Cardinal O’Brian compares Gay Marriage to the laws on Slavery?

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Did anyone hear this discussion on the radio this morning? Cardinal O’Brian, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland was being interviewed about same sex marriage and made some rather startling statements.

I found it really hard to follow some of his logic, even as someone who has been in and around churches all my life.This is what he was saying;

If we allowed gay marriage, it would amount to ‘shaming’ the country.

We would be taking standards that are ‘human rights’, from the UN declaration of human rights and turning them on their head.

We would be redefining marriage to something it is not, as marriage could only happen between a man and a woman.

He then compared gay marriage to what might happen if the government suddenly decided to legalise slavery. Thought this a ‘very very good example of what might happen in this country’.

Then he started to describe the ‘thin edge of the wedge’, referencing the Abortion Act in the 60’s.

I could start to tell you my position on this issue, along with whole pages full of justifications. I could get into the relationships between scripture and culture, and the authority of certain OT texts.

I could also discuss the position of love as opposed to legalism, and the fact that sexual ‘sin’ has taken far to central a part in our understanding as opposed to (for example) gluttony or usury.

I could also tell you how bored I am with the way church is ripping itself to pieces with this issue. How hard hearted and foolish we look from the outside. How different camps use this issue as a ‘totem’ of acceptability.

I could wonder aloud why we could not just agree to disagree and focus on finding a path of grace to walk on for our own lives.

And I could describe the feeling I have that this issue will look and sound very different in 30 years time, in the same way that remarriage after divorce and (dare I say it) slavery are viewed as theologically different now than how they have been previously.

I could also talk about how church leaders who seek to ‘defend’ the church, or take us back to some mythical state before ‘progress’ damaged and destroyed our Christian way of life are often talking utter nonsense. As if God is not big enough to stand up for himself.

But rather than all of this, I will just say that the Cardinal made an ass of himself.

Is God inspired by our politics?

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Interesting article in the Guardian about a study led by Lee Ross of Stanford University in California into the interaction between faith and politics.

 …the Jesus of liberal Christians is very different from the one envisaged by conservatives. The researchers asked respondents to imagine what Jesus would have thought about contemporary issues such as taxation, immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion. Perhaps not surprisingly, Christian Republicans imagined a Jesus who tended to be against wealth redistribution, illegal immigrants, abortion and same-sex marriage; whereas the Jesus of Democrat-voting Christians would have had far more liberal opinions. The Bible may claim that God created man in his own image, but the study suggests man creates God in his own image.

If you are like me, you are right now deciding that those whose political views you do not share are the ones who have invented more of their Jesus than you have.

Because basically Jesus is like a really good version of me. Me on a good day.

 Preachers, politicians and co-believers tend to emphasise and de-emphasise different aspects of the Christian canon; so conservative Americans study the Old Testament with its homophobic rhetoric and eye-for-an-eye morality, whereas liberals look to the New Testament Jesus who was sympathetic to the poor and the meek.

Evangelical politics is not, of course, limited to the US. Many social conservatives in the UK align themselves with the Christian right, and MPs such as Nadine Dorries take inspiration from US campaigns against abortion or gay rights. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the study is that it turns on its head the claims by many religious politicians, such as Republican nomination candidates Rick Santorum (“I’m for income inequality”), Rick Perry (“Homosexuality is a sin”), or the UK’s Nadine Dorries (“My faith tells me who I am”), that their politics is inspired by their God. This study suggests instead that their God is inspired by their politics.

I suppose this was the risk God took in giving us all free will.

The foolishness, the folly of God.

Who lies like a bound lamb on the altars we build.

Today I was not Murun Buchstansangur…

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After a particularly brutal week, there was a chance that today could have gone something like this;

(This post bring back lots of memories! Can you believe that this was a children’s programme back in the 80’s? This one seems to recommend idleness and alcoholism! I confess to a slight affinity to Murun Buchstansangur- perhaps related to the general melancholy that seems to be his watchword…)

After a morning seeking motivation, I eventually sparked into life, and re roofed my workshop and the bike shed- both damaged in the big storm. Quite a productive un-Murun like day in the end.

The postman brought me a letter today, offering me jobs that I do not want, or redundancy. It has been a long time coming (2 years of rumour, misinformation, bad communication and often downright overt rudeness) and despite having made my decision some time ago, it was still something of a shock to the system.

Murun does not seem to need a job. I wonder who pays his mortgage, or re-roofs his sheds?

Greenbelt 2012 early line up announcements…

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Greenbelt festival is ages away. I have a whole load of things between me and it.

However, it looks like I will be doing something this year with ultrasonic speakers- some technology that projects sound on a carrier wave, making it into a narrow focussed beam that you can limit to a spot some distance away, or even bounce off objects. We are going to use it to project poetry and sounds recorded on small Hebridean islands during our up and coming Wilderness retreat trips.

So (you heard it here folks!) the first announcement of the line up for Greenbelt festival- Chris Goan!

I understand entirely if this does not raise the heartbeat, but I was looking at the GB website today, and noticed something that certainly got my attention;

My all time favourite musician/songwriter/poet is there this year- Bruce Cockburn. This man’s words and music have been my companion and inspiration for 20 years and more. So famous in his native Canada that they put his face on a stamp. This is from the first ever album of his I bought back in 1989;

Also confirmed are the wonderful Bellowhead- a collection of musician who play folk/jazz/punk like you have never heard before. We have a few of their albums but have never heard them sing live. Check this out;

Wilderness retreats- new FB page…

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On a day when everyone seems to be talking about Google’s new (non) privacy policy, I have been trying to dip into the world of marketing. However, lacking the multi billion pound machine that Google can bring to bear on our consciousness, I settled for the creation of a new Facebook page all about our up and coming wilderness meditations.

