemed to be itching for a church in their own image he appeared to want a practical way to keep the Church together - which was what Jesus Christ prayed for before his crucifixion. That must surely be the priority for any who claim to follow him.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A speech which educated me came from an historian turned vicar called Miranda Threlfall-Holmes on the Thursday who effectively questioned the received wisdom that the church has always had one fixed idea of marriage. She outlined how the doctrine of marriage had developed over the years, for example the idea of consent ("I will", "I do") was a reform introduced to counter the practice of political alliances (including child-marriages). The Church, I learned, has not consistently taught for 2000 years that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and discussions about marriage have largely not been about sex, but about power. She suggested that the development of doctrine was a work of the truth-revealing Holy Spirit - which seemed to me to make sense. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">However the speech which moved and impressed me most came from Anderson Jeremiah, who describes himself as a Dalit Christian, who was ordained in the Church of South India and now lectures in Lancaster University. He was answering an amendment asking the Bishops to show more of their theological rationale before any decision was taken. If Ed Shaw's speech was a plea to be heard, and Miranda Threlfall-Holmes' a setting of the historical record straight, Dr Jeremiah's was a theological sermon. I looked it up on YouTube to see how it began and once again I was struck by its prophetic perspective: "Last Sunday I stood in the pulpit and preached a sermon on Isaiah 58. What is the meaning of true fasting, if not to address the yokes and systems of oppression right before our lives? Isaiah reminded his listeners then, and now, that we are people of exodus and that there is an ethical demand that we practise liberation and justice. I didn't tell my congregation, 'I haven't made up my theological mind yet, so please wait. I'll go and prepare a theological statement and I'll come back and preach a sermon on Isaiah 58.' Personal piety has a necessary public liberatory impulse. We as Christians, living in that prophetic tradition, are called to inhabit that intersection, to proclaim new life rooted in love, mercy and justice; to repair the breach and restore life. People in the journey, in Exodus, didn't wait for a theological rationale; they encountered God where they were. Now I readily agree with Dr Paul,... that yes, of course there needs to be a lot more theological rationale. For instance, in the entire document, the word 'justice' is missing. Somehow the fundamental Christian commitment to pursue equity, righteousness and mercy was missing. I understand that. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"But I appreciate the desire of the House of Bishops to actually get into action what's required <u>right now</u>. And that's why that commitment which has come from the House of Bishops to act now will be delayed if we go back again to thousands and thousands of years of theological writing on this matter. We all know from this discussion surrounding this process, it has been divisive; it has not been convivial. This brings me back to our focus: of justice. For too long, in the name of doing theology, we have allowed misogyny, racism, slavery, patriarchy, because there was not enough of a settled theological understanding, while people suffered. We can't do that. And that is why I resist this amendment, because we do need to act now - and do theology as we pursue justice in our lives. We can't separate pursuit of justice here and now, and do theology later. The God who meets us in Jesus said, 'The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.' Jesus standing in that prophetic tradition calls us to act now, not wait for a theological rationale. Therefore I resist this amendment and accept the steps that are taken by the House of Bishops and move towards pursuing justice while doing theology - because as a theological educator there are different ways of doing theology; there's a practical theology and a political theology, and you can do theology while doing what's required. Thank you." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Put simply, you don't put off pursuing justice on the grounds that you're still discussing the theory. Is slavery ever just? Is discriminating against people of other races ever right? Is it ever just to disadvantage disabled people like me? Is it just or equitable to refuse to bless committed couples whatever their sex? These are all historical yokes of oppression which we are clearly bound to lift and break.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dr Jeremiah, appropriately and significantly a voice from the global south, was the most prophetic voice for me. And so after eight hours of listening and thinking, my admiration for the Bishops was augmented and my view that blessing same-sex marriage is something that the Church must countenance was strengthened, although as Justin Welby humbly said in <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/media-and-news/press-releases/general-synod-archbishop-canterburys-speech-living-love-and-faith">his speech</a>, "</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Each of us will answer to God at the judgement for our decisions on this
matter. We are personally responsible. I am supporting these resources,
not, I think, because I am controlled by culture but because of
scripture, tradition and reason evidenced in the vast work done over the
last six years so ably by so many. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I may be wrong, of course I may, but I cannot duck the issue...". Amen to that.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span> <br /></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-50473054120630217232023-02-11T13:30:00.004+00:002023-02-12T12:38:17.618+00:00Fear and trembling (part 1)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8iNnSUGOFpVBrAN2SQOAO21JUolcCbXnVb0vkNInF2RBiBl8FXbls1z8qlAUy2v9UFE-N9bouTSCn3Bl1EHInWqwlvgJn9fUV-knqHjBNvX5rfgSWAgXpMD4wndnQWuZzQejZjLRakaQlfPh5u40rwfZ5Yi8uA8CzsPY0wUvKohOfh2Mo_ywK_FPWug/s785/Inline%20image%20-%20The%20Church%20of%20England%20logo%20version%202.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="785" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8iNnSUGOFpVBrAN2SQOAO21JUolcCbXnVb0vkNInF2RBiBl8FXbls1z8qlAUy2v9UFE-N9bouTSCn3Bl1EHInWqwlvgJn9fUV-knqHjBNvX5rfgSWAgXpMD4wndnQWuZzQejZjLRakaQlfPh5u40rwfZ5Yi8uA8CzsPY0wUvKohOfh2Mo_ywK_FPWug/s320/Inline%20image%20-%20The%20Church%20of%20England%20logo%20version%202.png" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I started to watch the Wednesday afternoon's debate on prayers of blessing for same-sex partners in the Church of England's General Synod. What an arcane process! One wonders what mind devised such a weird institution to decide church affairs. What a depressing watch! So much distrust in a Christian community.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Apparently the Synod has powers to legislate in church matters devolved by Parliament - which might explain the convolutions and the politicking of speakers. It seemed an unholy spectacle of power-playing. Occasionally I had glimpses of what resonated to me as good theology. Mostly there were unsubstantiated assumptions, stated as unquestionable truths, for example that marriage always has been exclusively between one man and woman, that sex before marriage has always been regarded as wrong. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It turned out that my trepidation was justified. The members got tired and the debate extended to Thursday morning, and after 28 amendments and eight hours' discussion a vote on the motion (amended) was taken and narrowly won. The star of the show was undoubtedly Geoffrey Tattersall KC who gracefully chaired the whole thing and stuck to the standing orders much to the irritation of those who wanted to gun for the Bishops. Second to him was the Bishop of London, and formerly Chief Nursing Officer of England, Sarah Mullally. It was her job to answer every amendment which she did with reason and calmness. I was saddened by the refusal of many to trust her integrity and that of others. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There was, it seemed to me, a concerted effort by the procedural device of amendments to delay or thwart the Bishops' proposals. I had the sense of a flexing of muscles by some influential and well-endowed parts of the Church to have their own way. Well, I suppose that's the nature of democracy, but I'm not sure it's the way of Christ. There was talk of the sanctity of truth. However, I'm not sure whether it wasn't the old Hellenistic and Enlightenment view of truth, i.e. propositional reason, rather than the Christian view, that truth is relational. Hence faith and love are relational, not credal. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Whether the Bishops will be given the grace to find what a friend describes as the way of "</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">reconciliation – how to live with people one can’t bear – starting from oneself sometimes" remains to be seen. People of goodwill will pray so.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-2918476615404823802023-01-30T17:07:00.001+00:002023-01-30T17:18:20.572+00:00Smothered by security blankets<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Yesterday</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I listened to Sunday Worship on BBC Radio 4. It was marking Holocaust Memorial weekend and came from the West London Synagogue. The service remembered not only the Nazi genocide of Jews in the 1940s, but also the genocide of Armenians early in the century, of Rwandans in the 1990s, of Bosnian Muslims in Sebrenica, the repression of </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Uyghur Muslims in China today. The final reading was what most struck me. It was from </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Heinz Heger’s book – <i>The Pink Triangle: The True
Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps.</i> I had known about the Nazis making Jews wear yellow stars. I'd not known about how they used triangles in concentration camps: with yellow triangles for Jews, brown for Roma, and pink for homosexual men (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge">see Wikipedia</a>) "Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were the prisoners who suffered most frequently and severely the tortures and blows of the SS and the Kapos. They were described as the scum of humanity who had no right to live on German soil and should be exterminated. But the lowest of the low in this scum were we, the men with the pink triangle. May they never be forgotten, these multitude of dead, our anonymous immortal martyrs" (based on the account of </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Josef Kohout, a Holocaust survivor).</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1segBOjXEQg0K3jg5kzordu-ghyQhPAplXAje0Skp3mcMpaQXzC41z_BFWGpnvL-pbFGD7mCMc0TdYc6N5i67P2_1sYM6vDi5ittYiW_XQvx_e2UShd9FUIzeC4k-T2-mbx3OZxNDtg7s5tKP9TJ1Tn86R2AMs7HYMWYqG6v_9bUb6Hz3LWqonk6-qQ/s2999/IMG_5777.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2999" data-original-width="2503" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1segBOjXEQg0K3jg5kzordu-ghyQhPAplXAje0Skp3mcMpaQXzC41z_BFWGpnvL-pbFGD7mCMc0TdYc6N5i67P2_1sYM6vDi5ittYiW_XQvx_e2UShd9FUIzeC4k-T2-mbx3OZxNDtg7s5tKP9TJ1Tn86R2AMs7HYMWYqG6v_9bUb6Hz3LWqonk6-qQ/w334-h400/IMG_5777.jpeg" width="334" /></a></span></div><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Today I'm remembering my best friend from university. He was gay. He died a few weeks ago. He was a lovely and talented man, and a man of faith. He was never allowed to be married to the man he loved by the Church he served. And he still wouldn't have been - in spite of there recently having been a much trumpeted report from our bishops and archbishops. It was seen as a step forward - as indeed it was in that it proposed prayers of blessing for all committed partnerships including after same-sex civil marriages. It also was accompanied by a forthright apology: "“We have not loved you as God loves you, and that is profoundly wrong. We affirm, publicly and unequivocally, that LGBTQI+ people are welcome and valued: we are all children of God.” </span></span></span><p></p><p><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDa3JHpBqgYU1tEOSLkhXDdrSCzmrG2WqD0wydaeth5BMzEzhJoo8Y0696SN98mxQcLFlrE44ZCpz_0Aj3Xseh5UMtAcLHrn_Rf5qN8H-ZNvTuiynHB1T_aDfkUwMPpugmATFF4RokiYhuF2e9ex1bPZPQasrG9AT6dLV1rHNSUpLGAn3TLHTIiHbItQ/s474/th.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDa3JHpBqgYU1tEOSLkhXDdrSCzmrG2WqD0wydaeth5BMzEzhJoo8Y0696SN98mxQcLFlrE44ZCpz_0Aj3Xseh5UMtAcLHrn_Rf5qN8H-ZNvTuiynHB1T_aDfkUwMPpugmATFF4RokiYhuF2e9ex1bPZPQasrG9AT6dLV1rHNSUpLGAn3TLHTIiHbItQ/w320-h320/th.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linus, www.peanuts.com<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Personally I was disappointed by the compromise, although I of course understand the awkward place in which the bishops found themselves, on the tightrope between literalists and liberals, and between the global north and south. I seem to remember Pope Francis once talking about how important it was for churches to be appropriate to their local societies. I can't find the quote but I think he wasn't arguing for moral relativism, just stating the obvious that science alters our understanding of the world. However it takes time for that understanding to spread. Yet in my search I came upon this resonant quotation: "</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has
been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from
being confined and from clinging to its own security." It seems to me that the Church of England is too anxious to cling to its own security. It's common for a child to have a crisis when her/his security blanket has worn out to a mere scrap of a rag.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The House of Bishops (their collective title) were between a rock and a hard place. I'm not sure whether their collective response isn't a fudge. If so, it's par for the course for the CofE. "</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>There are some among us who will be perturbed because they believe that these developments do not
reflect the way of Christ as they understand it. Some will see these developments as steps along a
continuing journey. Some will feel we have gone too far. Some will feel we have not gone far enough." A fair summing up, but the trouble with fudge is that it's not sustaining in the long term. And someone pointed out that an apology only rings true when you stop the hurt you're inflicting. It's time we repented fully of our part in anti-Gayism, which found its ugly flowering in the concentration camps. So I hope our church resumes the journey towards equal marriage pretty quick before we get bogged down in the mud for another six years. </span></span></span>
</p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-61466513240358053402022-11-08T14:40:00.003+00:002022-11-09T15:09:57.472+00:00Reaping the whirlwind<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">During Liz Truss’s ill-fated premiership, anxious to build on Boris Johnson’s Ukraine-bolstered popularity, Ben Wallace, the UK Defence Secretary, was sent to the United States to discuss with his American counterpart. We were told this was because of the villainous Vladimir Putin and the "very real" threat of his launching a dirty bomb attack on Ukraine. Of course Mr Putin denied this - but then, as we have been discovering here, politicians have a habit of lying in order to save their skins. Well, no doubt, our intelligence services know what they’re talking about - inasmuch as we’re allowed to hear. <br /><br />Of course, we won’t learn the truth for many years. However there is an irony here. And that is that these foul weapons, which combine conventional and atomic elements, had their origins in our own country. I’m listening to the BBC Radio 4 series “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cxrh">Fallout: Living in the Shadow of the Bomb</a>” at the moment. What a disastrous story! It’s an account of the British nuclear bomb testing after 1952, in Australia and the Pacific Ocean. I learned what I didn’t know before: that it was two scientists in Birmingham University (which even has a blue plaque to commemorate the event) who first wrote about the possibility of airborne nuclear fission and it was Winston Churchill and the UK wartime government who started an atomic weapons project, codenamed Tube Alloys, before the Manhattan Project in the USA. In fact it was we who shared the technology with them, and German and Soviet spies who disseminated it to their respective powers. Talk about reaping the whirlwind!</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnu8L72v9kXMBGYjnfU-lqDcXaOR7YIOHL8VGvS9ALQY7CQlCV8NP_BgtAEKe_MycxIzhKFmCIt0A9zxLAtUdvzA1soB1-oxw2ruKP-h8RBXMJtIxf7y6IGr4MqEyvQrv9NcoG6Z-63Am-Ph5KrB2IJCVTMUGCI2xf-z_ALopYM22RXOBGiarKRWh4w/s330/330px-University_of_Birmingham_-_Poynting_Physics_Building_-_blue_plaques_group_-_Frisch_Peierls.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="330" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnu8L72v9kXMBGYjnfU-lqDcXaOR7YIOHL8VGvS9ALQY7CQlCV8NP_BgtAEKe_MycxIzhKFmCIt0A9zxLAtUdvzA1soB1-oxw2ruKP-h8RBXMJtIxf7y6IGr4MqEyvQrv9NcoG6Z-63Am-Ph5KrB2IJCVTMUGCI2xf-z_ALopYM22RXOBGiarKRWh4w/s320/330px-University_of_Birmingham_-_Poynting_Physics_Building_-_blue_plaques_group_-_Frisch_Peierls.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But then it has always been thus. We discover a new super-weapon, such as the rifle, and we destroy indigenous nations and take their ancestral lands; or chemical and biological weapons and are appalled when they’re employed by dictators. We develop sophisticated landmines and then weep crocodile tears when thousands of children have limbs blown off. Drones were developed in the UK and the USA and used by Germany in the war, and now they are devastating our ally, Ukraine. <br /><br />As we approach Remembrance Day, in my view it’s vital that we recognise our complicity in this horrific trade and how central the military-industrial complex is in our economy. In his two-part essay, <a href="https://www.alanstorkey.com/1-re-remembering-war/">Re-remembering War</a> Alan Storkey writes: “The Military-Industrial Complexes of the World need wars and generate wars. Accumulating arms causes wars and did in 1914. Most modern wars do not have a big disputed reason, but start because the military and the arms sellers need wars for their business. The military-industrial complex, allied to its politicians, cause wars and rumours of wars.” And he quotes Lord Grey: “The person who knew the build up to World War One most thoroughly was Lord Grey, British Foreign Secretary for the preceding decade. He said: ‘The moral is obvious; it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war. If there are armaments on one side, there must be armaments on other sides.. The increase in armaments that in each nation is intended to produce consciousness of strength and a sense of security, do not produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. Fear begets suspicion and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts…The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them – it was these that made war inevitable. This, it seems to me, is the truest reading of history, and the lesson that the present should be learning from the past in the interests of future peace, the warning to be handed on to those who come after us.’" <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As Storkey comments, "There were many other witnesses to the same truth, as we shall see. ARMS CAUSE WARS.” Both developing weaponry and deploying it are pernicious human activities, and we should be more than sad as this weekend we contemplate their effects. Surely we should pressure our politicians actively to resist the siren calls of the arms industry with their well-paid lobbyists and a light grasp of morality? And pledge ourselves actively to seek peace? Or as the Peace Pledge Union has it, "Remember and disarm".