Category Archives: Uncategorized

Family name…

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I have just spent a few days down in Nottinghamshire visiting family. My mother has been diagnosed with cancer, so had to go into hospital for a lumpectomy- and we wait the news as to what further treatment she requires. All very scary.

Because I went down on my own this time, I stayed with my mother- the first time I have slept in the house that I was born in since the say before we married 22 years ago. This has some disadvantages, as she has no hot water, and no central heating (beyond a few ineffectual storage heaters.) She suffers from a fresh air fetish and even with a hard frost, each room had open windows. I had taken the precaution of making sure I had my down sleeping bag, which I slept in under the duvet!

However, it also gave me time to sit and talk about family. The murky details of my family background are complex, and full of things that most upright folk would rather had been swept under the carpet. Some of it I knew, but some I did not.

So, it goes something like this;

My great grandfather was born some time around 1850 in Lincolnshire, the illegitimate son of a local landowner. His father took some responsibility for his offspring, but not much- he set his son up as a farm labourer. It does not seem to have been a happy arrangement- he was a bitter and angry man, who treated his own sons poorly. My Grandfather was born around 1883, and as soon as he was old enough, left home to go and work in the Nottinghamshire coal mines.

In case you are wondering how I could have a Victorian Grandfather, read on…

He married and settled in Kirkby in Ashfield, in the shadow of the Summit Pit. He had two children, both boys. Unfortunately, his wife was sick most of her adult life, and a large portion of his earnings went on medical bills- this was long before the advent of the Welfare State.

The boys grew- one was wayward, and rebelled against my Grandfather liberal use of the leather strap. He left home, but was killed riding a motorcycle. By then, his mother was long dead.

The other boy had children of his own- one of whom survives.

In the meantime, in the housing shortage during the second world war,  my Grandfather moved into a former railway carriage. Quite why he needed a housekeeper in such a situation I have no idea- but such arrangements seemed to be common. So it was that my 43 year old Grandmother escaped her work in a munitions factory and moved into the Railway carriage with my Grandfather- then aged 60.

My mother was born shortly afterwards- into every kind of poverty. Her parents seemed to have little idea as to the needs of a child- particularly in terms of emotional needs. She had no birthday presents, no Christmas presents. The shame of being the illegitimate child of this situation was so powerful that when my Grandfather died in the 1970’s, at the ripe old age of 93, she was terrified at the prospect of the vicar officiating at the funeral discovering that his family name was not the same as her maiden name. So much so that she began hyperventilating as she tried to explain. Such is the power of childhood shame.

The story became more difficult for her- a bad marriage, lots of bitterness, and no small amounts of damage done to my sister and me.

However- what this conversation enabled me to see, perhaps for the first time ever, was a chain of ungrace stretching back 160 odd years. All those damaged people trying to find ways to live better.

And I was reminded of some hard old words from Exodus 20;

…for I, theLord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me…

And feel little comfort for how the words go on;

…but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The sins of the fathers are very human ones. I am not sure about all the judgement stuff in Exodus, but I am sure about the fact that damaged people can easily do damage, and that bitterness infects other people in ways that are hard to understand even in hindsight, even when right in front of our eyes.

May the scars we carry soften. May we not nurture any new hate.

 

Remembering those who died at arms…

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Another Remembrance day. Another 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Bands and sober crowds with the occasional glint of gold on the chest of men in blazers and regimental ties.

For me, this day always sets off cognitive dissonance. Remembering this kind of death can easily become a kind of glorification; an elevation of war to the great heights of human endeavour. The mass death of men in the flower of youth is so much more marketable than the quiet work of peacemakers, be that in our neighbourhoods or around a table at the UN.

But die they did, and whilst I can not rejoice at their death, nor pretend that being gutted by a shard of shrapnel can ever ennoble, I can pause and pray that we might yet learn something from all the carnage.

And I think the Bishop of London said it this morning quite well- the greatest lesson for us is to acknowledge that war happens when we allow poisonous hatred to flourish in our societies. When we scapegoat, when we point fingers, when we place ourselves inside and others outside.

