An Advent Poem.

Fascinating poem - drawing on Old Testament prophecy, the gospel narratives and many other allusions with beautiful imagery (in both word and video images) - grasps the heart of Christmas, and the future hope of Advent perfectly.

Check out http://www.theworkofthepeople.com for more

Human Dignity

It is probably no coincidence that the Vatican has released a long treatise on the dignity of the human person (“Dignitas Personae”) in the same week that we celebrated the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The two in many ways go hand in hand, and it is no surprise that I am involved with the selection panel for an award to Christian doctors and other health workers involved in the response to HIV & AIDS known as the Dignity & Right to Health Awards. Health and human dignity hold together - especially when we understand health as wholeness of being (health and wholeness and holiness all share the same Anglo-Saxon root - and parallel the Hebrew word "shalom" meaning a state of right relationships and well being).

The aim of the Vatican's three-part instruction 'is to provide responses from the Church to new bioethical questions that didn’t exist when the Church released her last biomedical document in 1987. According to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) the document is the result of six years of study and deliberation on the most recent developments in the field of bio-technology. The document seeks “both to contribute ‘to the formation of conscience’ and to encourage biomedical research respectful of the dignity of every human being and of procreation.”' Catholic News Agency

And there is no doubt that the rapid acceleration of modern medical technology is out pacing our ethical thinking. At both ends of life and (increasingly) in the middle, we are seeing the boundaries shifted - from regenerative medicine based around stem cells, to pushing back the boundaries on pre-term survival of infants. This is increasingly complex moral and clinical territory. An intelligent input in to the debates from a Christian perspective is to be welcomed, and Dignitas Personae gives that input eloquently.

I have become increasingly challenged and fascinated by the Catholic approach to a 'consistent ethic of life', as it holds together the traditional, conservative Christian concerns over abortion, euthanasia and experimentation on human embryos, with the traditional liberal concerns for social justice, care for the poor, and opposition to war and militarism. Holding together these two areas, usually associated respectively with the conservative right and liberal left is, I believe, deeply Biblical, and represents a continuum rather than a clash of interests.

Justice for the child in poverty, exploited as a child soldier, trafficked into the sex industry, or left to die of cholera or AIDS holds hand with a concern for the unborn and an opposition to abortion on demand. A concern to prevent legalised killing of the very ill or disabled goes hand in hand with true compassion and care for the sick, disabled and dying. Not that there are always clear cut answers to these questions - but our responses to them must be couched in compassion rather than judgementalism, in seeking understanding and dialogue rather than pushing our own views as the only way.

Nevertheless, this strong sense of human dignity and the right to life and health is why the early church used to scandalise Roman society by going out in the streets to bring in the poor, the homeless, the sick and the dying, including babies left outside the city gates ("exposed") because they were unwanted or deemed 'imperfect'. One wonders if in a 100 years time our societies' increasing acquiescence to abortion on demand and euthanasia, as well as our fondness for war as a tool of diplomacy and our general inertia in ending the scandal of extreme poverty in the developing world, will be seen as barbaric as the Roman practice of exposing unwanted infants or casting out the disabled and elderly?

But at the heart of all of this is not these emotive issues themselves, but something more basic and more wonderful. Human life has something essentially of value and dignity - so much so that we should declare human rights a global priority, and that we should stress, in the face of advances in medical technology, or the spread of tyranny and human trafficking, the importance and value of each and every human life. For me, the central reason for that dignity is simple - not only are we made in God's image, but also that God took on human flesh, that he grew in the womb as we do, that he was born as we are - vulnerable, naked, dependant on human parents. That he grew and lived, and ultimately died as we live and die, and in so doing lifted our ordinary human existence to the divine. This message is deeply resonant, especially as we approach Christmas.

Once you see all humanity in that light, then everyone you meet, tweet or otherwise interact with is worthy of the utmost value and respect, because there is something of the image of God in them. It impels us to care for the vulnerable and fight for justice for the poor, and not for the sake of a quiet life acquiesce to a culture of comfort that turns a blind eye to the suffering of others

That, perhaps, is one of the greatest messages of Christmas.