</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There's a prayer for Remembrance Sunday which goes: <i>"God, our refuge and strength, bring near the day when wars shall cease and poverty and pain shall end, that the earth may know the peace of heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."</i> With due respect to the writer of the prayer, I reckon it isn't just the Almighty's job to work for peace. <br /></span></span></p><h2 class="result-title__heading" data-test-id="result-title" data-v-1c584a7e="" data-v-b4e44ddc=""></h2><p></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-69938652255215009002022-04-06T15:05:00.005+01:002022-04-06T15:05:58.310+01:00Channel 4 and Cadbury's<p> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On Monday Channel 4's <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/cadbury-exposed-dispatches "><i>Dispatches</i></a> programme focused on the operations of Mondelez in Ghana. You might be forgiven for asking, 'And who or what is Mondelez?' It's Mondelez International, one of the two foreign companies which eventually gobbled up our pioneering ethically inspired chocolate industry - consisting of the three Quaker founded firms of Fry's from Bristol, Cadbury's from Birmingham and Rowntree's from York. The first two are now part of Mondelez (annual profits £3.3bn), and Rowntree's part of Nestlés (annual profits £13.8bn). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHJo4PtSOXiz_z6vm3UEuWyp3KpM3US8EiOcTzRktwso-n7aFh1qanjzMYUdMekVjsB4eENzpScVHa6cEjImACF2NZCOm3T__oZVil-Us4YQbbtwVIOpFUQG8grMRF4dY75H1P2rslKVIMWc2Gpl4i7EnPW3k0Rulki_NiuTsNXzof0Dt32YTcaLQMQ/s1440/Screenshot%202022-04-06%20at%2014.55.15.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1440" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHJo4PtSOXiz_z6vm3UEuWyp3KpM3US8EiOcTzRktwso-n7aFh1qanjzMYUdMekVjsB4eENzpScVHa6cEjImACF2NZCOm3T__oZVil-Us4YQbbtwVIOpFUQG8grMRF4dY75H1P2rslKVIMWc2Gpl4i7EnPW3k0Rulki_NiuTsNXzof0Dt32YTcaLQMQ/w462-h289/Screenshot%202022-04-06%20at%2014.55.15.png" width="462" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From Channel 4 programme<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> In the programme, '<u>Cadbury Exposed</u>', Antony Barnett visited the farms which supply Mondelez, i.e. Cadbury, with the cocoa, some of which goes into Cadbury's Creme Eggs and Dairy Milk bars. Mondelez claims to be an ethical producer. '</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mondelēz, which made global profits last year of more than £3.3bn, has a
sustainability programme, <u>Cocoa Life</u>. Its logo is marked on its
products, including Cadbury Dairy Milk, and its website states: “No
amount of child labour in the cocoa supply chain should be acceptable”' (<i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/apr/03/cadbury-faces-fresh-accusations-of-child-labour-on-cocoa-farms-in-ghana">Observer, 2nd April 2022</a></i>).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXOl-9VQJ9J_gs1k-s9WfSF_Q_A_aMuadzEoVgicjCb6-0edyeOMoa2YMbq2j06-IluspYgMTopoE2jnwFlcPhZcoqyMf-T0OUAvPzgY-4Crdnp729QuEm2YwNKMJEU4tm0jwW6oi6_IsEXQXx9iEsTKMSvDrPJW7ySTkUDIi1n1OeodP-ZG5Ab1ODQ/s620/1800.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="372" data-original-width="620" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXOl-9VQJ9J_gs1k-s9WfSF_Q_A_aMuadzEoVgicjCb6-0edyeOMoa2YMbq2j06-IluspYgMTopoE2jnwFlcPhZcoqyMf-T0OUAvPzgY-4Crdnp729QuEm2YwNKMJEU4tm0jwW6oi6_IsEXQXx9iEsTKMSvDrPJW7ySTkUDIi1n1OeodP-ZG5Ab1ODQ/s320/1800.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From Channel 4 programme<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In fact the cocoa farmers are forced to use child workers as young as ten, as they themselves are paid only £2 a day and therefore cannot afford to hire adult workers. And this by a company that makes a <u>profit</u> of £3.3,000,000,000 a year. I think the most effective way to make Cadbury's (aka Mondelez) live up to their Cocoa Life claim by paying their farmers a fair rate would be to boycott their products and buy truly fairly traded chocolates - which can bought on the high street from the cheapest to the poshest shops. See <a href="https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/media-centre/blog/15-fairtrade-chocolate-choices-you-can-find-on-the-high-street/">https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/media-centre/blog/15-fairtrade-chocolate-choices-you-can-find-on-the-high-street/</a>. My favourite <a href="http://www.cornerstonegrove.org.uk/">local coffee shop</a> also supplies <i><a href="https://meaningfulchocolate.co.uk/pages/real-easter-egg">The Real Easter Egg</a> </i>products. I gather commercial firms mind a bit when their custom drops.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the same day as the programme the government announced its plans to sell off the admirable Channel 4. The reason it wants to is opaque. Although publicly owned, it costs us and the government nothing as it's financed by advertising. The Secretary of State says it needs to compete with the 'new online platforms' like Netflix. That it can't is far from obvious. It seems to have very creative staff, producing programmes of variety and independence. I wonder if I'm alone in wondering whether the latter is the real motive for privatization - as well as the cash it would contribute a welcome boost to the stressed coffers of the Exchequer. I for one can't see a commercial tv company wanting to commission such investigative programmes or encouraging the probing interviews which are the hallmark of Channel 4 news. Perhaps the real reason for the government's vendetta against Channel 4 is the discomfort that ministers often experience at the hands of interviewers - </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">or avoid</span></span>.</span></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-89336635131619530522022-03-05T12:22:00.000+00:002022-03-05T12:22:21.426+00:00A Word for the Day<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We read <a href="https://www.chpublishing.co.uk/books/9780715123836/reflections-for-daily-prayer-2021-22"><i>Reflections for Daily Prayer</i></a> most days. Today's, by Philip North, Bishop of Burnley, was particularly apt. As my wife commented, "I don't suppose he had any idea how appropriate it would be when he wrote it." Could Putin be a contemporary Pharaoh? I wonder.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLsKlDW5eyK4OnENefTG7L2bwp1UGwLApFHqjYp46653omrqCVwB-I5-COcES0JBmzQHkOAh1uvHgeqIPSNilJvKL-MidwnsRQ6LqvracHQf_CmDVALx9LdQRw-AaVkWwbdqHxafPVTcfePGtP1MhxT-KodUg1dsZxQWdAfdRKdnBDupx_iDL37p2IZg=s3166" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3166" data-original-width="2372" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLsKlDW5eyK4OnENefTG7L2bwp1UGwLApFHqjYp46653omrqCVwB-I5-COcES0JBmzQHkOAh1uvHgeqIPSNilJvKL-MidwnsRQ6LqvracHQf_CmDVALx9LdQRw-AaVkWwbdqHxafPVTcfePGtP1MhxT-KodUg1dsZxQWdAfdRKdnBDupx_iDL37p2IZg=w479-h640" width="479" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">"We live in a world in which the colossal global strongholds of political power, military might and corporate dominance seem all pervasive - a world in which the gentle teaching of a roving preacher who lived 2,000 years ago in Galilee can so swiftly be drowned out or perceived as irrelevant. <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>"But just as mighty Pharaoh needed the jailbird, so even the powers of the twenty-first century need <b>with all their hearts </b>the man nailed to the cross." <br /></span></span><p></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-35993080850952702612022-03-03T18:47:00.006+00:002022-03-04T11:25:56.457+00:00Ash Wednesday - Confession<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I was wrong.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Those who know me well will know that I have a soft spot for Russia. I enjoy Russian literature and its music and art. I have a relative whose husband's forebears left the Soviet Union shortly after the Revolution and I have a good friend who was born in St Petersburg and visits her family there. I felt sure that the Russian/Byelorussian military "exercises" which were interpreted as sinister by Western governments were no more sinister than those which NATO regularly carries out in Eastern European countries - ie. merely defensive. Even ten days ago, I couldn't believe that anyone would be so stupid or misguided as potentially to start a war in Europe. But I was wrong. One man was.