The endless fascination with the second world war (which I share in part) always takes place with an underlying assumption about how plucky England fought a lonely crusade- a holy war- against the evils of fascism. Our Knights rode Spitfire steeds to slay the Teutonic dragons.

In this stained glass portrait of war it becomes impossible to feel the shame of all the empire building, the asset grabbing and the dreadnought building that Britain indulged in for hundreds of years beforehand- factors which any high school historian has to acknowledge as the fertile fields in which the seeds of both world war were nurtured.

So on this 11th day of the 11th month let us see war for what it is- a terrible failure. Each life lost paid the price of this failure.

Each battle won obscures the failure slightly but failure it remains.

Welcome to the new Archbishop…

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At the time of writing this, we await the likely announcement that Justin Welby, the current Bishop of Durham, will be the next leader of the Anglican Communion. There is a 15 min radio profile on him here.

Here is my gathering of a few facts about him;

Eaton school. Most expensive fee paying school in the land, where the rich and autocratic send their kids.

Trinity College Cambridge. Member of the Christian Union, a very Evangelical Grouping known as ‘the God Squad’. The dean however (in contrast to Dean of John Robinson, was a liberal radical, famous for a controversial liberal theology book called ‘Honest to God’.)

Evangelical. Attended Holy Trinity Brompton, Charismatic in outlook.

Joined an Oil Company, became treasurer. Very rich.

1989 gave it up to become parish priest.

10 years ago, fast rise up church hierarchy- Dean, Bishop of Liverpool, Bishop of Durham (less than a year.)

Now Archbishop?

Where does he stand on those totemic issues that have the capacity to rip the church apart? Apparently he is supportive of women in ministry, but his views on homosexuality are less clear. He has suggested that he supports the ‘churches position’ on the matter, which might suggest he holds to traditional teaching.

However, others have suggested he has really good skills relevant to the post- being a great communicator, intermediary, good with managing money and engaging with issues. This as contrast with the outgoing Archbishop, Rowan Williams, who was a brilliant, deeply spiritual, cerebral character.

Leadership matters. We only have to look at the things happening in the Roman Catholic Church at the moment under the leadership of Pope Benedict as he tries to roll back changes made in the church over the last 40 years since Vatican II.

The Anglican Communion is a very different animal however- much more about the vicarage kitchen table than the Papal palace. I hope and pray that Justin Welby will be a leader who we will look back on with same affection as most will be doing on his predecessor.

Why do Glaswegians die young?

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Health inequalities- what causes them? Why do people in some parts of the UK have an average lifespan of years and years longer than people who live in other parts?

Glasgow is a case in point. Life expectancy at birth in Glasgow is the lowest in the UK –over six years below the national average for Glaswegian men (71.6 years, compared with a UK average of 78.2 years), and over four years below average for Glasgow’s women (78 years, compared with the UK average of 82.3).

In previous discussions, we suggested that this difference was primarily caused by pockets of extreme deprivation in the inner cities- an underclass who die young through high risk lifestyles skewing the statistics. However this may well not be the case.

This from the Guardian;

 …the conventional wisdom that Glasgow’s ill health is all down to poverty, bad diet and bad behaviour is, at best, partial and, at worst, misleading. Despite years of research and decades of evidence that something has gone terribly wrong in the heart of Scotland’s largest city, the underlying causes of Glasgow’s fatally poor health remain something of a scientific mystery.

Poverty alone doesn’t account for Glasgow’s dismally low life expectancy. Other British cities – Liverpool and Manchester, for example – have rates of deprivation every bit as high as Glasgow, yet their life expectancies are substantially higher. What’s more, even Glasgow’s most affluent citizens, those in the top 10% of the income distribution, die significantly younger than their counterparts in other British cities. At best, according to the epidemiologists’ calculations, deprivation accounts for less than half (around 40%) of Glasgow’s “mortality gap” compared with the rest of the UK. The other causes are still unknown.