Zechariah & The Christmas Culture Wars

For our regular office devotions this Advent I set the readings from Zechariah. This often overlooked prophetic book is full of intriguing visions, many of which point to the coming of Messiah, the crucifixion, the final judgement and the coming kingdom of heaven, and of all the nations flowing together to worship the same Lord. It is the fourth most quoted book in the New Testament after Isaiah, Psalms and Deuteronomy - especially in the passion narratives of all four gospels and the book of Revelation. Looking forward to both the coming of Jesus and His return it is perhaps an ideal book to focus on during the season of preparation that is Advent.

This morning's reading was from Zechariah 7 – and it jumped out at me. In particular verses 5 & 6:

"When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?"

I am in the midst of a busy time helping my wife to prepare for Christmas, which we are hosting this year. The logistical planning is almost military in its detail and complexity – and it is so easy in the midst of all of this to forget that Advent is the season of prayer and penitence as we look forward and prepare for the return of Jesus. And when we get to Christmas, will we be focussing on "the Word becoming flesh", or will it be on the food and presents, and getting everything ready in time for the Queen's Speech at 3, or making sure we are ready to go off to visit the extended family on Boxing Day? Or will be focussing on the miracle of God taking frail, vulnerable humanity and what that means for us here and now? In fact, it brought me up short about all our festivities – because in Keeping with Isaiah 1:17 and Isaiah 58, it is all too easy to be religious without concern for others, for justice and fairness as well.

"This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'" [v9-10]

But it also struck me that these were admonishments for God's people, not the nations that did not know Yahweh. So I find it hard to hear the constant whine we make as we see a secular world ignoring the spiritual core of Christmas, and focussing so much on the food, fun and excessive expenditure (in times of recession we are told, it is our patriotic duty to go out and spend, spend, spend, even if it means more unsupportable debt, just to keep the economy going - as if that isn't what caused the problem in the first place!!).

Maybe we should be living our Christmas so differently, so focussed on justice, on compassion and mercy (and not on spend, spend, spend) and ultimately so focussed on Jesus, that the World takes note. Are we out there in the homeless shelters this Christmas, or supporting developing countries through living gift schemes, or in a myriad of other ways approaching Christmas in a different sprit to the world? And let's stop having a go at the secular society for ignoring the spiritual root of Christmas – it does not make them more aware of God, it just entrenches us deeper in these pointlessly petty culture wars we indulge in at the expense of God's Kingdom. Let's rather live out the Kingdom first, and be salt and light rather than shrill noise.

Surving Christmas [Part III]

Still alive, still sane and finally as a family we all get to plob out and have what we call at "duvet day" (stay in bed late, don't get dressed, do noting of great importance, watch a lot of [new Christmas] DVDs and trash TV, talk about everything and anything but work and household business, play with the kids, chill out - you know the sort of day, however infrequently you get a chance to take it). A good "duvet day" is needed in the middle of the Christmas madness, if only to get your energy levels up to cope with New Year.

Christmas day was actually a good rest for us in reality - after the military level planning delivered a more than decent Christmas lunch, and the present opening went chaotically but enjoyably. I just caught the Christmas Doctor Who special, and that was about all the TV I saw all day! Otherwise my evening was spent stripping the turkey carcass and getting the bones in the stock pot to the strains of Kate Bush's "The Ninth Wave" - arguably the best thing she ever did, and one of my favourite Chrissie pressies this year (that and the Beatles "Love").

On Boxing Day we decamped up to North East London to the annual family get together at my wife's Uncle's extensive Manse (the only one of two houses in the family big enough for most of us to get together). That involves the small kids going mad with each other upstairs, the twenty somethings sitting around boozing and nattering in the front room, and us oldies sleeping off the large lunch of cold cuts in the snug. It is actually a good time to catch up and see people that we only get together a few times a year, and it is such a huge family that we do not all get a chance to meet up very often - we'll miss the next major family gathering as that is at the same time as our next baby is due to be born.

It was also a poignant get together, as last year's Boxing Day meet up was the last time that my wife's grandmother was with us all - she died very suddenly and unexpectedly in her bed on New Year's Day. As the clan matriarch, her absence is very keenly felt by all of us. This year there were only three generations of the family together - for the last five, we had seen four generations all together.