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">My grasp of East European politics and history, in particular that Ukraine could not rely on NATO protection if attacked, was woefully lacking. Mr Putin clearly realised that attacking Ukraine would elicit no military response from its so-called Western friends and presumably assumed that a weaker Ukraine would crumble before the might of the Russian military machine. But apparently it hasn't. Whether there are Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the south and east who welcome his invasion ("special operations", or "peace-keeping operation") we can't know, because we won't be told. It's clear however that there is an heroic unity among the Ukrainian people and a desire to be sovereign and independent. One irony of the invasion is that its effect so far has been the opposite of the objective. It's pushed Ukraine westwards rather than eastwards. I can't imagine it ever being a willing satellite state of the Kremlin after this, even if a Putin puppet government were to be installed.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Among the many shocking pictures of the war, tanks and armoured vehicles, shattered buildings, frightened refugees packing railway stations, families sheltering in bunkers, cellars and underground car-packs, one which chilled and shocked me almost more than them all was footage (which I assume was contemporaneous and posed) of Vladimir Putin kissing an icon, crossing himself, and lighting a candle. At about the same time he had put his nuclear forces on high alert. "What sort of man is this?" I wondered.</span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2xXTxyA-KMXBBQJCKWlZjg6URnB__ImPcbj3Sg-zKG1YvB7OKVmRf11hFiUkYjgS5_5ywtUlH63cFdhtfIwrNECZewtwPN6lyolrlj3-FYRtgaw8hDQ7B0bl3G_YGWdmY50zcO8zq9VXn0PRF08_86hd01ejKaeGtV9aV_2NgUMW_y44PnKhzFHd55w=s2886" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2886" data-original-width="2164" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2xXTxyA-KMXBBQJCKWlZjg6URnB__ImPcbj3Sg-zKG1YvB7OKVmRf11hFiUkYjgS5_5ywtUlH63cFdhtfIwrNECZewtwPN6lyolrlj3-FYRtgaw8hDQ7B0bl3G_YGWdmY50zcO8zq9VXn0PRF08_86hd01ejKaeGtV9aV_2NgUMW_y44PnKhzFHd55w=s320" width="240" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A few years ago an artist friend gave me a print of an icon she had painted at the <a href="https://www.bethlehemiconcentre.org/">Bethlehem Icon Centre</a>. It's of St Michael (of angel fame). I'm not in the habit of kissing it; but it has a certain poignancy at the moment, as an early news report of the invasion was filmed overlooking St Michael's Cathedral in Kyiv (one of the city's many cathedrals). Ironically this beautiful Byzantine building was destroyed by the Bolsheviks between 1934 and 1936, but magnificently rebuilt and restored around the turn of this century. Now it's at the heart of the Russian assault on the city.<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjq2gIJFQmK9gsXMQQvyl3Bn0ppYroCEu1P53wN0bKArpF_3895ZQalS5a_pNnrMeLKNn3chsrQBHcsXIqkDW_gOOXN_hB8FxG6dXqVV5Uq80C1eFwsphYf9bHX6lBIbiLM3gvjmpmFNjapB1gbGcT46ypzorvypHFT6VzUBI2cVM8BHtzm2EPBrnj_6Q=s660" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="660" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjq2gIJFQmK9gsXMQQvyl3Bn0ppYroCEu1P53wN0bKArpF_3895ZQalS5a_pNnrMeLKNn3chsrQBHcsXIqkDW_gOOXN_hB8FxG6dXqVV5Uq80C1eFwsphYf9bHX6lBIbiLM3gvjmpmFNjapB1gbGcT46ypzorvypHFT6VzUBI2cVM8BHtzm2EPBrnj_6Q=w400-h200" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEju1aQ4rw9Hix_M39VJXfHHneVgZ543A7BalF5fYiKauq_tt2hxGlJ5B3WPeGeB6UoouzkZsnDJRvYDUFXikrgIiQvc14TzBWJrid107YGySfmMf953Nr6emymvDtpVLDK5YmrD_KfZmGn38y58smZJvHI-P69zGj4isgQALV2T2V8PYeEG4M7oS_oONw=s1980" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1359" data-original-width="1980" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEju1aQ4rw9Hix_M39VJXfHHneVgZ543A7BalF5fYiKauq_tt2hxGlJ5B3WPeGeB6UoouzkZsnDJRvYDUFXikrgIiQvc14TzBWJrid107YGySfmMf953Nr6emymvDtpVLDK5YmrD_KfZmGn38y58smZJvHI-P69zGj4isgQALV2T2V8PYeEG4M7oS_oONw=w320-h221" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">My friend from St Petersburg once gave me <a href="https://fivebooks.com/best-books/anna-reid-on-the-siege-of-leningrad/">Anna Reid</a>'s horrifying account of that city's siege by the Nazis from 1941 to 1944, in which a quarter of the citizens died of starvation in the first year: <i>Leningrad. </i>The horrors of those years, just ten years before Vladimir Putin himself was born there, exceed anything we in Britain experienced or have cared to contemplate. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgri1-19Aobh2vcbLtaCdEY0G6z9Dotdlw8P85OZn4cQV4RW8bfTl08mOm4WxhtTERzBhmFu87zKCjdWHSD_Ot8Wi_ke102MMYDekku-C9AopTrCyxP0KpZTeUW_V-dDeCJvbJj1PM6MQE4Spp6wbACfvMejn35T6_PRUZ5wIbu92gGAhgU3R-CbUKErQ=s1140" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1140" data-original-width="760" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgri1-19Aobh2vcbLtaCdEY0G6z9Dotdlw8P85OZn4cQV4RW8bfTl08mOm4WxhtTERzBhmFu87zKCjdWHSD_Ot8Wi_ke102MMYDekku-C9AopTrCyxP0KpZTeUW_V-dDeCJvbJj1PM6MQE4Spp6wbACfvMejn35T6_PRUZ5wIbu92gGAhgU3R-CbUKErQ=s320" width="213" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So how, I wonder, can he even contemplate investing Ukrainian cities and forcing them to similar straits? Ukrainians after all suffered just as terrible atrocities in World War 2 as their Russian brothers and sisters, such as the massacre of 33,771 Jews in two days at the<b> </b>Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv.</span></span> <p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I've this afternoon heard of a family whose sons had been conscripted, one into the Ukrainian army and the other into the Russian army.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As a Christian I am perplexed. I believe that we're all made "in the image of God" (<i>imago Dei</i>), in other words that there's a core of goodness in each person. I also know, and it's transparently clear, that we're all flawed and fail short of even our own hopes of goodness. When I blogged about <a href="https://mydonkeybody.blogspot.com/search/label/Leningrad"><i>Leningrad</i></a><i>,</i> I wrote: "</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I find I’m tired of politicians indulging in the
rhetoric of suspicion and fear to justify spending on the arms trade. I do
realise that Hitler was an exceptional evil, and that there have been and are
others like him who need resisting. It’s a complex world. We need a
transformation of human nature, transformed by love."</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">
I suppose one thing I learned as a teacher is that if you tell a child
they're bad or hopeless they're likely to believe you and fulfil your
low expectations. You may criticise or condemn their actions or
omissions, but when you condemn their character you kill some of their
humanity. Another thing I learned is you should never sanction a whole
group for the misdemeanours of an individual. It is counter-productive
and teaches a faulty view of fairness and therefore of justice. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In my view Vladimir Putin is as human as the rest of us. No doubt there are others, even among our allies, who have committed dreadful crimes as well. However his actions in Ukraine are exceptionally evil, even if there's a rationale of fear behind them. We must nevertheless resist evil specifically and not generally.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Jesus, Lamb of God, have mercy on us.<br />Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us.<br />Jesus, redeemer of the world, grant us peace.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">AFTERWORD</span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6D1gbyCTRaF0AclrZREfR-TeIwo99En5e4U-WMwNrFPoCOkBM6RPNxoyNk1McfDHYcdIjn99XLzlDhZMw-NwykqFrsQLM_5G8L4kUuo5fw_XBy4D6PXnocgY2TzN2DoUjUrkayZvMEJZ2qhPocHp1gnGQoDRbQ9qjxpgte1KUk9MpMLKRW3MY_MjOcg=s500" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="405" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6D1gbyCTRaF0AclrZREfR-TeIwo99En5e4U-WMwNrFPoCOkBM6RPNxoyNk1McfDHYcdIjn99XLzlDhZMw-NwykqFrsQLM_5G8L4kUuo5fw_XBy4D6PXnocgY2TzN2DoUjUrkayZvMEJZ2qhPocHp1gnGQoDRbQ9qjxpgte1KUk9MpMLKRW3MY_MjOcg=w162-h200" width="162" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I've just begun to read for Lent Jane Williams' <i>Approaching Easter. </i>In her preface she writes: "The history of how and why Jesus died on the cross is at least partly an analysis of what we all do to one another when we are controlled by fear, or greed, or love of power, or too much love of ourselves. At every turn, Jesus challenges us to be brave enough to step out of our self-made prisons and turn towards the source of life and freedom, which he calls God. Unfortunately, too many of us don't see </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">fear, greed, love of power, and love of ourselves</span></span> as prisons. We see these emotions as necessary to grab what we think we need for our own security; we might even be prepared to kill for them, just as people 2,000 years ago were prepared to kill Jesus rather than hear his challenge." I suspect that, as I continue to read, I'll discover that Putin is not alone in a prison of </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">fear, greed, love of power, or too much love of self. I may be there too.