If you are a user of FB, then I would be honoured if you would visit and give it a ‘like’. I think that this helps in some way, although I am not quite sure why!

Even better- why don’t you come along? There are lots of photos on the page to give some kind of flavour of how lovely these places are.

Travelling well with the Jones’s…

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Many of you will already follow the on going adventures of the Jones family- Andrew (aka TSK) Jones blog is after all essential reading for many of us who are interested in what is happening on the edges of the known (and not yet known) Christian world.

A year or so ago, the family were living in Orkney off the northern coast of Scotland, when they bought an old truck, converted it into a living/entertaining space for themselves and all sorts of others. You can read something of their adventures travelling through Europe, Asia and North Africa here.

The point of all this travelling was to connect with all those small beautiful projects, and small and beautiful people who were working out the mission of Jesus in the lesser known places, and to support and encourage them.

It is an adventure that many of us feel a combination of envy, admiration and incredulity in relation to. It seems both bonkers and wonderful at the same time.

Anyway, the point of this post is to give a plug to Andrew’s new book project- you can pre-order it in order to support the next phase of the Jones journey, into Asia.

Details of the book, and how to order are all here.

We need people like the Jones clan to remind us that other ways are possible, and that other lives in far away places might teach us much about our own, so go on- order the book now!

Doubts and loves dig up the world…

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A year ago I wrote a piece about doubting the existence of God. It received quite a bit of traffic for a while as it seemed to hit a chord.

Many of us who have been part of an overly concreted doctrinal system of belief have struggled to acknowledge doubt. It is almost as if any small incorrect belief would form a crack in the whole edifice of faith that might bring the whole thing tumbling down. To avoid this apocalyptic end to everything we have built our lives upon we contort ourselves into all sorts of defensive positions.

In my case, this involved two main strategies-

  1. Do not go there. When you feel the approach of doubt, turn in the other direction. It is better not to ask the difficult questions as the answers might be too much to cope with. Distract yourself with narrower, safer issues.
  2. Dishonesty. Better not to talk about doubt as this might infect others as well as yourself. You also might find yourself ostracised by the fervency and inflexibility of others.

Eventually of course something has to give or we become like stagnant pools, unable to flow, unable to sustain any kind of life. Faith fixed and defended becomes something else called religion. And religion belongs in the text book not in the soul.

I was reminded of this again after listening to this from Giles Fraser;

For my own experience of faith is that belief and unbelief commonly nestle alongside each other. Indeed, I cant make any sense of a faith that doesn’t include unbelief as a powerful element. “My God, why have you forsaken me” is, after all, the cry of Jesus at the very centre of the Christian drama.

As with much that is of the soul rather than the brain, faith and doubt finds voice in poetry. Giles quotes a poem he read that forms part of a memorial for Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, murdered by a religious man because he sought peace.

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

Yehuda Amichai

Pine Marten on the prowl…

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This morning, around 5AM Emily came into our room to say that the chickens were making a fearful row in the back garden.

Yesterday we got two new Chickens that we introduced to the hen house overnight. They often fight at first, until they have established their pecking order, but they have next to no sight in poor light, so it is very unusual for them to be active when it is still dark.

I confess I turned over and tried to sleep, while Michaela and Emily went to investigate.

They found the new pair of chickens still in the roosting box, but the two older ones out in the garden shouting their beaks off.

Then they saw a sleek shape move easily over the ground, up onto the wall where it trotted off along the lane. There is a streetlight on the lane, and so they had a good view of the animal against the light.

As far as they can see with research, it was a Pine Marten. The other options- Stoat, Polecat or Mink were all discounted by the intrepid pair as a result of being too small, too short of tail, too dark of face.

Now we have a bit of a dilemma. It is so exciting to have such a lovely wild and rare creature in the garden.

But we also know that they are perfectly capable of taking chickens. And we love our chickens.

For now, all we can do is shut them up at night (we have been letting them go to bed when they are ready and not shutting them in as we have never had any problems before.)

What do you want to be when you grow up?

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Michaela reckons that when you are small this is what people ask. They do not ask what you want to do but rather what you want to be.

A subtle but important difference she felt.

Michaela wanted to be a nurse. Nothing really surprising there, it is a rather typical thing for girls to aspire to, or rather it used to be. Hopefully the options have broadened out these days. Certainly Michaela has no desire to be a nurse any more, although when you think about what nursing might have seemed all about to a small girl- the caring, the looking after, the seeking to heal and restore- these attributes are still part of who she is. You might even say that these were who she was always meant to be.

Can you remember what you wanted to be when you were small? Might it contain something significant about your way of being, if not your current way of doing?

I wanted to be in the Navy.

I wanted to sail to far away places and have adventures. I wanted to be in a fast ship along with lots of people doing similar things. I still get a little excited when sleek grey ships pass the house on the way out to who knows where. I want no part in war, but still I find myself proud and unable to turn away.

As I think about it now, I wonder about the longing in me for the far horizon. There is in still the need to form a band of adventurers and go to explore new places, new ideas, new ways of being.

That ‘being’ word again…

Or perhaps it was always just about the uniforms.