Not only have we survived Christmas this year, we have enjoyed it, reconnected with far scattered family, and remembered at the heart of it the story of God becoming a vulnerable child. Whatever the cultural battles over Christmas are (and I think they are largely based on a romanticised notion of a past that never was - Christmas has always been at least half a pagan festival), it remains an important time in our culture, whatever one's religious convictions. And it should never distract from the core message of Jesus' teaching and life.

There is nothing in the Bible telling us to celebrate a festival called Christmas (which is why some Christan sects dispense with it altogether), and indeed, we only get two, somewhat contradictory accounts of Jesus birth in two of the four gospels (Mark glosses over Jesus' origins altogether - while John goes for a mystical interpretation, which is very powerful, and I think deeply profound). The precise details of Jesus' birth are less significant than the impact of His life and teaching, yet it is the minutiae that get focussed upon. Jesus had a phrase for this - straining at gnats and swallowing camels. And who said Jesus never had a sense of humour?

So now it's the run up to New Year, and all the quasi spiritual themes about "new starts" and "resolutions" that usually entails. One, strangely profound moment in the Christmas Doctor Who (not a programme in which I normally find profundity) was the Doctor showing Donna the origins of the earth as all the debris of solar system coalesced to form the planets, and pointing out that the thing that humans do is create order out of chaos with our calendars and our festivals. We make meaning where there appears to be none - that is why we are so close to God in our nature.

New Year, like Christmas may be a bit arbitrary, but it gives us a focal point to collectively reflect on the year that was, and look forward to the year that is to come. We can do that individually and as families at point in the year of course - birthdays, remembrances of family deaths, wedding anniversaries, the third Tuesday in May, whatever is personally relevant or takes our fancy. But a shared, collective time of reflection is good for us as a nation and individually. We very often forget these collective acts and their importance to society.

Surviving the Run-up to Christmas [Part II]

So, made it to and from the fair town of Southampton (infamous across the Pond for being the city that that rejected the Pilgrim Fathers) to catch up with family and exchange presents. It was good to catch up, especially with my sister, of whom I see far too little. Odd how we take such relationships for granted.

My darling wife managed to use the opportunity of my absence, and the absence of earlier mentioned madcap midgets (who were abducted by grandparents in an act of uncharacteristic spontaneous mercy) to get all the pressies wrapped, and actually have a sit down with Nigella Lawson (not in person, you understand - although having both domestic goddesses under one roof would fulfill a particular fantasy of mine - but let's not go there right now!)

My daughter has been getting very upset about the lack of presents under the tree for her, and was therefore very excited to come home from said grandparents to find a several carrier bags and a large crate of wrapped presents. She has just spent the morning putting them under her tree, while her brother plays on the computer next to me on his favourite Underground Ernie game [this did prompt a couple of minutes back a five minute whinge from daughter, as she wanted her brother to help her with a three hundred piece jigsaw - I seem to spend my mornings being shouted at by children!]. My wife is enjoying the lie in she always promises me at weekends, but that my body and my children conspire never to give me. But that does give me the chance to wrap up her presents with the kids!

So, yes surviving Christmas. Not doing too bad so far, but today is the day that we do the major logistical planning that is Christmas lunch, so anything could happen! Timetables, oven temperatures, preparation tables, you name it, there's a list and set of instructions that will be pinned to the kitchen cupboards so that I can get dinner on the table, on schedule, and properly cooked tomorrow. I am king of the Sunday roasts, and can instinctively judge timings and temperatures for everything pretty well, but with Christmas lunch, it is distinctly more timing and temperature critical, and nothing is left to judgment or instinct [or chance]. This is military level planning!

The enjoyable bit of today is taking the kids to the Sunday afternoon crib service and the much later, taking myself to midnight mass. These are the reminders of what all this logistical planning, and running to and fro, shopping, agonizing and general hard work is about. These trappings are part of the social customs that help us stay connected to one another - they go back to pre-Christian Rome and Celtic Britain - lights, feasting, special foods, presents. All mid-winter celebrations to in essence break to gloom of the coldest, dingiest part of the year in the northern hemisphere.