<br /></span></span></span></span><p></p><p></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-57189355308121230772021-11-10T10:56:00.000+00:002021-11-10T10:56:01.949+00:00Our war on the climate<p> <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Last week I caught a news item on BBC radio telling us that our spanking new (relatively) aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, was now in the Gulf of Oman having returned from the South China Sea where it had been carrying out exercises - presumably to frighten the People's Rebublic of China. Now our Defence Minister was saying it could also be useful in fighting terrorism.... Rather a blunt weapon, I'd have thought. However the part of the report that most caught my attention was that during its voyage there had been daily sorties by the 'elite' F-35 fighter-bombers. Whether these are UK or US planes I don't know.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pCUUJajXR0Y/YYuj1POkpZI/AAAAAAAAB7M/hJcmf33kqlwcRtsnay8AjHJmtAkOZYgwACLcBGAsYHQ/s330/330px-Carrier_Sea_Training_MOD_45166691.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="330" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pCUUJajXR0Y/YYuj1POkpZI/AAAAAAAAB7M/hJcmf33kqlwcRtsnay8AjHJmtAkOZYgwACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/330px-Carrier_Sea_Training_MOD_45166691.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But I thought, "Every day? Are you joking? When in Glasgow world leaders are talking about climate change..." I imagine each of those planes burns a load of fuel each time it takes off. Well, today I find I wasn't wrong. In fact I was thinking far too small. Will de Freitas, Environment and Energy of the admirable <i>Conversation</i> wrote this.</span></span><br /></p><table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" id="email-container" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; padding: 20px 8px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; width: 460px; word-spacing: 0px;"><tbody><tr><td class="full-width" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left; width: 460px;" width="460"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="block" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px; width: 600px;"><tbody><tr id="editors-note"><td style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;"><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 16px;">"At full speed, a fighter jet can burn through hundreds of gallons of fuel per minute. When you add up the emissions caused by all the planes, ships, tanks and missiles used by militaries across the world you get a substantial “carbon bootprint”.</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">But though every country in the world is represented at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, their militaries are not. That’s despite the total emissions of armed forces and their suppliers being larger than civil aviation and shipping combined. In fact, thanks to exemptions written into the Paris Agreement, militaries don’t even need to report how much carbon they are emitting or where. <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 32, 32); color: #202020; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">One group of academics has done their best<span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://theconversationuk.cmail19.com/t/r-l-trtkjha-otltklklll-i/" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">to track these emissions</a></span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 32, 32); color: #202020; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">."</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p></p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So I of course looked at the article referred to: <a href="https://theconversation.com/cop26-how-the-worlds-militaries-hide-their-huge-carbon-emissions-171466?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20November%2010%202021%20-%202110720892&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20November%2010%202021%20-%202110720892+CID_6de6e6e153e528ae4d9bd49d1c702cd5&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=to%20track%20these%20emissions">"COP26: how the world's militaries hide their huge carbon emissions"</a>. I think this is what a former would-be US president would call an inconvenient truth, but it's one governments and media would prefer us not to dwell on. Maybe the world won't be destroyed by nuclear weapons, as we used to fear in my younger days, but by our attachment to being global superpowers.<br /></span></span></p><div style="color: #202020; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 32, 32); color: #202020; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-2294421147402902402021-10-19T11:25:00.006+01:002021-10-19T11:25:48.018+01:00My bid for an Eco Oscar!<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I was intrigued to hear on today's news that at the Earthshot prize ceremony tbe celebrities walked down a green not the traditional red carpet. How apt! I believe the podium used no plastic. And strikingly none of the delegates used airflights to attend. (I wonder how the COP 26 will compare...) The Earthshot prizes, AKA the Eco Oscars, seem to me an entirely worthwhile intitiative with its potential to scale up some excellent local projects and to encourage some very bright young minds on whom our planet's future might well depend. To me one of the most encouraging aspects is that the finalists came from around the world. It wasn't the global north telling the developing world what's good for it.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tnJwvzv-DXE/YW6arSlhSjI/AAAAAAAAB58/NqqgU-yYo7AC3PVWPeeGZUWdivRez9XqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s759/28F1806A-045A-4AAA-AFDD-DA98DBDDFAB6_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="759" height="221" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tnJwvzv-DXE/YW6arSlhSjI/AAAAAAAAB58/NqqgU-yYo7AC3PVWPeeGZUWdivRez9XqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/28F1806A-045A-4AAA-AFDD-DA98DBDDFAB6_1_201_a.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iQAHk8mlPZk/YW6arcCEF5I/AAAAAAAAB6A/g7w43DKiCh8C60SHl6KXSizL-15TaOBtwCLcBGAsYHQ/s742/513191F1-CB21-4C08-8C25-C3F071629187_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="742" height="230" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iQAHk8mlPZk/YW6arcCEF5I/AAAAAAAAB6A/g7w43DKiCh8C60SHl6KXSizL-15TaOBtwCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h230/513191F1-CB21-4C08-8C25-C3F071629187_1_201_a.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photos from The Independent<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm neither young nor especially creative, but if I entered for an Eco Oscar it would be with a very simple idea; and it's to do away with artificial turf. I know I used to play hockey before the days of astroturf. But to put a roof on God's good earth is the height of perversity. The ball may travel a bit more predictably on a surface imitating a snooker table, but very seldom is that dangerous, and plastic burns in soccer victory slides in are more likely to cause damage. However the real harm is below the plastic. Here soil is deprived of its natural nutrients, and a subterranean desert is created. As far as I can see there are no advantages - except for the multi-millon industry that makes and markets the stuff - only contributions to climate degradation. In my view it should outlawed. See the Guardian's article <b><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/02/turf-it-out-is-it-time-to-say-goodbye-to-artificial-grass">here</a></b>. So there's an easy starting point - and so I propose myself for one of next year's Earthshot prizes, your Highnesses - in common with the USA's excellent women's football team. </span></span><br /></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-48167838477524932452021-10-11T17:18:00.004+01:002021-10-21T10:39:43.868+01:00A new Pietá<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yesterday I was presented with a work of art which left me speechless. It was crafted by a relatively unknown South Devon artist. Here it is in its temporary resting place.</span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D-2YipdIxu0/YWQbnZgrtxI/AAAAAAAAB4s/JN9XYNEbOLIJxFGY0gzAj4-DfQaSTwG9gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_4491.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D-2YipdIxu0/YWQbnZgrtxI/AAAAAAAAB4s/JN9XYNEbOLIJxFGY0gzAj4-DfQaSTwG9gCLcBGAsYHQ/w480-h640/IMG_4491.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> © Pietá by David Milnes</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">David Milnes and I have been friends since schooldays. In correspondence with him in August, I wrote: </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"As
for the 'commission', in one of my novels I wrote about someone facing
the loss of someone she loved identifying with Mary at the cross. She
seems to me the person who most experiences the desolation of
dereliction in the Bible. And I’ve long thought that evangelicals have
failed to engage our imaginations in the gospel story. What must it have
been like at the moment of Jesus’ death? So I’ve been looking for something
that expresses the grief, disappointment and pain as they begin to take
the body down. The characters I was looking at around the cross were Mary
the mother, John the friend and Mary Magdalene who’s in love with Him
(parent, saint and sinner - all humankind). It seems to me that all of
us in our dark moments think the God we believed in and who is love has
died and abandoned us. For many a resurrection morning never dawns.
