More Real Than Gravity Itself

So a film curiously named after a scientific term triumphed at the Bafta awards and there seems general agreement thatGravity is an extraordinary production.

Gravity  adopts a most basic form of drama – actors seen only as faces within spacesuits. Everything else in the film is simply not real. Every frame consists almost entirely of computer-generated special effects. These are so stunning that audiences have found it totally convincing.

But such technical genius brings us more than entertainment and valuable therapeutic escapism. It also offers an unsettling lesson on how easily the ‘not real’ can master the consciousness and so overshadow ‘the real’ altogether.

On this score, maybe Christians should more often well … get real. For we might be more in danger of unreality’s seductive spell than anyone else. The closeness that binds the faithful together can easily get the better of us so that we become too cosy, safe and insular.

“Why do people in church have to be so nice?” a teenager once complained bitterly to me. Could she really mean us? Yes of course. We wouldn’t wilfully hurt even a tree-beetle but we still grow de-sensitised to inhumanity all around us. However, scripture actually prizes the real above all.

Only a response to the real can set people free. Repentance, initial or constant, springs from cold recognition of what we secretly are: the real us. And Jesus has already inhabited places of harsh reality in order to liberate its oppressed people.

Our news media have made a brilliant job this week of popping the ‘not real’ bubble for everyone. The ‘real world’ has reasserted itself in disturbing ways over comfortable lives. Reports appear of the troubling extent of UK child-trafficking. Cruel floods and traumas strike those formerly considered better-off. And despite hopes of UK money helping to restore human rights in Sudan, an outrage is reported there – the jailing of a pregnant woman for the seeming crime of being raped. The Ukraine looks on the brink of civil war.

But perhaps most shocking of all is the UN’s report on North Korea detailed by theGuardian. The special commission on human rights has extensively documented thekwanliso, prison camps where hundreds of thousands have already suffered execution or starvation to death. Harrowing stories abound: a woman being beaten by a guard until she finally does what’s demanded of her – to drown her own baby and so stop it crying; a boy having his finger chopped off for accidentally dropping a sewing machine; chillingly, prison camps holding some people actually abducted from other countries. Tragically, this is ‘the real’ for millions, perhaps billions, in the world.

But there’s good news embedded in the bad. And it is ‘the real’ just as much as any harrowing headline. A television report on North Korean escapees asked just how these traumatised people are managing to enter a recovery process. Answer given: through the love and support of Korean churches. A poignant and moving clip follows of Korean Christians embracing escapees and welcoming them into fellowship and care. And the victims of so much brutality do attribute their progressive healing to the love and practicality of believers. Surely it’s this that scripture sees as the ultimate, ‘real’ experience for Church. Church is real when prisoners are being set free and hearts and minds healed there in every way.

So now we have the definitive form of ‘real’ – compassion in action. It trumps all dark things that are also real. But it demands the conscious choice of the will. Over and over again.

Roy Kearsley is an author and former theology and mission lecturer based in Cardiff 

Knowing Jesus

I've just finished reading the classic 'Knowing Jesus' by james Alison.

I'll just quote the end paragraph of the book (in may not do justice to the entire book but it's an excellent conclusion):

"... we  become disciples by serving serving that the intelligence of the victim (Holy Spirit) reveals to us, we will find that we have come to know Jesus, and the Father. We will be surprised to discover that what appears to be a road leading only to exclusion, and narrowing horizons, turns instead into a highway of ever increasing diversity, and the richness of learning to be moved by Another, Another who is quite without rivalry or possessiveness. And there we will know without the hidden traps of our self-delusion blinding us; we will know as we are known, and discover that our knowledge of Jesus was nothing at all compared to his knowledge of, and love for, us." James Alison

I appreciate the idea of a highway of ever increasing diversity, knowing Jesus leads us to inclusion instead of exclusion... the knowledge of Jesus gradually leads us into wider spaces...leading us into the knowledge of a God who loves...A God who is defined by love...the Father who loves the world and by imitating the Son, who imitates the Father we will be led to love the world. To receive the releasing of forgiveness that loosens us from  self-victimization, self-loathing, so that we can embrace our human ordinariness so as to immerse ourselves and relate to the world and its ordinariness and realizing that we are in complicity with its faults and violence.
Our sins no longer block us off from others, but are now made healthy in becoming a medium of solidarity instead of a motive of separation. In knowing Jesus we begin to hate our sin, not in a personal self-loathing way, but we hate our sin because of the harmful effect it has on others.

Open up your horizons!

