Love one another as I have loved you

Many adults feel quite disheartened by the immature behaviour of our politicians. They certainly disappoint me at times - and this week has been one of those times. Parents and teachers work hard to encourage good behaviour and strong values in our children: it might be time for our politicians to go back to school!

Throughout the democratic world we have come to expect childish one upmanship as our elected representatives forget their roles as our servants and standard-setters, and do all they can to demean, undermine and sabotage their opponents - and groups they have decided they cannot tolerate.

Adversarial governance always ends up with immature name-calling, treating people as objects, winners and losers. And too often it seems to draw us in as we find ourselves supporting the ideas and behaviour of our favourites (who we do support - but for other reasons).

In Australasia at the moment we have added what seems to be a new dimension in our part of the world. We are fighting about how badly we can treat groups of people we have decided we don't like: people who are mothers, fathers, children. But we don't see that; all we see are the group, the gang, the different-from-us.

I understand that Australia is afraid of strangers coming to their country. I understand that they want to get rid of the sorts of people-different-from-them they have decided they don't like. But, although it is shockingly new for us in 2015, both countries have incidents from our not too distant past that we don't like to remember - incidents that we should never have allowed ourselves to forget! 

There are better ways to deal with people we disagree with or fear. Just last week on 5 November we celebrated the rebellion of Te Whiti o Rongomai of Parihaka - a nineteenth century Maori New Zealand Christian pacifist who seems to have influenced the thinking and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. He was a man who understood, and acted on that.

Politicians yelling at each other can be seen as mostly harmless posturing, albeit disappointing and setting a poor example of behaviour. But always, real individual people are being hurt. Real mothers and fathers, real children and friends and families are affected. 

All of us - you and me, as well as our leaders - need to stop thinking in stereotypes and "getting one over" the other. We are all created one-by-one by the same God, who knows and loves each of us. Wherever we are, we all need to see people as they are. I recall a memorial in Rwanda where they know what this hatred can lead to ...

“If you knew me,
and if you really knew yourself, 

then you would not have killed me.”

Felicien Ntagengwa

... and there's another Rwandan memorial that's always affected me, this one from a survivor of the sort of stereotyping we are flirting with ...

The next step

This week at Garin College in Nelson, all over New Zealand, and - I assume - all over the Southern Hemisphere, 17, 18 and 19 year old students are leaving school to take another step in their lives.

Nearly all of those students are more than ready to throw off the uniforms, the monitoring and checking, the routines and the hierarchies of school life and try themselves out in the adult world.

So far, most are not fully aware of the size of the step they are taking.

At school older adults take care and responsibility for the growth, learning and safety of their pupils. The staff want them to do well academically - and want them to develop in positive ways as people.

But over the next week our young adults enter a world where (when they leave home) no-one they see on a day-to-day basis really will care about their life as a whole or about their personal development. They move from environments where they are genuinely loved and cherished and supported - to much more impersonal places where, at best, people are paid to watch out for them for eight hours a day, for a term or a year.

At school older adults take responsibility for the safety of their students. The adults - parents and teachers - explain how things might go wrong and try to prepare them for the step they take this week.

Adults put themselves out to provide rich and stimulating experiences. Parents support them financially with free food and accommodation, and with other necessities and luxuries.

When our students were children many of the adults around our young people did their best to make them aware of the spiritual world around them. In most families and schools that support has become a rationalisation that we each must make our own way spiritually. In most families all they can do is set an example - or just pray for their children. Some families give in to the indifference of the world and are no longer involved in spiritual formation - of the adults or children.

At school and inside families, the consequences for mistakes are mostly personal and loving (even when the consequences involve short-term pain!) Next week - and definitely next year - mistakes will have adult consequences. A growling, a detention or suspension, or a "talk" - will be replaced with impersonal failure, debt, fines, prison, or lifelong commitments.

In our families and schools the adults protect young people from the worst consequences, but in the adult world that protection quickly fades and sometimes even becomes illegal. Everyone must face their own consequences.

Even the language changes. Borrow becomes steal. Tease becomes harass. Push becomes assault. Consequence becomes punishment. Experiment becomes illegal. Risk-taking may become death.

Parents and teachers have done all we can to prepare our young people for the world they step into so lightly. There will be grief for all of them - as there was for us. Most will adjust quickly and thrive. Some will continue to need our support.

Most young people stepping out this week are spiritually aware, even if most are not particularly religious. Tell them you are praying for them. Tell them you are still there for them. They will mostly be too proud to ask, but knowing you are still their backstop is an important security.

We ask God to continue to bless them, to protect them, and guide them in their lives, and as they become the people God (along with parents and teachers) created them to be.