Which, I guess, we all fear and which is why, I think, we need each
other to hold on to as we wait." </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">David immediately set to work. He'd picked up, to his relief, that I wasn't looking for an serene scene carved in marble like Michelangelo's masterpiece. He'd been impressed by Fenwick Lawson's Pietá in Durham cathedral carved from "the rough split rawness of large logs". </span></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u17gMUMNZWA/YWRIVrnfZmI/AAAAAAAAB48/ipqmNE66oQE7FVcS9xByVYOmEqjEvYMEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s528/pieta3.webp" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="514" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u17gMUMNZWA/YWRIVrnfZmI/AAAAAAAAB48/ipqmNE66oQE7FVcS9xByVYOmEqjEvYMEgCLcBGAsYHQ/w195-h200/pieta3.webp" width="195" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">© Picture Durham Cathedral<br /></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is David's description of his own work. "For the <span>figure of Christ I have used a section of a plum tree<span> in our garden. It is dead, twisted and covered in lichen. Two side branches looked like contorted arms writhing in pain and desolation. The connection between the arms is not realistically correct but suggests dislocation and extreme pain. The main branch is thinner than the body should actually be, but elongated bodies suggesting suffering were good enough for El Greco, so why not? In order to make the hands, feet and face stand out and in order to emphasise their vulnerability, I carved them separately in lime wood that enabled me to include greater detail. The marks of the nails and the spear in his side were burnt into the wood. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span>"The cross is not a beautiful, smooth and varnished piece of neat carpentry. It is a rough piece of pallet wood which I have scorched. Burning has close associations with pain and destruction.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span>"For the figure of Mary, as she reaches out to help remove her badly mutilated son from the cross, I used a piece of holly wood which is solid and heavy with sorrow. It has twists and knots and rotted areas which are indicative of the terrible trauma and devastating blows that she has endured. It is very different wood from that used for the figure of Christ but it suggests suffering which is different but just as all consuming."</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span>I love the rawness of this Pietá<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">. It is certainly a discomforting addition to a sitting room. I like the fact that Mary is not portrayed as a beautiful young saint but as a middle-aged mother whose years of bringing up children in occupied territories have taken their toll on her physically. She is one of the many middle-eastern women grieving for their sons killed in a reprisal air raid. I like the proportions of the carving. To her Jesus is still the small child she held in her arms. I like David's choice of woods: Using for Mary the wood of the holly tree, which two Christmas carols associate with the suffering of Mary - "the holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall". And he has used fruit wood for the body of Christ. Humankind's fall from grace came through eating the forbidden fruit; its restoration to grace comes through "eating my body", as Christ put it. And the wood on which he hangs, a discarded pallet to crucify the rejected carpenter's son. The artist's brother pointed out that Mary is seen as left-handed - so maybe represents despised minorities and those considered weak. Theologians may recognise in the emaciated crucified body a depiction of what they call </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="el" title="Greek-language text">κένωσις</span>, Christ emptying himself "taking the form of a slave and becoming obedient even to death on a cross".<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As my son commented, "What a gift!" Whether he meant what a talent or what a present, I don't know. Probably both. And on both counts he's right. </span></span></span></span></span><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2fHv7J7ewcE/YWRilU7s-TI/AAAAAAAAB5I/7SOYDIHNiFciALJzvAZ3RQFshBkyFYGdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/2e47e375-e685-48cb-8d4b-f19ec11352f3.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2fHv7J7ewcE/YWRilU7s-TI/AAAAAAAAB5I/7SOYDIHNiFciALJzvAZ3RQFshBkyFYGdgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/2e47e375-e685-48cb-8d4b-f19ec11352f3.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">© Photo Courtesy John Milnes<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tqEnYFNR2DU/YWRilTBrqPI/AAAAAAAAB5E/4riRwkDY-IUcprXAtDskMthXwxtPcuEFACLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/6d38ea38-a83d-44e3-86a9-c0d7498ea12c.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tqEnYFNR2DU/YWRilTBrqPI/AAAAAAAAB5E/4riRwkDY-IUcprXAtDskMthXwxtPcuEFACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/6d38ea38-a83d-44e3-86a9-c0d7498ea12c.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">© Photo Courtesy John Milnes</span></span></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yQFniHGpS68/YWRilQxObVI/AAAAAAAAB5M/-i4aid4k_pM8fZ7vTczSWwPmgLckve1egCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/635bffe3-cb90-43b1-bb37-9fcd52e70a61.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yQFniHGpS68/YWRilQxObVI/AAAAAAAAB5M/-i4aid4k_pM8fZ7vTczSWwPmgLckve1egCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/635bffe3-cb90-43b1-bb37-9fcd52e70a61.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">© Photo Courtesy John Milnes</span></span></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /> </span> </span></span><p></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BQXRP79uOFI/YWRil3Y38XI/AAAAAAAAB5Q/odbqSD-AsnIITv0EN3iX-O6wunRGg9XngCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/da74d042-028d-4598-b931-317ad823d4ff.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BQXRP79uOFI/YWRil3Y38XI/AAAAAAAAB5Q/odbqSD-AsnIITv0EN3iX-O6wunRGg9XngCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/da74d042-028d-4598-b931-317ad823d4ff.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">© Photo Courtesy John Milnes</span></span></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span><p></p><p><br /></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-35062727207962270382021-04-20T19:00:00.002+01:002021-04-21T10:35:01.459+01:00A dinosaur dreams of Utopia<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oqKQuyana6E/YH8V0gU2qcI/AAAAAAAABxM/6vztVq1L5RUhLQVgFzqXwZ7aS9z_OIyXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1135/Screenshot%2B2021-04-20%2Bat%2B18.50.13.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="782" data-original-width="1135" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oqKQuyana6E/YH8V0gU2qcI/AAAAAAAABxM/6vztVq1L5RUhLQVgFzqXwZ7aS9z_OIyXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-04-20%2Bat%2B18.50.13.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 5 News: Dippy the dinosaur </span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">One feature of lockdown has been the proliferation of laws and guidance to the extent that even some police forces have not known which are which. At first sight it seems strange that there has been such widespread acquiescence to the extraordinary restrictions on our freedom. However a conversation last night brought home to me that this has by no means come out of a clear blue sky. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Our society has been becoming increasingly risk-averse and litigious for some decades. With a few brave exceptions, the majority of us tolerate egregious limitations on our freedom of speech and actions, which provide us with the illusion of safety. Every industry, every school, every institution is familiar with having to produce an exhaustive risk assessment to cover every possible contingency. Why? Because a dose of common sense wouldn’t do as well? No, for fear of some jobsworth inspector or some venal lawyer out to find you at fault.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A former NHS worker told me: "</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">In the NHS the amount of policies and procedures is staggering. There are different levels that range from overarching policies down to work instructions. I can see a place for the higher up tiers of the system but I was very much against the lower tiers. I believe it is a culture of fault finding and avoiding liability that has led to telling staff what to do to such a degree. There is no way to completely avoid human error and I even believe that a system that tells people what to do to such an extent could actually be at fault. You have intelligent people with degrees being told what to do and having their own judgement taken away from them. On the other hand they do have a tried and tested way of doing things and they don't have to re-invent the wheel for every new patient."</span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline; float: none; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span>Seek employment at a new firm, and you’re likely to be presented with vision statements and targets, and policy documents. Err from them at your peril. None of these is bad in itself, but they come at the cost of freedom and trust, in the same way that video devices removes responsibility and trust in sports referees. <br /><br />When I began my teaching career, I taught in a school with a vastly experienced head, who outlined the school’s three rules - which after more than 45 years I still remember. They were courtesy, cooperation and consideration. Who, I wonder, will recall the words of “policies” after even 45 weeks? When I began my ministry, there were equally memorable guiding principles: love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. <br /><br />Of course staff and students, clergy and congregations, often went wrong. Simply recalled principles didn’t prevent that. However neither do an infinity of policies, regulations and targets. What I have witnessed is the growth of an inspection industry fed by a parasitic industry of litigation. Before I had retired, the Church of England issued a whole handbook for clergy about how to behave, which I believe has been updated more than once. We live in a tick-box society. I have the impression that the Pharisees had a similar managerial mindset, with the idea that a multitude of rules and regulations (or policies) would keep them on the straight and narrow. However it didn’t work. Jesus didn’t have much time for it.<br /><br />What a soul-destroying idea that employees should work according to a set of rules, or worse, targets! We see it in the worst industries, such as multi-national warehouses, courier firms - but it has also infected education and social care. Form-filling replaces contact and time spent with individuals. It’s more important that you can prove you’ve completed a risk assessment than you take care of a person who’s tripped over your doorstep. <br /><br />A major motivator during the pandemic appears to have been the rather vain fear of dying - something we will all have to face, and something which some elderly people would in fact welcome. The possibility of long underfunded NHS being overwhelmed was in my view a more serious fear, which appears to have been avoided although at what cost to those on the ever-lengthening waiting lists remains to be seen.<br /><br />Do I want to turn the clock back? Not at all. If anything I want to wind it forward. I’m reminded of the implied accusation, that Jesus had come to abolish the Law and the prophets. On the contrary, as Paul puts it, “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Which I have to say is easier remembering than the whole Torah. </span><br /></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-70420260026864303822021-03-27T18:59:00.079+00:002021-03-30T11:12:42.518+01:00Unexpected journeying 2/2<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span>Where to start? I'm the youngest of four children, all brothers, part of a staunchly conservative evangelical family. Wikipedia describes my father like this: "</span><span>Wenham had the distinction of being a conservative <a title="Theology">theologian</a>, a defender of biblical inerrancy", although as specialists would detect he propounded a few unorthodox views. My mother came from another evangelical family. So I have evangelical genes through and through. We had animated mealtime discussions, but I don't recall any mention of the decriminalization of homosexuality, which following the Wolfenden Report (1957) was eventually passed into law when I was 18. Nor am I aware of being very conscious of the issue. I noticed CS Lewis in his <i>Surprised by Joy</i> referring to gay activity in Malvern College when he was a boarder there, but I don't recall speculating whether there was any in the boarding houses of the public school where I was a day boy. The idea of "fancying" (in the ugly term) boys didn't enter my head. The only fancies I had were for those who were very definitely the fairer and more exciting sex. I am immensely grateful for the innocent foundation for life that my parents gave me. I had a most happy and privileged upbringing.