A journey justified

As the Omicron virus variant begins to bite, again the question lurks in our minds in this merry month of December: ‘Will journeys be curtailed to keep Christmas alive?’ As travel cancellations escalate and holidays are again delayed, there’s a growing fear that visiting relations and friends may be reduced to avoid the ‘Déjà voodoo’ of a hapless lockdown.

Journeys, however, feature strongly in that first Christmas story, and risks were taken – well beyond the realm of the sensible, sanitised, modern mind-set of the West. Firstly, through the demands of a Roman census, a heavily pregnant mother was forced to travel seventy miles by donkey through the dangerous Samarian countryside which would have taken four days at its smoothest – not quite the 1 hour 50 minutes that it takes today by car from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Joseph, who would naturally have wanted to protect his wife, might therefore have opted for a safer route, but this could have extended the journey to a week, despite knowing that she was ‘great with child.’

Then there was the epic journey of the Parthian magi from the borders of Afghanistan and Syria guided not by sat-nav but by the stars, or rather, one in particular. It had been their conviction after much soul and sky searching that a regal birth had been ushered in, and a sense of mystery and divine curiosity goaded them on to cover the 500 miles, taking them eighteen months or more.

For the shepherds out on the Judean hills, the journey was not nearly so long – but they were ‘under the influence’ of angels and bright lights, and this caused them irrationally to abandon their flocks, potentially to the ravages of wild animals.

For all the central figures that first Christmas journey was fraught with risk and danger, but they were put aside for greater purposes: the celebration of a new-born king who would ‘reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and for ever,’ as the prophet, Isaiah puts it.

It is a similar sense of daring and abandonment that the Christian message calls us all to make: to go with haste and inquire into what this story could mean for us in our hearts. Of course, it might mean disposing some of the excess baggage that we’re so tempted to carry at this festive time – an over-emphasis on self-indulgence, a preoccupation with consumerism and ‘stuff,’ and a scant regard for how the poor and marginalised might be coping as they languish in Yuletide shadows. Our travelling to meet the Saviour face to face, like the crib figures, is down to will power and a heart-felt conviction. Do we want to make that journey? For those who are making it now and have done for centuries it needs no justification. As Ralph Washington Sockman once said: ‘The hinge of history is on the door of a Bethlehem stable.’ History was changed by that journey, and ‘his-story’ for each one of us can begin there too… and transform us.

May each of us consider making that personal journey this year and keep Christmas alive– a very happy and joy-filled season to you all!

(With thanks to Revd Alex Aldous, chaplain of Prestfelde Prep School, Shrewsbury)

Coping with the unexpected

Across the news this week we have seen terrific volcanic eruptions in Palma,
Canaries, an earthquake in Melbourne, Australia and the increased threat of
energy companies shutting down around the country. In each of these
situations, no-one could have anticipated any of these intrusions in our daily
lives; and the same could be said about so many life-events that cross our
bows – whether it be accidents, illness or, perhaps, the more positive news of
an unexpected rise in one’s salary!

Despite how many risk assessments that we might make in schools, industry,
government or in our own personal lives at home, life always has the
propensity to throw us a curved ball. Aside the need for each of us to take
responsibility for how we conduct ourselves in relation to our world, it is a
challenge to see how we can better cope with the unexpected. Even if we play
ostrich or genuinely hide ourselves away in our homes, we can never be sure
that a roof tile doesn’t strike us! To follow such a line can only lead to a prison
of neurosis, which binds, breaks down human relationship and prevents vision
and confidence in a world to explore and enjoy.

Whilst Jesus was on earth, in his Sermon on the Mount, he pointed his listeners
to nature: ‘Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store in
barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more
valuable than they? Who by worrying can add a single hour to their life?’
Worry is not only unhelpful but can itself be a source of harm, as any
psychologist or neuro physician will concur. But what Christ is underlining here,
positively, is that we have a heavenly Father who genuinely cares and loves us,
in the midst of the unexpected as much as in the humdrum, and as he reminds
us earlier in that Sermon, we are all called to be light and salt in the world, not
hiding away but shining, supporting, and demonstrating God’s love to our
hurting neighbour.