This is quite a statement. For many years research had pointed clearly to the fact that poverty is the single most likely indicator of life expectancy. What other options are there that might explain the Glasgow situation then?

With colleagues at NHS Scotland and the University of Glasgow, Walsh has devoted much of the past five years to uncovering what makes Glasgow so different, compared with other, similarly deprived British cities. If you think deep-fried Mars bars are to blame for Glasgow’s ill health (as many English commentators seem to), then think again: obesity rates in the city are actuallylower than in some English cities.

Nor can Glasgow’s infamous penchant for alcohol and cigarettes explain the puzzle. According to the largest health surveys in England and Scotland, Glaswegians neither binge-drink nor smoke more than their peers in Liverpool or Manchester. Drug abuse (particularly heroin), knife crime, murder and suicide are all significantly more prevalent in Glasgow than in other cities. But that only prompts the question – why is this the case? What is it about life in Glasgow that seems to predispose some of its citizens to such destructive behaviours?

“Lots of people have their own pet hypotheses about it,” Walsh says. In a recent research paper, Walsh, McCartney and their co-authors, Chik Collins and David Batty, assessed no fewer than 17 competing explanations for Glasgow’s ill health. There are theories that blame the weather (perhaps it is vitamin D deficiency or chilly winters?), those that blame the data (perhaps Glasgow is simply poorer than it looks?), plenty of theories that blame the Glaswegians (a culture of hedonism, sectarianism or alienation) and still others that point the finger at the Tories (a “political attack” on Glasgow, conducted by Margaret Thatcher’s government). Some have more supporting evidence than others, but all are unproven, says Walsh. “The main thing to say is that it’s not going to be one thing. It’s going to be a combination of different factors interacting,” he says.

Point of death may not be the best measure of a life, and population wide stats tell little about individual experience- but I believe that this gap in life expectancy is a terrible blight on our country which should really be much higher up the political agenda.

Well done Will!

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This was William about 4 years ago in France, sending down a delivery on the campsite. It seems a long time ago.

This week, after two trials, he was selected to be part of the Regional Development Squad for under 15s. He is only 12 so this is quite a vote of confidence in his potential. For those who understand the language, it is his wrist spin bowling that resulted in his selection- although his batting has come on in leaps and bounds this year too.

The boy could go far…

Guy Fawkes…

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We gathered to celebrate the failed terrorist plot to blow up the houses of Parliament today.

(Or from a different perspective…)

They gathered today to burn another Catholic freedom fighter in effigy.

The photo above freaked me a little- it looked like a man being burnt on a cross- which would be slightly appropriate I suppose.

So I chose to engage with the bonfire and fireworks (both of which I love) as a means to remember a time when Protestant and Catholic were set against one another, and truth tribalism was let loose on the land like a pack of raging wolves.

15 minutes of grace…

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I listened to this today, and it made me cry.

There was a story told by a woman who returned to the mental hospital secure ward where she had been incarcerated years before. The building was being demolished and she was there to take photographs. But walking into the building she could hear the noises of people shouting and screaming, and she could remember feeling so dreadful whilst she was there that she broke both arms by smashing them into the wall in the hope that they would have to take her somewhere else. She cried as she remembered the dead butterflies she saw on the floor of the empty ward, and could only bring herself to take photographs with all the heavy locked doors wide open.

But there were also lots of other stories of people who found their own healing- their own recovery.

It is 15 minutes long, but full of beauty. Go on, have a listen.

Climb every mountain…

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No, I am not going all Rogers and Hammerstein on you- rather I wanted to mention a remarkable story of endurance and human endeavour.

I have a long time interest in climbing mountains- personally this has amounted to gasping up many a peak in the UK, but it also means a book shelf or two full of books about climbs in the Himalayas.

If I analyse what this interest is about, I have to acknowledge that climbing mountains is a pointless, self absorbed, selfish activity. It liberates no captives, heals none of the afflicted, brings no comfort to those in grief. Rather it can become the obsessional activity of the rather socially dysfunctional.