The letter of the law

I recently joined Twitter (we retired people can make time to do these things!) and even more recently got into a very focused discussion arising from the Synod for the Family about remarried Catholics being able to receive communion.

In that discussion it was brought home to me very forcefully that there are huge divides in the Church. 

People who have got to know me have mostly worked out that I have a simple theology and philosophy of life: God made us in his image, so we are all spiritual beings created to mature spiritually and find our way back to God. 

That means that we were all born blessed and gifted - and so the purpose of families and schools and parishes is to help us grow along that path by growing in God, sharing the blessings, and developing the gifts by using them for others.

My key understanding of our Creator is "God is love". 

To me this is very obvious. It is all supported by scripture, the teaching of the Church, and reinforced by the experiences of my prayer-life. Just this week our Pope, speaking of Jesus healing blind Bartimaeus, reminded us that "even though Jesus has only begun his most important journey ... he still stops to respond to Bartimaeus' cry. Jesus is moved by his request and becomes involved in his situation. He is not content to offer him alms, but rather wants to personally encounter him."

Last week I got into discussion with very committed Catholics, members of my Twitter community, who have a strong black-and-white view that mistakes made early in life cut a person off from full participation in the Church for ever. 

My understanding of the conclusions of the recent Synod is that these Catholics may be right objectively - but people in that situation always have the right to a subjective case-by-case review with their priest, and their conscience (which I see as a person's individual developing relationship with God) also plays a part. I do not know any priests in our country who would treat that discussion with a closed mind.

I would feel uncomfortable in a church that cut off prodigal members with no possibility of return.

However, one of the best things about the Catholic church is that there are about 1.2 billion of us. That is far too many for a real community - but when we break ourselves down into real communities, there seems to be a place for most of us. 

That 1.2 billion is about half of the 2.5 billion Christians in the a world of 7 billion. I include these numbers not as a source of pride, but because all 7 billion were created in the likeness of God, and each has a direct link with our Creator. We are together finding the kingdom within us.

Many of those links are tenuous - but on a subconscious level at least, we are each guided by God. Some choose not to listen. Many do not know how to listen (and this includes nearly all of us at some stages in our lives). Listening to God is a skill that most are given as a seed only - and with a responsibility to water and weed and fertilise as we grow. 

Perhaps some very committed people feel safer relying on clear and objective rules and find security there. 

My Twitter friends may find food for thought in St Paul's comment in his second letter to the Corinthians 3:6 ...

God has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Glimpse: Hiding

If I can't see you, how can you possibly see me? The little girl runs behind the chair and sits down. Invisible.

- Where's my girl? Anyone see where she went? 
- Is she under the table? 
- No, not there. Behind the couch? No. 
- Did she go into the kitchen? No. 
- Edith - are you lost? where are you? She's gone ... can't find her anywhere. 
- Edith?

A little head appears at the side of the chair.

- There she is. Where were you?

The head withdraws - gone again!

The game goes on (and on!)

Each time she disappears. Waits to be called. Reappears. Each time new - still believing I can't see her if she can't see me. 

- Don't know where she is.

I sneak up to the chair. Look over the top. There she is ... sees me ... new game: run away from Grandad. 

I follow her around a circuit of furniture. I stop and turn around. Catch her - lift her. Tickle time. She hadn't realised that the rules had changed, and if I turned round she would run into me.

We try again - this time I tell her when I turn back. One false step, but the second time she hears me, understands the new rules, stops, and turns when I do. I just can't catch her.

It is amazing to see a new person learning. Adult eyes see it all. We are amused, feel superior, pleased we have grown so much and aren't fooled the way a child is.

But really, have we learnt that much?

We still believe that if we can't see things, they don't exist.

We still run in the same direction (sometimes expecting different results!)

And too often, even when we are told we need to change direction, we just can't.

What would you call a female priest?

I love the Catholic Church, but sometimes (as happens in a lot of families), I despair!

I have been watching the "Synod of Bishops on the Family" discussions in Rome, and despite the best efforts of our best people, the Synod is being sidetracked too often. For an interested outsider like me, the idea is simple: the family is where we learn to love and forgive. That's it. The job of the Synod is therefore to find ways to help and support each family to love and forgive.

Instead, we are sidetracked into complicated mazes like whether divorced and re-married Catholics can receive communion. (My question - for what it's worth - would Jesus cut off support to people at the very time in their lives when they are feeling lost and vulnerable? Would Jesus cast people away when they made a mistake - assuming there might have been a mistake?)

Another sidetrack in the maze: homosexual parents. Would Jesus judge them on their sexual orientation or the quality of their love? the quality of the love they bring to their family? their ability to help children learn to love and to forgive?

And, again, the role of women in the Church! To me it is hugely ironic that the leaders of our parish families - yes our parishes are modelled on the family - are all male. We call them "Father".

