We are just back from a lovely holiday week spent in sunny Englandshire- firstly Northumberland, then Yorkshire and finally Lancashire. We swam in the sea, climbed mountains, and made the pilgrimage to Lindisfarne, barefoot over the sands (with some mud!) at low tide.
It was great to spend some time with my lovely family doing seaside things- and to appreciate again how lovely England is, with its layers of history laid down in a rolling landscape and in buildings of stone and brick.
We also fitted in celebrating the wedding of our friends Stacey and Bob. Congratulations to them as they start their married life together.
Here are a few photos- particularly of the magical walk over the sands to the Holy Island;
(I am writing this sitting in one of the great British wayside institutions- a Little Chef- somewhere near Skipton.)
We have been away on holiday for a week- more on this later- but today we attend our friends Stacey and Bob’s wedding at Beeston Manor, near Preston. Emily and I will be playing some fiddle/guitar music, and they kindly asked me to write a poem for the ceremony.
It is a humanist ceremony, and so I spent some time trying to come up with some way of saying something new about love. Not an easy thing to do without stumbling into a morass of sticky clichés. Also, my main poetic voice tends towards melancholic introspection, not quite the right tone for a wedding!
So, with every best wish to the happy couple- here is my poem of love;
The shared unknown
What more can be said of love that has not been said before?
Wendell Berry is a prolific author, activist, poet and also a farmer in Kentucky, USA. He is also a life long Baptist Christian.
He came up with a list of what he saw as the best way to change our destructive Capitalist global economy into something more human scale, more sustainable and in tune with our environment, where ever this might be on the planet.
See what you think- might such a set of rules actually work in the real world?
A community economy is not an economy in which well-placed persons can make a ‘killing’. It is an economy whose aim is generosity and a well-distributed and safeguarded abundance.
Wendell Berry is a strong defender of family, rural communities, and traditional family farms. These underlying principles could be described as ‘the preservation of ecological diversity and integrity, and the renewal, on sound cultural and ecological principles, of local economies and local communities:
1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.
2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.
3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.
4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products – first to nearby cities, then to others).
5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.
6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.
7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.
9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.
10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.
11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.
12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalized childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.
13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalized. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.
14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.
15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.
16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
I do not mean to be in any way rude to American readers, but there are lots of things that happen over on your side of the Atlantic that often seem to make little sense over here. I think this is partly because in many ways the Conservative, Christian, largely Republican middle America is so very different from the UK- even if this is just one part of your vast and wonderfully diverse country.
However, the influence that American Christian media has on certain strands of religion over here is significant- music, satellite TV, funding for ‘mission’, Evangelists, books- these are overwhelming dominated by US products.
It goes something like this- CEO of fast food company (who donate millions of dollars to charities who try to ‘cure’ homosexuality) openly states his opposition to gay marriage. This causes a backlash, including from the Mayor of Chicago, and- Kermit the Frog;
However, step forward the right wing ‘Shock Jock’ Mike Huckerbee;
…former Republican presidential candidate and current Fox News host, Mike Huckabee stepped in to defend Chick-fil-A. In order to bolster support for the company, he encouraged people to visit their local franchise on Wednesday. It was dubbedChick-fil-A Appreciation Day.
As Huckabee put it, it had the “simple” goal of affirming “a business that operates on Christian principles, and whose executives are willing to take a stand for the Godly values we espouse”.
Too often, he said, “those on the left make corporate statements to show support for same-sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians affirm traditional values, we’re considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant”.
There is so much I could say about this story. I think we have to start with an understanding of how easy it is to be influenced and controlled by our culture. Culture in this case that is mixed with religion and becomes so rigidly conservative and controlled by assumptions and normative values that make anything outside seem threatening and requiring a defensive (or even an aggressive) response.
There is also the fact that for much of Middle America, President Obama (the physical embodiment of this threat) and is ahead in the polls, leading to great uncertainty. Mitch Romney’s blunder-ridden jaunt around Europe might make him a comedic figure this side of the Atlantic, but to many he is the hope for salvation.
Then there is that word ‘fundamentalism’- which in this context involves a literal interpretation of the Bible- even if thinking Evangelicals would admit that there are still nuances to this when we try to adopt words into our culture. I have been around this way of thinking for much of my life, and though I currently find myself at considerable divergence, it is clear to me that many people who hold to these beliefs are actually trying desperately to live a good life, according to the light of God revealed through the words of the Bible.