There is, conversely, within the Christian message, the need for us to be
vigilant and watchful and knowing that we need to be prepared for eternity.
Life, unlike what some may say, is a dress rehearsal – the three score years and
ten, or thereabouts, is never guaranteed but can be viewed as an opportunity
not for obsessive indulgence in good works, but rather permission for God to
have his way in our lives by his grace, seeking what the day given to us might
hold, according to his will. That, I believe, will give us a divine perspective on
the unexpected and a readiness to greet each day with joy and gratitude and
our life in the next world, whenever that might be.

(With thanks to Revd Alex Aldous, Chaplain at Prestfelde Prep School)

Heartbreak

It was on this day (27th January), 65 years ago, that the King of Rock, Elvis Presley, released his first million-selling single ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ achieving the accolade of reaching the ‘top five’ of Country and Western, pop and Rhythm and Blues simultaneously. The lyrics were inspired by a recorded tragedy of a man jumping from a hotel window through jilted love.

‘At Heartbreak Hotel
Where I’ll be–where I get so lonely, baby
Well, I’m so lonely
I get so lonely, I could die.’

As we are all aware, loneliness, this lockdown, has reached epidemic proportions and the homes that people have been confined to through ongoing restrictions have indeed become their Heartbreak Hotels: hearts that have been broken, through not reuniting with friends and loved ones they crave to embrace and hold and have the simplest of conversations with. The ‘Hotels’ may quarantine the body but never the mind, heart and soul. The Psalmist stated that ‘the Lord planted the lonely in families’ but it has become the Hotel of Discomfort that has separated them again and as we daily imbibe our news updates, we share the anguish of all who are in isolation.

It seems almost trite to provide easy religious messages to massage the pain that so many are enduring, but as humans created for intimate relationship, it would be wrong also not to point people back to our Lord. He it was who Himself endured loneliness, not just in coming to this earth, or in the misunderstanding of those who claimed to follow Him, but on the cross when He experienced the desolation of the Father abandoning him – why? so that we could be reunited with Him. It is the cry from numerous psalms that it is in our human desolation and out of our depths – brought on by any number of circumstances – that we call out and look up. It is as we are still before God that we are reminded that He, who knew anguish of soul, is the One who stands by us at the very worst of times. How do we know this? Because it was not only in His becoming like one of us and sharing our experience of humanity in all its glory and its degradation, but through the work of reconciliation on the cross that He restores, comforts and reminds us that we are not alone. Nothing about us, nor how we feel about ourselves or our condition can separate us from the love of God, and it is the promise of His holy and indwelling Spirit that He gives to us – the pre-eminent Comforter – that reminds us that we are not alone.

The monument to Presley’s hit, ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ stood for thirty years in Memphis, but it was torn down to make room for the new Guest House at Graceland – now there’s a parable! We are all, as humans, welcomed into His house and habitation of Grace, but he does not call us His guests, but as friends for ever: the ‘Heartbreak’ for Him is that not more of us welcome the move.

(Reproduced by kind permission of Revd Alex Aldous, Prestfelde School chaplain)

A ‘new normal’?

I’m an urban spaceman

One of the more intriguing group of musicians of the 1960s went by the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek name of: ‘Bonzo Dog Doo-bah Band’ with its particularly successful single: ‘I’m an urban Spaceman.’ Another of their psychedelic pop/comedy rock singles in the ’80s was entitled ‘Normals.’ Being sucked along what sounds like an hermetically-sealed conveyor belt, ‘normals’ are processed and gawped at by a spoof inspectorate. ‘You think you’re normal?’ Here comes one…he’s got a head on him like a rabbit.’ Chorus: ‘We are normal and we want our freedom.’

Trauma

But what is ‘normal?’ Last week I attended an online course for Trauma and Bereavement where we were informed that trauma occurs when core human beliefs are threatened: 1) That nothing bad is going to happen to us 2) That the world’s generally predictable and 3) That people are essentially decent. The last few months have shaken these first two beliefs and things we counted as dependable – employment, financial security, and uninhibited socialising have seemed certain no longer, and normality itself seems like an endangered species.