In the early Church some of the holiest people went into the deserts of Egypt to be more alone with God.

The word that has come down to us when they were addressed is "Abba" (father). But there were women there too. They were called "Amma" (mother). These people were our mothers and fathers in the faith.

The family is precious to the Church partly because it is a model for the Trinity: three making a single unity. The Holy Family (Joseph, Mary, Jesus) is our model for the family. And yet we insist on male-only headship for our parish family. That worked well enough even as recently as the nineteenth century when the Roman/Victorian concept of paterfamilias was accepted without much question.

Society has moved on. The Church has moved on in so many other ways. The world is changing. Rapidly! Spirituality is changing in a huge way. God is no longer seen as male (or female). The Church will change on this - but sadly not in my lifetime. Even this synod is a "Synod of Bishops on the Family" - with a few family people as "auditors" (listeners, who can only speak when spoken to).

The lack of balance is part of the problem. No-one would consider saying that the bishops are not bright or educated, nor say that they are unconnected to their flocks - but their experience of day-to-day family life is up to half a century old. AND they are trained male academics, and too many too often argue from the head rather than the heart.

So pray for the Synod.
Pray that they stick to their knitting.
Pray that their focus stays on love and forgiveness.
And pray that the teachings to come out of the Synod will support all our families as they form the adults of the future to be more loving and more forgiving people.

Glimpse: Looking in, looking out

In my part of the world Spring is a short season, to be enjoyed before the equinox and the gales. I try to cycle every day, and have just returned from an hour biking in the wind.

I started uphill and leaning into the wind. My head down, my gears down: it was hard work. That is enjoyable in a way - but the joy is in the work rather than the world around me. My focus is on the the body-length in front of me, the wind rumbling past my ears, senses limited to that tight bullet of awareness: the path coming up, the bike's gears, me.

But then there is the ride home: downhill and wind behind me. I sit up, a bigger sail for the wind. I see beyond myself and my own effort. The joy now is being part of creation. New lambs bouncing, or resting in preparation for bouncing. Glades of sunlight between huge dark totora, splashes of sunlit green on a canvas of black and brown and shaded leaves.

The willows broke into leaf several weeks ago and have already matured past that fluorescent lime green - but they excited new life in a solitary bonsai willow, blasted trunk, perfect minimal zen shape, fighting to survive, but breaking late into leaf.

The Monet magnolia flames are now being quenched by new leaves. But the oaks are just breaking into their tiny leaves - bronze shading the pale green - arthritic fingers of their branches still sharp, clawing at the sky.

A vivid kowhai - all golden flower on silhouetted branches - tiny leaves invisible.

And bird-sound everywhere, the earlier steady roar of the wind a whisper now as I am blown along at the same speed, just the hum of my tyres through the light gravel of the cycle path - and the invisible birds.

Further away are the hills, shadows and sun accentuating the anatomical nature of landscape: bodies sprawled in lazy postures, backs and bums, ribs and hips, spine and shoulders jumbled together in an orgy of shiney green and shadow.

Real joy: after my hard work and inward focus biking into the wind (and up hill!), the grace of sudden revelation: creation in bright light, pollination and quickening, wind-waves in the grass, even the hills alive with the bliss of new birth.

Glimpse: Walking alone

The little girl in dark pink and pale green won't hold my hand. Out for a walk - traffic close enough to make grandad anxious. Just over a year old, but already making her own way in the world!

Who will she become? What will be my influence? Unanswerable questions.

She is a mix of genes (a quarter mine), so far unknown gifts from her Creator, and the unknowable effects of every single contact and experience of every single day of her life. Her parents and the environment they create have a huge influence, and many of the most influential contacts and effects have already happened. But there are so many more to come. 

As she gets older, each will dilute or moderate earlier contacts - and she has still to meet many of the key people in her life, still to live through suffering and tragedy, to face disappointment, still to discover that her plans are not the only plans.

I rush to keep up, pick her up to cross to the park, let her down again. 

I try to walk holding her hand - now more for my comfort than her safety! She will have none of it, rushing off to chase shadows, make friends with seagulls, find ducks to feed - all in a world of her own imagining. 

I know my place; even at (nearly) one and half she needs to know that she can make her way alone. (And I do notice the occasional gratifying glimpse back to make sure she is not too alone.)

She's a lucky little girl - parents who love her and spoil her (just a little), a loving community of friends with babies of their own, plenty of stimulation and attention, clean water and enough to eat, a warm and safe place to live, and (maybe with some little influence) four grandparents who think she is the most wonderful little girl ever born.

So, she rushes off over the playing fields, a spirited bundle of apparent independence and gifted with huge potential. I follow, keeping watch, almost overwhelmed contemplating the persons she might become and the worlds she might live and love in.