But any of us who have been on a high ridge as the dawn rose, or stood in the snow as hammerhead clouds gathered in the distance, or tested ourselves beyond any comfort zone on ascent through wild rock- for us there remains something noble and pure about mountains that can not be dismissed. The photograph above was taken on the Cuillin Ridge, Skye, on a day when cloud lapped my feet on one side of a knife edge, and clear air dropped two thousand feet on the other. The day lives on in my memory.

But back to the story. Two British men have just completed a climb up Mazeno Ridge, on Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas. This climb has been widely regarded as the ‘last great problem of the Himalayas’, and countless previous expeditions have failed. Involving both technical climbing and massive endurance, the Mazeno route requires ascents on seven subsidiary summits above 6,000m before tackling the final summit of over 8000m.  Remember that at these altitudes, gaining even an extra 300m in height takes superhuman strength. It is not called ‘the death zone’ for nothing.

The men who managed this incredible feat are Rick Allen and and Sandy Allan. Rick is 59 years old and Sandy is 57.

This from the Guardian;

Sandy Allan and his climbing partner Rick Allen were at their last camp below the summit of Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth highest mountain, when they gathered together the food they had left.

After 14 days on the vast unclimbed Mazeno Ridge – the longest in the Himalayas – it amounted to a packet of McVitie’s Digestives biscuits.

A lighter they had taken with them had stopped working, its flint worn through. The only spare, they realised, was in the pocket of another member of the team who, exhausted and demoralised, had already decided to descend.

The consequence was that they could not light their stove to boil snow for water, essential on the world’s highest mountains where the consequence of dehydration is the risk of frostbite and pulmonary and cerebral oedema. They hoped, however, that they could reach the summit and descend the imposing Diamir Face in a day and a half; they were counting on fixed ropes left by other expeditions. In reality, it took them three full days to get down from the summit without any food or water, a lengthy struggle through deep snow at the limits of survival.

When asked if he intended to climb more high dangerous routes like this, Sandy said this; “I’m 57. I’m a father. The rat’s been fed.”

A rat it may be, but a what an animal.

The moral case against welfare provision…

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Those of us this side of the Atlantic find the American polarisation around the provision of state welfare/health care extremely puzzling. Here, for the last 60 years there has been a general hegemony that it is the job of any government to look after the most vulnerable people in our society, even allowing for the fact that there are differences between the left and right of the political spectrum as to how we might do this.

People like me would go further- and say that the best measure of a society is the degree to which it looks after the poor and broken, and how the structures of society mitigate towards providing as much equality of opportunity as possible.

From here this seems like the only moral position that could be compatible with a modern state- particularly one with its roots into the teachings of Jesus.

So how then does a society that is avowedly Christian, and is the wealthiest, most powerful state in the world manage to more or less take a different view? What moral choices justify this position to the moral majority- the middle American mostly Republican, conservative Christian majority?

If this interests you, then I very much recommend listening to this radio 4 programme.

The eminent American political philosopher Michael Sandel is Radio 4’s “Public Philosopher.” Now, as America prepares for its Presidential elections, he is going on the road in America with a unique mission to challenge ordinary voters and lay bare the deeper moral questions bound up in the noisy Romney and Obama campaigns.

In this week’s programme, Professor Sandel is at Harvard, his home university in the intellectual heartland of New England. Much of the debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama has been about welfare policy, social security and healthcare. Underlying this, Professor Sandel believes, is a moral and philosophical disagreement about the nature of the American dream itself.

Earlier this year, Obama was attacked for his remarks about the role of government. “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive,” the President said. “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Republicans saw this as an attack on business and accused Obama of stifling the idea of individual success at the core of the American dream. The right’s policies are more focussed on individual choice — lowering taxes and opposing, for example, the type of universal health care policy which Obama has enacted.

Against this backdrop, our public audience will be asked: “Who Built It? Is the American vision of individual responsibility for one’s own success a myth?” Michael Sandel weaves through these issues with the help of philosophers past and present.