But the other side of coin - the remembrance that the Lord of Creation came into the poverty and muck of a stable birth to a teenage girl, pregnant outside of marriage (and nearly "put aside" by her husband to be in quiet disgrace), in an occupied land where ethnic and religious persecution were the norm, after a journey at the behest of a corrupt leader seeking to boost his tax revenue from already hard pressed peasants. It was into these inauspicious circumstances that Jesus was born - not a romantic nativity scene of Victorian Christmases or modern piety. It was this child who grew up as an artisan in a small village (still in a region that is the scene of ethnic and religious tensions to this day), then in adulthood spent three years preaching and teaching around the remote, largely ignored region of Galilee before finally being arrested by the religious authorities for threatening their status and power. He was eventually put to death by the secular, occupying forces of the Roman empire. Oddly enough, it is the instrument of torture and execution on which he died, a symbol of Rome's brutal control of it's subject peoples, which has become a globally recognised symbol of the Christian faith, and not any of the symbols related to Christmas (stars, mangers, etc, etc.).

Not much of a foundation for a faith you might think- Richard Dawkins and others would tell us so, but the idea that God got involved in all this rubbish we have to live with, from work and taxes to political oppression and persecution lifts our everyday muck and poverty and hardship to the level of something sacred- because He went through it with us. Even something as mundane as pregnancy, childbirth and childhood are lifted to being something holy. It also reminds us that injustice and suffering are something that matter to God, and not issues to be swept under the carpet.

That is something worth celebrating. That and what Jesus' death actually means - Christmas only becomes complete at Easter.

Joyeux Noel touts les Mondes

Surviving the Run-up to Christmas [Part I]

Well, my kids were actually well behaved, and we survived the neighbour's party with no blood on the carpet (although there was spillage of red lemonade - although the carpet was already so old and worn that you would hardly notice the difference, but I still feel guilty about it ).

So, here I am with two days to go until Christmas. My inestimable wife has done miracles on the Christmas shopping front (in addition to making presents!), while I have actually got all my shopping done (God bless the Internet). With a manic last couple of months at work keeping me busy and away from home for upwards of twelve hours a day and leaving my like a zombie when I get home, my dear wife laid low by late stage pregnancy, two small hyperactive and mischievous midgets and bronchitis, it is a small miracle that we have got this far alive.

My next struggle is to to do the present run to my sister and cousin in Southampton. With the fog and likely traffic chaos, that does not look to be great fun. To be honest, I could do without going, but we have reached a compromise, and the kids will stay at home with my wife, and I'll go on my own - traffic and weather permitting.

I case you missed it, most of the British Isles has been under a very, very heavy blanket of fog for pretty much all of the last four days, throwing airports, road and public transport into even greater chaos than usual. Oh, and the drivers one of the main train companies are threatening strike action. Christmas would not be Christmas in Britain without travel chaos - it is what we do best.

Needless to say, this is one of the major reasons we never, ever go away for Christmas - that and two travel sick midgets, and the stress of organising going away. And that we have family and friends on our doorstep, so "going away" just means a ten minute walk round the corner, or a five minute drive. Only the Southampton present run has entered the Christmas calendar as a long distance event.

Now don't get me wrong. I love my sister and get on with my cousin and her family pretty well, but the thought of hauling arse all the way across the south of England and back in one day to exchange Christmas presents a few days before the festivities is not my idea of a fun excursion, with most of the rest of the Southeasts' 23 million souls trying to do the same on an already overstretched and overcrowded transport infrastructure.

But unless we keep up these little, ritual points of contact, the bonds that hold families (and friends) together begin to weaken. People take offense, or just forget about us, and next year, we are likely to get left off the list of cards and invitations (not necessarily maliciously). And so it goes.

Everyone moans about Christmas, the commercialization, the hassle ,etc. But we all still do it, every single year. Why? Because it is a basic human instinct - we need these little present giving rituals to keep us knitted to one another. Christmas has many meanings, but one of them, however stressful and annoying at one level, is keeping far flung families and groups of friends who have drifted apart geographically from drifting apart socially. We go through all this hassle because, at the end of the day, just letting someone know you have thought about them and care about them, and giving them the opportunity to do the same, actually means more than all the aggro that goes with organising all of this.

We are odd creatures. But at least that is one reason why Christmas persists, even as Western Culture at least has largely forgotten the spiritual narrative that underlies it. But that is for another day, and for other, more vehement blogs of those on the frontline of the Culture Wars, a conflict I see little point in fighting (at lest not the way it is usually fought).

If I survive today's excursion, I will be back again to explore surviving other sides of the run up to Christmas in my family.