<br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span>So then I went to Cambridge - all men's college of course - and immersed myself in the evangelical Christian Union, work and visiting Footlights where my best friend was President. I look back with chagrin at myself as blind and deaf. I now realise there were a number of gay men among my friends, but when one of them asked me what I thought of homosexuality, my answer was somewhat dismissive, like, "Well, sex is meant for procreation, so it must be between a man and a woman. Otherwise it's wrong." For him that conversation held infinitely more significance than for me. Many years later I apologised to him and he remains a friend, which says much for his graciousness. I continued to enjoy the sitting-beside company of both men and women; but face-to-face love was reserved for women, eventually one in particular who agreed to marry me.</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span>Which is a long preamble to explain why, when I was finally ordained into the priesthood, I remained thoroughly orthodox in my religious convictions and teaching. Much as I dislike such labels, I would have called myself a conservative evangelical, Bible-believing, strict on remarriage, anti-women bishops, anti-homosexuality and sceptical about charismatics (who believe that the Holy Spirit is still miraculously active today). And now I return to my previous post, which was about the revolution - or was it evolution? - in St Peter's attitude to non-Jews, moving from believing them to be unclean to welcoming them as fellow-believers just like him, and sitting down to eat their food. Luke in <i>Acts</i> describes the step-by-step process which my commentator says God was taking him on to think the unthinkable and to accept the unacceptable, and of course change the history of world Christianity.</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span>My journey was similarly gradual. I have previously recorded two milestones, but never in my blog what might be regarded as the first. As I journaled shortly after: "That night, 30th September 1994, opened my eyes to the tangible reality of encounter with God. Whereas I had been able to assert God's activity in retrospect, I now began to find him in the present." It was an event witnessed only by my wife in our home, but the results of which were noticed for better or worse by many more. In other words I had discovered that my charismatic friends were right. The Holy Spirit is more than an odd old expression. Maybe that was what prepared me for subsequent changes, such as coming to the conviction that women may hold leadership roles and even become bishops! My faith in the authority of the Bible remained, but it too was changing to understand it in its cultural context and apply it in our contemporary context. I've found it nowhere better expressed than in the late Rachel Held Evans' </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><cite class="citation book cs1" id="CITEREFEvans2018"><i>Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again.</i></cite> </span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lZn8rKrHII4/YF9-S-WJIzI/AAAAAAAABvE/4AjjX1M5uo0TKF8naUkAMCD9QDivp4xWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s314/mileston.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="273" data-original-width="314" height="278" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lZn8rKrHII4/YF9-S-WJIzI/AAAAAAAABvE/4AjjX1M5uo0TKF8naUkAMCD9QDivp4xWgCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h278/mileston.gif" width="320" /></a></span></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">from Meriam Webster dictionary</span><br /></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading">The last bastion to fall was undermined bit by bit, and I have recorded it a number of times in this blog. I remember my children with their straightforward faith telling me that of course God unconditionally loved their gay friends, as if I was mad to doubt it. I discovered that one of my Facebook friends was a lesbian and a Christian. I met parents of gay children who had been driven away by the attitude of their churches, parents who were painfully conflicted by the church's teaching and their children's experience. And inevitably I began to reflect. The critical moment came in a quite unexpected place, that is a churches' summer festival in Somerset, called New Wine. It was a charismatic evangelical event, where the accepted tradition about homosexuality at the time was generally similar to my original one, for example I don't think an openly gay worship leader would have been allowable. Being interested in the subject I went to the first of two seminars on the subject of equal marriage, where the line was that if you were gay you should either remain celibate or marry a partner of the opposite sex. In the Q & A session at the end a woman stood up. She related her road of faith and declared that she was a lesbian with a partner, and woe betide anyone who dared to separate them. </span></span></span></span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading">Not on the Damascus road nor in a Tel Aviv apartment but in a Somerset field, I was finally turned round. </span></span></span><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading"><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading">It wasn't a voice from the sky, but it was a clear conviction which has never left me in spite of doubts. </span></span></span>We sought the woman out. She told us her story, which included being banned from leading the youth group in her church years earlier and made unwelcome there. Since then she had not lost her faith, simply her fellowship. When I embraced her and her partner, she commented, "You know, you're the first Christian who has hugged me since I came out." And so supporting LGBTI+ people has become important to me. I want them to know that they are just as much loved and just as unconditionally as any other of us human beings. I have been indignant at the bile and vitriol directed at gay Christians by others who also call themselves Christians. This terribly happened when Christian musician, Vicky Beeching, admitted to a newspaper journalist that she was and always had been gay. She wrote her story in her painful book, <i>Undivided</i>, (see my review here <a href="https://mydonkeybody.blogspot.com/2018/06/undivided-by-vicky-beeching.html">Undivided by Vicky Beeching</a>) in which incidentally she picks up the parallel of the story of Peter and the Gentiles. This week I hesitate to use the word, but the reaction to her coming out has been as near to verbal crucifixion as I have witnessed. </span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading">Having met and talked to LGBT people and their parents, especially within the church, I know that it's not a lifestyle choice. It is in their hardwiring. Which is why "conversion therapy" of any sort is so cruel. It's saying either, "You are an egregious sinner, who needs to be converted," or, "You are dangerously ill and need to be healed." I am glad the Church of England has called for it to be banned, but sad that other Christians disagree (<a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2021-03-16/evangelical-christians-urge-boris-johnson-not-to-ban-conversion-therapy?fbclid=IwAR3GEEhGguz1VD1ZYWLhFHd5jhUaDUVfONtCmxsSeT-iaPnt_jNfFF5cBXM">Evangelicals urge PM not to ban conversion therapy</a>). In her very good Thought for the Day on Radio 4's Today programme, </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading">Catherine Pepinster (<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09c413n">listen here</a>) quoted </span></span></span></span></span>the late Cardinal Basil Hume: "</span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading"><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847)" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;">In whatever context it arises and always respecting the appropriate manner of its expression, love between two persons whether of the same sex or a different sex is to be treasured and respected." Yes, all faithful love is to be treasured.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading"><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847)" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;">Who's to say whether I'm still an evangelical - not that I have much time for exclusive labels? I'd simply say I'm a sinner who tries to learn from and follow Jesus.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading"><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847)" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;">And so, to my dedicatees, and all your sisters and brothers, I will say, God welcomes you without reservation in His Church and you will find many churches who will also welcome you unreservedly. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading"><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847)" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span><span><span><span><span aria-level="4" itemprop="name" role="heading"><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847)" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;">You're no worse a sinner than I am; and you don't need to be cured. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>You are loved for who you are. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-70798251158592224502021-03-24T16:23:00.003+00:002021-03-29T10:52:15.364+01:00The God of surprises 1/2<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This and my next post are dedicated to three of my friends who have been severely wounded by their treatment at the hands of those who brand themselves as "evangelical Christians".</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I don't like internecine sniping amongst so-called brothers and sisters, and so I shan't indulge in it here. I don't believe it's helpful or right. So I'm hoping that the Lord will set a watch over my fingers and my brain. My intention here is simply to tell my story. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Jane and I customarily read the Bible together using notes entitled <i>Life Every Day.</i> Over the past fortnight we have been following the story of the early Church's mission to the Gentiles (non-Jews). You may remember that it began as an exclusively Jewish sect centred on Jerusalem. However in his own ministry Jesus Christ had given glimpses that his mission was not merely to men but also to women, not just to the Jewish nation but to whomever he met from despised Samaritans to Romans and others. And when he gave his followers his great mission statement, it was a mission starting</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Acts-1-8" id="en-NRSVA-26921"> "in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." The notes traced how the Church, in particular Simon Peter, one of its leaders, was slow on the uptake - and it was only by a series of nudges followed by a crisis event in Caesarea that he eventually got the point. Here a few quotes from Jeff Lucas's notes. "Slowly, gradually, the Church is inching towards the idea that Gentiles could be part of the Christian family, but other events would have to unfold first. God is patient." "Gradually, Peter's heart and mind are being opened up. A cataclysmic revelation is about to come, but not before God slowly, carefully, prepares Peter for it. Wisdom is found in the journey with Jesus, if we are open to it." The crisis event for Peter was a vision of unclean food which he was told to eat and then a summons from a Roman centurion, Cornelius, arrives asking him to come to his house. That day all his inherited prejudices were shattered. He talked and ate with those he'd previously considered beyond the pale and found them already within the fold of divine love. As he reports back to his critics in Jerusalem, "</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Acts-1-8" id="en-NRSVA-26921"><span class="text Acts-11-17" id="en-NRSVA-27313">If then God gave them