On this issue however, I find myself with more in common with Kermit than with Huckabee.
Partly this is because my theology sits quite comfortably with same-sex unions- I am quite happy to celebrate love and life long commitment wherever we might find it. Far from this being a threat to any kind of family values I hold dear, my hope would be for new families to thrive and grow as mine has done.
I also do not think that Christians need to engage in any kind campaign to protect their ‘rights’ to proselytise or to condemn others for what we would see as immorality. Let us raise our voices against injustice, corporate greed, globalisation, leave the rest to God, and resist the throwing of the first stone.
The article deals with an old theme here- what makes for a full, satisfied life? How do we live in harmony with our community connections to facilitate this kind of living in those about us? (See here for example.)
There is a narcissism at the heart of our culture that elevates individual ‘success’ and fulfilment above all else. There has always been a terrible contradiction in this for me- in much of our activities, success for one has to mean failure for most. Add to this the effects of globalised inequality, in which overconsumption of the few requires the exploitation of the many and the myth of democratic meritocracy begins to look like what it is; thinly disguised Imperialism.
This way of organising ourselves has become a trap that we are all caught in. We in the West get fat behind our guarded borders, whilst those the other side of the frontier are sold impossible aspirational ideas of Western glamour and our obsession with new gadgets.
There is evidence everywhere that this arrangement is not working. This from the article mentioned above;
Our global economy is effective at many things—moving huge quantities of goods across great distances, for example, or turning mortgages into profits. What it’s not so good at is determining whether these activities are worthwhile when it comes to improving the lives of the people who live and work within the economy (not to mention preserving the natural systems on which the whole shebang depends). In many cases, economic policies that increase trade or production actually decrease well-being for millions, even billions, of people.
That’s the reality that’s leading more people (and, increasingly, governments, from Bhutan and Bolivia toBritain and France) to ask a very simple question: What’s the economy for, anyway? Do the rules and policies we create to govern the flow of money and goods exist to create ever more money and goods, or to improve our lives? And if we decide we’d like to prioritize the latter, how do we rewrite the rules to do that?
The article interviews makers of a documentary film, entitled The Economics of Happiness;
In countries around the world, in fact, there is an epidemic of depression and suicides and eating disorders. With this film, we’re trying to show that, when you look at the big picture, these social issues—as well as our environmental problems—are linked to an economic system that promotes endless consumerism. Fundamental to that system are trade policies that promote the expansion of giant multinational corporations…
Norberg-Hodge and her colleagues strongly promote the idea of localisation as a solution to some of our social-economic woes;
I’ve spoken with some journalists who ask, “Well, how do we know what happiness is? Who are you to say what it is that constitutes happiness?” It’s true that there are many definitions, but I’m most interested in the abundant research that says that people all around the world, more than anything, need to feel loved, appreciated, seen, and heard—especially as children growing up. They need to be nurtured in order to become nurturing, loving and happy people. That is what localization is all about. That’s why localization is the economics of happiness—because it’s about restoring that human connection and care. In addition to research, consider our spiritual traditions. Virtually all of them have a clear message that love is the path to peace and to happiness.
Because people so need to be seen and heard, respected and cared for by one another, rebuilding community at the local level can dramatically restore human well-being…
…When people reach out to each other to start rebuilding the local economy—for example through the local food movement or local business alliances—we see a reduction in polarization, across political divides as well as across ethnic ones. At the same time, localization helps people reconnect to the natural world around them, something which fulfills another deep human need.
These are the things that really restore human happiness, and they come through localization.
I find myself instinctively responding to these words and ideas. They seem right. Possibly because they offer a means by which our spiritual life, community life, and economic life can come together again after being split apart by consumerism and accommodation with a culture founded on exploitation of others.
And as a follower of Jesus, the primary measure of a good life can never be economic success, acquisition of gadgets or protection of what I have already from those who have less. Living as a Christian in this kind of economic reality is like trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle.
If there is to be any kind of change in our way of being, starting locally seems to me to be the only way forward. Find some friends and do things differently- it is the Jesus way.
this fragile tent 