The Gordian Knot

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. 

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 is 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. 

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.

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. 

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: "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one." I pray so. That is surely an imperative which all of us must heed.

Bat and bird norms

This morning before dawn I woke up to hear our nocturnal robin singing quite energetically. I guess it’s not perversity that makes him or her tweet away in the night. I’ve always assumed it was the result of his/her territory being over the road from one of those orange sodium street lights. However I believe that this habit predates cars and electric lights. He's not abnormal. He may not, after all, have been corrupted by our modern culture.

It put me in mind of a story I’ve just come across in a blog article, Turning a Unicorn into a Bat: the post in which we announce the end of our marriage. It's a long and moving article about a gay husband and straight wife divorcing after a long and happy marriage held together by their shared faith. Lolly, wife to Josh, summarises the story like this. “Stellaluna by Janell Cannon. It’s a charming story with beautiful illustrations.

“Stellaluna was a tiny baby fruit bat. One day, Stellaluna’s mother was out flying with Stellaluna, when suddenly an owl attacked them. The owl knocked Stellaluna out of her mother’s grasp, but luckily she ended up safely in a bird’s nest. Stellaluna was allowed to stay in the bird’s nest as long as she acted like a bird. She ended up giving up all of her bat ways—she slept at night, ate bugs, and never hung upside down because Mama Bird told her that those things were wrong. Stellaluna tried very hard to be a good bird, even when it was very difficult.

“One night, Stellaluna ended up finding her bat family who convinced her that her bat ways were not wrong for her—that they were part of who she was. Maybe they were wrong for a bird, but not for a bat. They fed her delicious mango and taught her to fly at night and she realized she never had to eat bugs again. When she finally accepted her identity as a bat, she found happiness she never knew.”

If you want to hear the whole story being read, you can hear it here: Stellaluna read. Full life must include being the way you were made, mustn't it? When we dictate that someone should be like us, we run the danger of killing the real them.

Sheer brilliance at Stratford

The only downer on it all was that I couldn't watch the climactic speech, because I knew beyond doubt that it would make me blub like a baby, if I saw as well as heard it. Not that it was sad, you understand, just fantastically packed with emotion. But we've just had one of those weekends to savour. We had our good friends, Anthony and Ruth, with us for a couple of nights,  sandwiching a visit to Stratford topped with a meal at Le Brasserie Blanc in Oxford. They are entirely positive people, whose company we always enjoy.

Anyway, this time, I'd chosen The Taming of the Shrew, about which I've always been ambivalent, reinforced by memories of the Burton/Taylor film, directed by Zeffirelli in the 60s, which I recall as a story of a man bullying a woman into submission. I might have missed the subtleties of direction, but it remained a problem in my mind. Jane had also read the play and not found the scenes when Petruchio "tames" Kate much to her taste. One thing this production potentially had in its favour was that its director was a woman, Lucy Bailey. I couldn't see her creating a celebration of misogyny. It would be interesting if she made it into a feminist tract. However, she did neither. Remarkably, she illuminated Shakespeare's text in a way that rang entirely true, and produced a play full of life, humour and intensity, and in which, at the end, you felt both Kate and Petruchio were the winners and the rest, to put it bluntly, were "Losers". In the opinion of our party it was the best Stratford production we'd seen together yet. It was very funny, very clever and very moving.

Faithfulness to the text was key. Unlike the Zeffirelli film, this production started with the alcoholic tinker, Christopher Sly, being "ejected from a country pub and carried to a Lord's house, where he slips into a drunken coma. He awakes and finds himself in the world of Padua and its inhabitants, caught in a dream he seems unable to escape from...." So the programme note explains the beginning. The dream, if it is one, includes Sly being dressed and treated as a lord himself, and then settling to watch the play. The set was extraordinarily simple and clever, looking like a huge double-bed with a house façade behind curtains at the head. Sly remains on stage virtually throughout, and meanwhile the Lord also watches unobtrusively from different places in the audience.

Then begins the Shrew part of the play, or the play within the play. The plot is well known: the rich Baptista Minola who won't let his younger daughter, Bianca, marry until the older Katharina is off his hands. The trouble is, no one wants to marry Kate who has been labelled as a "shrew"; it's true to say that she's feisty to the point of uncontrollable. Bianca, as her name suggests, has a not altogether deserved reputation for mildness and is clearly her father's favourite. She assembles a trio of suitors; Kate is unwanted, until Petruchio arrives on the scene. He's just lost his father and is in search of a fortune. It's clearly not only the money that attracts him to her. Somehow the actors, Lisa Dillon and David Caves, succeeded in creating a chemistry of attraction between them despite the battle which she appears continually to lose, starting from her unwilling marriage within a day.