The programme allows real debate between thinking Americans about the nature of government and sets it within a philosophical and world wide context. However, I was most interested to try to understand the American/Conservative perspective- because like it or not, the power lies here- not just in America, but through the various world wide institutions and globalised interests, the morality inherent in the position affects us all.

Follow me on this a little- I would suggest that no human endeavour exists in a moral vacuum- rather it grows and is driven by a set of underlying assumptions, leading to half understood rules and codes, and eventually to a kind of automated set of behaviours. The same set of principles that result in a moral stance firmly against state welfare and health provision also result in free market capitalism, evangelical Christianity and economic growth systems depending in endless innovation, and conspicuous consumption. (You will note that so far I am trying hard to remain neutral in this piece!)

The Michael Sandel  radio programme allowed members of the audience to state clearly the reasons behind their support of both sides of the welfare debate. Those AGAINST clearly stated some of these things;

Freedom

This was the powerful idea behind many parts of the argument. The idea that government tax is a form of coercion, that being made to give money is a fundamental invasion into the rights of the individual.   Freedom is seen as the pre eminent idea of what is truly American.

(I can no longer stay neutral!)

There seem to me to be some real problems with this idea. Freedom is not abstract- it is constructed. It arises in a particular social context and is meditated by many powerful self interests. There is also the fact that one person may extract their freedom (for example to enjoy a particular lifestyle) at the expense of others. Might they not also wish to be free from what they regard as oppression?

Americans seem to have not problem in paying taxes to government to build up massive military forces. To protect their ‘freedom’.

Individualism

Allied to the idea of freedom is a powerful sense of individualism- the idea that the individual is always more important than the collective. That is not to say that small town neighbourliness is not important, but that society ought to be based on the hard work, the opportunities made and taken and the achievements of- the individual. This principle extends right to the point of individual rights to protect what is ‘mine’ by the use of the gun.

I have come to see the dominance of individual, personal rights as part of the reason for much human distress in Western culture. Researchers will point to the fact that the more dependent connections we have on those around us, the more we are anchored to our context, then the happier and more fulfilled we will tend to be. It is how humans are made. When Margaret Thatcher said ‘There is no such thing as society’ she was never more wrong.

We have a choice between anchoring our society around a sense of common good, or against a common enemy. The Americans (and by association the British) have tended towards the later of late- and this is something that I think we should deeply regret.

Encouraging and rewarding fecklessness.

This is the powerful idea that benefit breeds dependency and laziness  The end result is that people who work hard end up supporting those who will not work, and a huge growing underclass is created of state sponsored inactivity.

This is of course one of the issues that any State benefit system has to contend with. How to prevent people getting ‘stuck’ in the system. How to constantly find ways to encourage and develop people, not stigmatise and exclude people from full participation in society. Our system in Britain pegs benefits below the level of the minimum wage, and has evolved a huge machine into which people are churned in the hope that they will emerge into renewed enterprise. It is far from perfect.

Some people can not work in any society. They are sick, or broken, or addicted. They may also be very unlovely, and brutalised by their experience. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that we in the UK (as a result of having a developed welfare state) have more of these people than in the USA.

Charity is a better means through which to provide welfare.

This idea suggests that where people are in genuine need, then individuals can still offer help via donating to charities, voluntary agencies and self help groups, who will operate more efficiently and are better able to meet the needs of the poor and sick than the state can ever be. This is of particular interest to faith groups and churches, as this might then become their natural field of operation.

Back in the Victorian times, a man called Samuel Smiles wrote a book called Self Help, which was an excoriating account of the inefficiently of the charitable activity of the time. Charities have the capacity to be every bit as efficient or inefficient as government action. They are also likely to be piecemeal, and lacking in any kind of overall vision or common principles.

It will be no surprise to you to know that I do not think the moral case against welfare provision hangs together- particularly from a Christian perspective. It owes more to enculturalised ne0liberalism than it ever does to the words of Jesus.

But there is a moral argument nevertheless- polarised and dualistic as it has become…