the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was I that I could hinder God?" That rightly but not finally shut the critical party up. There continued to be eruptions of exclusive sentiment, I suppose until the mother city of Jerusalem is ransacked in AD70.</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Acts-1-8" id="en-NRSVA-26921"><span class="text Acts-11-17" id="en-NRSVA-27313">So much for an oversimplified account of our past few days' reading. Why have I bothered to write about it? Well, I'd already been drawing my own parallels when last Saturday we read: "God was doing a new thing, and they struggled to understand it. Let's be open to the God of surprises. He is trustworthy, but not predictable. <b>To ponder: When did you last change your mind about a long-held view or opinion?</b>"</span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Acts-1-8" id="en-NRSVA-26921"></span></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n1XlDC8Lpd0/YFtlQFYMBGI/AAAAAAAABuo/FXE6GzvmdRIUlsVexe_bUW3lS1BIvjP1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1800/Le_penseur_de_la_Porte_de_lEnfer_%2528muse%25CC%2581e_Rodin%2529_%25284528252054%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n1XlDC8Lpd0/YFtlQFYMBGI/AAAAAAAABuo/FXE6GzvmdRIUlsVexe_bUW3lS1BIvjP1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Le_penseur_de_la_Porte_de_lEnfer_%2528muse%25CC%2581e_Rodin%2529_%25284528252054%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rodin, Le Penseur (wikipedia)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Acts-1-8" id="en-NRSVA-26921"><span class="text Acts-11-17" id="en-NRSVA-27313"></span></span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="text Acts-1-8" id="en-NRSVA-26921"><span class="text Acts-11-17" id="en-NRSVA-27313">Readers who have put up with my meanderings over the years may perhaps recall occasions when I have admitted to doing so <i>eg </i><a href="https://mydonkeybody.blogspot.com/2012/11/women-bishops-apology.html">Women bishops - an apology</a> and <a href="https://mydonkeybody.blogspot.com/2014/04/love-unknown.html">Love unknown</a>. I think all I'll say at this point is that I have found Jeff Lucas's reflections reassuring and his questions challenging. Next time I shall turn to the issue which has stirred me to write again. (<i>cont</i>)<br /></span></span></span></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-74018905210545207102021-03-08T16:22:00.004+00:002021-03-11T10:53:54.126+00:00Unhappy Families<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Really, what family needs twenty homes to live in? (See <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/604000/map-of-every-uk-royal-residence">https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/604000/map-of-every-uk-royal-residence</a>.) It is extraordinary how many houses and how much land (and seabed) is either held in our royal family's name or actually owned by them. (See <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/royal-family-how-much-land-own-crown-estates-wedding-meghan-markle-queen-a8352401.html">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/royal-family-how-much-land-own-crown-estates-wedding-meghan-markle-queen-a8352401.html</a>.) <i>I am not in least bit envious of them</i>. Their wealth doesn't seem to bring them much joy. As a wise man once put it, "for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I do understand that, if you're born saddled with great wealth and all that goes with it, you have a problem. And if you're surrounded with vested interests who want to benefit from your wealth and status, then you have a major problem. It becomes more than a burden when your wealth attracts unremitting media attention. It becomes a deadly nightmare. And so I can understand why Prince Harry and, his wife, Meghan Markle decided enough was enough - in every way. Admittedly they lived in only one (rather large) house called, ironically, a cottage, in contrast to his brother and his aunt (two each) and his father (with five). However I don't think it was property envy that provoked them to up sticks and resettle in the environment where she had made her living. I'm writing this before watching their interview with Oprah Winfrey; so I don't know what they will say about their reason for going. But judging from the sudden PR operation and the leaking of hostile emails from "the Palace", I'd assume the couple weren't happy merely to play the Royalty game.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vgni2phWZn4/YEZOlWx_djI/AAAAAAAABtQ/CAaAJPrtgfgP9gT5X87DSxV2RFbUlAMqQCLcBGAsYHQ/s830/headerImage-ee142922-aadb-4790-b9bf-17ee655816bf.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="830" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vgni2phWZn4/YEZOlWx_djI/AAAAAAAABtQ/CAaAJPrtgfgP9gT5X87DSxV2RFbUlAMqQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/headerImage-ee142922-aadb-4790-b9bf-17ee655816bf.webp" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo: ITV</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Monday morning</i> Well, lots of journalists watched the CBS interview last night, and started to comment this morning. Indeed they are predictably making a meal of it. On our local radio station there was a royal "biographer" who clearly had it in for Meghan in particular, and there was no obvious reason if not because of her mixed heritage. What was the point of 'bleating' when everyone has had 'dark thoughts'? And why now, when Harry's grandfather has been so ill in hospital? If there's one thing that's clear it's that the Sussex couple don't control the broadcast networks' schedule. She hoped the royal family would make no response to the interview to "display their utter disgust and contempt for their exposing of the family (dirty) linen in public."</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br />I suspect if the royal family was not surrounded by the multitude of courtiers, equerries, special advisers and press officers ("the firm") and if they were allowed to be free of the constraints that we, the public, put on them, they would prove to be quite a nice bunch of people. However, what has been striking about this weekend has been to pick up the sense of proprietorship that the press, and in particular the tabloids, has for the royals. It's as if the country owns the royal family. I've heard someone say this morning that the Queen is devoted to duty but not such a good mother. Who knows? And who presumes to judge? What parent is complacent about their parenting skills?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br />Although the departure of Harry and Meghan from the royal orbit has, in my opinion, impoverished the royal family, they could have bequeathed it a great gift. That is that breaking free from the shackles of the institution is the best way to human flourishing, and defying the demands of the media is possible.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br />Perhaps also they might cause the establishment to reassess the role of royalty. Is a head of state helped by having excessive wealth and property? And don’t give me that guff about how good they are for our tourism income! What an insult - the monarch compared to an art gallery or a theme park! Do they need a huge retinue of hangers-on with a vested interest to hang on? Perhaps we have something to learn from our “friends in Europe" about effective constitutional monarchies.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> <br />The big question is whether the media will have the strength of purpose to resist the temptation to take easy pickings from those who, though very privileged, are just as human as the rest of us. And will the public be prepared to forego their voyeuristic obsession with those born to wear coronets? Because <i>we</i>, </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">as a society,</span> are succeeding in making some human beings very unhappy.</span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163514158748049548.post-51207348900629860902021-02-10T11:37:00.001+00:002021-02-10T11:37:42.053+00:00A virtual stoning<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">These are tiring times. At least, I am tired. And I have been wrestling with whether to write this post at all. However I have been challenged by a blog from a friendly vicar in a group of country parishes entitled <b><a href="https://therectorywindow.blogspot.com/2021/02/silence.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR1XYOwD1iEifweWiTmTK7IgSdURQ1YoaC0DcGq8O0eiOgyOhr63s227sZg">'Silence'</a></b> about a subject of which I was blissfully ignorant. The challenge came in his alluding to the famous words attributed to the German pastor, Martin Niemöller: </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." Having first been impressed by Nazism, by 1934 he came to see its inherent evil. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">My friend George was reacting to the storm stirred up in London by a tweet of a theologically literate clergyman about the proposed national clap for the late Captain Thomas Moore. He said he would be praying for the repose of the kind and generous soul of the man who had become the icon of practical gratitude to our NHS, but he wouldn't be joining in the clap. I think he had rightly detected that such gestures, since their rather pure and altruistic inception as an expression of national gratitude to front-line medical and care staff, had become politicised and devalued. It's certainly my perception that NHS staff are weary of such gesture politics. If you want to know more of the background you can find it in this article from yesterday's <i>Guardian: </i><b><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/09/church-body-criticises-social-media-lynching-priest-robinson-brown-captain-tom-row">Social media lynching</a></b><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/09/church-body-criticises-social-media-lynching-priest-robinson-brown-captain-tom-row"><span style="color: black;">. </span></a>In case you're in doubt about some of the references, Jarel Robinson-Brown is, his own words, "</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">someone who is Black, gay, and Christian" which may explain the lynch-mob who went for him on Twitter led by such luminaries as Kelvin Mackenzie (former editor of <i>The Sun</i>) and self-publicist and populist Nigel Farage. As far as I know, neither of them is a keen supporter of the CofE. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jfHbrv6tXlY/YCPA8OnhEGI/AAAAAAAABrA/QN4fkgWK43g2PpRmGh07JIEAM3c4_ViWwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/stones-rock-3d-model-max-obj-fbx-mtl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jfHbrv6tXlY/YCPA8OnhEGI/AAAAAAAABrA/QN4fkgWK43g2PpRmGh07JIEAM3c4_ViWwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/stones-rock-3d-model-max-obj-fbx-mtl.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo: www.cgtrader.com/3d-models<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That the UK equivalent of the ultra-cons might work themselves into a lather over one arguably ill-timed tweet is predictable, though that they have nothing better to do than to act as 21st century thought police speaks volumes about them. The more troubling aspect of the affair is that the authorities in whose care the curate is, far from supporting him, seemed initially to have been more anxious to appease the hue-and-cry. "</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">J</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">arel Robinson-Brown’s comments regarding Captain Sir Tom Moore were
unacceptable, insensitive, and ill-judged. The fact that he immediately
removed his tweet and subsequently apologised does not undo the hurt he
has caused, not least to Captain Tom’s family. Nor do Jarel’s actions
justify the racist abuse he is now receiving. A review is now underway, led by the Archdeacon of London." To give them their due, the diocesan authorities are now rowing back to a much more pastorally nuanced position. But my initial reaction before I had found the story was, </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql oi732d6d ik7dh3pa fgxwclzu a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id" dir="auto">"I
know nothing about this particular case, but in my view when those in
authority take to the public forum they are most likely trying to
bolster their own establshed credentials than exercising due pastoral
care - which is their primary role in a case like this."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">George's question remains a good if hard one to answer. </span></span>"When the vulnerable and isolated are attacked by the powerful and
established, whatever we think of their ideas, it must immediately make
us ponder: do I stay silent or do I speak up?" </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Jarel Robinson-Brown's recent article in <i>The Church Times</i> "<a href="https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/5-february/features/features/can-rage-be-holy?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1612483603">Can rage be holy?</a>" is worth reading.)</span><br /></span></span></p>Michael Wenhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04756324780596609238noreply@blogger.com0