The final scene (in which I had to avert my eyes!) reveals her as transformed from the bride no one wanted to the wife everyone wishes they had - and it's not because she's submissive and downtrodden. She has amazing dignity and authority. She began as a shrill-tongued harridan to whom nobody listens; in her final speech you could have heard a pin drop, on stage and in the audience. I like the suggestion that this is something she's learned from her husband with whom she goes from arguing in staccato questions to listening in silence. In this production, she kneels having delivered her last lines and places her hands on the ground:
"And place your hands below your husband's foot:

In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease."

In response Petruchio does the same. And you sense that they've become a partnership of equals and not a constant struggle for ascendancy, and so Petruchio invites Kate, "Come on, and kiss me, Kate", "Come, Kate, we'll to bed" rather ordering her.

Rather than there being a wedding at the end as often symbolising harmony after confusions, the weddings take place earlier in the play and are all dis-ordered in some way. Kate's final speech is the great instrument which establishes the restoration of order and sanity. Lisa Dillon delivered it perfectly.

As we drove home, Ruth pointed out the Christian message in the play, particularly the play's portrayal of marriage, "submitting to one another" (Ephesians 5). And I mused on the message of grace of which there are traces, such as the "worthless" Sly being dressed in the Lord's robes with rings put on his fingers and witnessing another story of an unlovable person loved, albeit roughly, into love and universally admired beauty. I wonder if such roughness is the price of redemption......

You might enjoy the two main actors discussing their characters and relationship:
Lisa Dillon and David Caves in discussion. And although Saturday was the last day it was on at Stratford, it is going on tour to Newcastle, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Richmond on Thames and Bath - so you could get to see it. It's brilliant. You will enjoy it - I guarantee.

Squaring the circle

I don't listen to the BBC World Service so much these days, but this morning I happened to tune in to The Forum. The format was a three-way discussion this time on the subject of Activism. The participants were a French architect, a South Korean economist, and an Australian "anarchist" poet, John Kinsella, who's a fellow at Churchill College in Cambridge. It was a provocative discussion.

I was particular interested in their discussion of language, kicked off by the poet who advocates "linguistic disobedience", which I think means resisting the way that language is used as a system of control' ie scepticism about words and control. It reminded me a bit of what I wrote yesterday about the Nazis' use of "compassion" in the early 20th century. We have not to collude when language is manipulated by those with power and influence. For example, government spokesmen construct the myths they want us to believe by their selection of terms - as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is someone else's freedom-fighter. Kinsella talked about writing a poem trying to prevent the death-sentence on an Australian in Singapore in which he stripped away the rhetoric and describe the event as it is: "the executioner will eat a meal before and after"; as he said, "Anyone who takes a life is a hypocrite." When meanings are hijacked, imperceptible control is exercised without our realising.

It's a technique I've come across among the campaigners for euthanasia. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society (whose purpose was what it said on the packet) rebranded itself, a few years ago, as Dignity in Dying, and took to talking about Assisted Dying rather than Suicide. There are four ways of dying: natural death, accidental death, being killed and killing oneself. There's also an attempt to hijack "compassion" to legitimise putting an end to someone's life prematurely. One needs to ask, "What's the agenda beneath replacing plain English with gobbledy-gook?"

Other interesting hijackings include "having a baby" and "marriage". Picture a couple. The wife discovers she's pregnant, "Honey, we're having a baby!" The politically correct man replies, "No, dear, you're carrying a foetus." And I guess 99% of the population would consider "marriage" to mean what it's always meant, the union of a man and woman for companionship, procreation and family life. But not for much longer. The meaning of the word is being manipulated to create a new myth.
I'm indebted to Paul Huxley for this sardonic comment on the official redefining of words.
"Square circles to become legal

"In a groundbreaking move, the government is set to introduce square circles.

"The Deputy Minister for Shapes commented: 'It is time that we gave true equality to circles, not only to rectangles. Why shouldn't circles be considered square?.'

"Under the new law, mathematicians and geometrists who object to this redefinition will be allowed to continue using the old definitions, and definitely won't be forced to use the new terms in their research papers. However, all Maths teachers will be required to use the new definitions with their students.

"A spokesman for the fundamentalist group, The League of Geometrists, objected to the new rules: 'How can a circle be square? It is a contradiction in terms. If it remains circular, how can it consist of four lines of equal length?'

"But the Prime Minister, supporting the move, said: 'This move will be supported by all tolerant, welcoming, broad-minded people.'"