A Prayer for the union with Divine Reality

Here's a prayer by James Finley:

May each of us be so fortunate as to be overtaken by God in the midst of little things. May we each be so blessed as to be finished off by God, swooping down from above or welling up from beneath, to extinguish the illusion of separateness that perpetuates our fears. May we, in having our illusory, separate self slain by God, be born into a new and true awareness of who we really are: one with God forever. May we continue on in this true awareness, seeing in each and every little thing we see the fullness of God’s presence in our lives. May we also be someone in whose presence others are better able to recognize God’s presence in their lives, so that they, too, might know the freedom of the children of God.

Trinity

Yes, God is “One,” just as our Jewish ancestors taught us (Deuteronomy 6:4), and yet the further, more subtle level is that this oneness is, in fact, the radical love union betweenthree completely distinct “persons” of the Trinity. What is sometimes called the first philosophic problem of “the one and the many” is overcome in God’s very nature. God is a mystery of relationship, and this relationship is foundationally and essentially love. The three persons of the Trinity are not uniform—but quite distinct—and yet completelyoned in total outpouring and perfect receiving. 

Further, our word “person,” now referring to an individual human being, was actually first used in Greek-based Trinitarian theology (persona = stage mask or a “sounding through”), and later then applied also to us! So we also are not autonomous beings, but soundings through, seemingly separate but radically one, too, just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are. The implications could make for years of meditation. We really are created in God’s “image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26f), much more than we ever imagined. Trinity is our universal template for the nature of reality and for how to “one”!
By Richard Rohr

Baptême de Jésus

I bought a Christian Church calendar this year. It goes through the church year using different artists.

'Baptême de Jésus' is a painting by Corinne Vonaesch where she seeks to express  the life of Christ.

The image is not too abstract and close to the text - but giving space to the spectator to welcome and deepen the text with her/his perception.

Epiphany means 'to make manifest' - reveals Jesus' mission to the world in his adoration by the Magi, his baptism, his ministry and his call to follow as his disciples.

Tony Benn - Anger against injustice coupled with hope !

Philomena

Saw the British film Philomena at the cinema this morning. It's a fantastic film, sad, true and magnificently played by both main actors Judy Dench (Philomena) and Steve Coogan (Martin Sixsmith). The film is based on the true story that was published in book-form entitled 'The Lost Child of Philomena Lee', written by Martin Sixsmith. I always appreciate a true story and this was no exception.

Philomena gave birth to a son out of wedlock ( 'out of wedlock' sounds so old hat these days) - but back then in the 50s in strict Catholic Ireland giving birth outside of marriage was a shame for the family of the girl (the father of the illegitimate child had no worries !).
Philomena was sent to a convent, gave birth to  Anthony, signed away her rights to him and subsequently her son was adopted without her knowing who the parents were.

Philomena gets older but everyday she thinks of her son, his whereabouts and what he could be doing.
On Anthony's 50th birthday Philomena decides that it's time to tell her daughter about Anthony and then (to cut a long story short) gets Martin Sixsmith, the shamed Labour adviser and journalist to find her son.

They end up in America where Anthony was sold (adopted) to a rich American couple. Anthony's name had been changed to Michael Hess who had become a chief official in the Reagan administration.
He was also gay. He died of AIDs. Philomena was devastated when she learned that her son was dead.

There are some interesting points that can be highlighted from the story.

Philomena forgives the nun who kept the secret about her son's identity and whereabouts from her. The jounalist could never forgive the nun. Philomena comments that because of this he's crippled with anger and bitterness. Philomena forgave and through forgiving was released from a potential  bitterness that unforgiveness brings.  Forgiveness brings freedom.

The institution of the Church (in particularly the Roman Catholic Church) is seen in a negative light. The Church that is called to be a Light, is seen as darkness. Hiding the truth and financially profiting from the sale of babies and slave labour of young girls who had become pregnant. Unfortunately the Church often fails to live out the teaching and life of Jesus, whom she professes to follow.

I respect the character of Philomena and I can learn from her example. As already stated she readily forgives those that have trespassed against her. Forgiveness is tough, especially when you've been deeply hurt by someone. Philomena is open-hearted and continues to love and think highly of her son - even when she learns that he was a homosexual. This may not be such a big deal for most of us, but the fact that Philomena is an elderly Irish Catholic I think this may have been a large step for her.
She is 'uncomplicated' , she has a real faith, though sometimes 'deformed' by the education she'd received... actually keeping faith with such a deformed and ungodly education is admirable.

A very good film, filled with emotion and honesty.