In the West, we are largely screened from the unpredictability of much of the world’s experience where people are victims of volatile weather conditions, despotic governments and relentless poverty, but the Corona pandemic has united the world in a shared experience which has left humanity reeling, and, of course, it is the poorer nations and the poorer within our own communities who are left to suffer its after-effects most.

Creatures of habit

We are essentially creatures of habit and we crave for a return to that which we know, a safe retreat to patterns of living with which we are familiar. We in our own community hope that in this vaccine-lacking limbo-land, still we seek to emulate that which we have known and yet mindful of the need to change and adapt as the virus follows its course. Aside the need to adjust technologically and respect social distancing, what are we bringing to our shared existence that can enhance our common experience and raise standards within normality? It would be my hope and prayer that a deeper understanding of what it is to value each individual made in the image of God would emerge and a real comprehension that there is more to life than riches, success and fame.

A new normality might require us to look again at Jesus’ model of real servanthood, ‘washing the feet’ of the unlovely, the rejected and the outcast and tending the wounds of those who are being mentally scarred by lockdown and the effects of the virus.

A new normal of compassion and sensitivity

Being normal and wanting our freedom is perfectly understandable but not desirable if it’s an inappropriate return to mass raves in gathered spaces or unthinking frequenting to known beauty spots – that is the old selfish gene rearing its ugly head. But if it means freedom from: mental anguish, loss of direction and being without purpose in life and we are the agents of this to one another, in the name of an outpouring of sensitivity and compassion then let it be, dear Lord, let it be. But is it new? Only if we’ve never tried it.

(A guest blog, with kind permission, by one of our TISCA chaplains, Revd Alex Aldous)

Hope in anxious times

Deadly diseases

In the 1970s, a student who would one day go on to become one of the foremost clinical microbiologists was advised against doing research into infectious diseases. There was no point, his professor told him. Thanks to vaccines and antibiotics, deadly epidemic diseases, such as smallpox, plague, typhus and malaria, were finally in retreat. All too sadly today – as we remember SARS in 2002, Ebola in 2014 and recognise that by 2016 HIV and AIDS (which came to worldwide notice in the 1980s) had been responsible for 35 million deaths – we are now faced with a new pandemic, COVID-19.

God’s to blame?

Epidemics breed fear and suspicion that multiply (along with modern scams, hoaxes and false news) more rapidly than any virus. Often when a mysterious illness erupts the first unhelpful reaction is to panic and the second is to identify a culprit. The White House recently called COVID-19 ‘the Chinese virus’ and in the 1980s, when the cause of AIDS was still unknown, the American Press accused Africans of having sex with chimpanzees, whilst Soviet agents located its origins in US research laboratories. Interestingly, in 1665 at the height of the plaque in London, the prime suspect was God! Lacking any other explanation, crowds flocked to churches, praying for deliverance from what they interpreted as divine retribution for their sins.

There is hope

Whilst God is not being labelled the culprit for coronavirus, in some places it is indeed causing people to return to Him, if not in a church building setting then certainly via online services, discussions, prayer times and seminars. A school chaplain I know reported that in normal times the voluntary Sunday chapel services attracted 50-60 pupils, the online version was now attracting over 200 participants. In society today, as was seen in 1918-20 (during the Great Influenza or Spanish ‘flu outbreak which claimed more lives than those killed in the Great War), this crisis has spawned an outpouring of mass volunteerism and self-sacrifice across the globe. There is hope!

I know Who holds the future

The world is indeed a very anxious place but as we consider the plagues and epidemics of the past, we can also acknowledge that much good has emerged from such times. Whether it’s wonderful literature (some of Shakespeare’s plays were written whilst self-isolating from the plague) or ground breaking science (Isaac Newton ‘discovered’ the laws of gravity when temporarily confined to his Lincolnshire cottage from disease-ridden Cambridge), we can still point to the One who holds our future and brings Hope to the world at all times, and especially in those when tragedy, fear and death are rife. As a well-known Christian chorus puts it, ‘I know who holds the future, and He’ll guide me with His hand. With God things don’t just happen, everything by Him is planned. So as I face tomorrow, with its problems large and small, I’ll trust the God of miracles, give to Him my all.’ (Eugene Clark)

(With thanks to History Today magazine, April 2020, for historical examples.)