Tag: Grace

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)

Speaking the truth in love…

Last week, a top official was dismissed from his office for stating that widespread voter fraud across the Pond was entirely baseless and without any credibility. ‘The question of Truth’ appears once more to be on trial. Stating something loud enough, irrespective of validity, and to people who massage one’s ego sufficiently, seems to be the norm… in certain quarters. In Roman mythology, ‘Veritas,’ the goddess of Truth is the daughter of Saturn, called Chronos (Time) by the Greeks. Time will certainly tell – truth always has a habit of coming out and the checks and balances put right, though at what cost?

Without truth, stability in society and trust and confidence between individuals cannot flourish – all of us need to know ‘where we are.’

Unconcealment

However, in our dealings with others, it is well to remember the philosopher, Heidegger, who made a distinction between the Roman and Greek conceptions of truth as their gods declared it. ‘Aletheia,’ the Greek god, he argues, essentially means ‘unconcealment’: in other words bringing out of obscurity and darkness that which needs to be brought into the light. ‘Veritas’, on the other hand refers to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, a state of being reflecting that which is right, but  winsome and sensitive. Just saying something which we believe to be right, is not enough, but it is how we say it.

St Paul spoke of the need for us as citizens to ‘speak the truth in love’ and this is the challenge. Being dogmatic and ‘barking’ out a truth (to forgive the pun!) about someone or something may be technically correct but wins no favours and certainly not another person whom one may be wishing to ‘put in their place.’ It is how we say something, and exercise love with it, that is of greater importance.

In need of more grace

During this lockdown and in the midst of this prolonged pandemic, it is easy for each of us to feel tempers fraying and frustrations boiling over, and taking them out on others within our community and amongst our families is perfectly understandable, but not necessarily excusable. It is at this time that we all need to avail ourselves more of God’s grace and love, realizing that of our own resources we are frail. As the psalmist says: ‘I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to a rock that is higher than I.’ Of ourselves, especially in isolation behind our own walls, it’s so easy to shoot from the hip, to defend truth as we see it and make judgments which, though they may seem accurate are not always appropriate to articulate.

In the end, when it comes to truth, I am led to someone who declared in himself that He was The Way, the Truth and the Life. Truth, when it is clothed in flesh and soaked in love: He inspires us not to score points or put another down but always hopes, always believes the best, and always longs for God’s image in one another to be greater. Speaking the truth is good…speaking it in love is far better. ‘Love…truth…again.’

(Blog with thanks to Revd Alex Aldous, chaplain at Prestfelde Prep School, Shrewsbury)