Continuing our Advent journey, on day 5 we consider how we might come to imagine a different future.

I see the Bible as a magnificent library of books that record how mankind seeks to understand God. There are many ways to read and engage with the texts but one way that I find meaningful is to see the stories it contains as a process of evolution of understanding; humankind starts in innocence, then we stumbled into acquisition and successions of empire building. All through this process however, there were people who saw differently. People who risked everything to speak a different truth, calling us to a more lovely, more beautiful, more loving (otherwise known as ‘more holy’) version of ourselves.

These people were usually called ‘Prophets’. Men and women who belonged to the awkward squad. They were often irritants, weirdos, wild visionaries. Sometimes people in power listened. Mostly they did not.

Notice friends, that we have tended to understand the word ‘prophecy’ to be concerned with predictions of future events, but this is just one way to understand it. The more common use for the recorded prophetic utterances in the Bible was to speak truth to power. Prophets were people who saw things differently and were brave enough to do something about it. Some things have not changed. We need our prophets more than ever.

The Advent story includes an old man called Simeon who had spent a life time longing for things to be different. You can read about him here.

A shuffling walk, awkward

silences,

followed by strange words,

spat out like spears.

Be still my child

for the Prophet speaks.

“For unto us a child is born.

Unto us a son is given.

And the government shall be

upon his shoulders.”

“The Spirit of the Lord will dance within him;

He will turn the power games upside down

The poor will be his priority

Those locked out will be welcomed in

Fools will open their eyes for the first time

To the debtors

He will shout

jubilee.”

The Prophet was rigid

All angles like a marionette

Eyes shining.

“He is coming.”

“He is coming.”

Day 4 in our Advent journey, and today’s poem is a tribute to those of us who plod on, under heavy burdens, because that is what we have been called to do.

Blessed are you, the wage slaves. Blessed are you as you make the monthly mortgage, as you keep the electric meters turning. Blessed is the shrinking margin that you salt away for summer, and for the purchase of pink plastic things for the kids. For this too is holy.

It takes love to be a donkey. Lots of it.

Another day drops with a dull thud;

Dawns yellow from behind my unpeeled eyes.

I sigh.

Still, this old world keeps turning.

Two cups of coffee and a three rounds of toast

Set me on the road-

For the mortgage must be met

There is the holiday to pay for

And the kids need new shoes.

I’ve played these blues

before.

There is a photograph on the dashboard

Stuck fast with love.

For their sake, this weary way

Is sacred;

It is my plodding pilgrimage.

Each hiss of tyre, another chant

Another spin of my holy prayer wheels.

I smile-

This old world keeps turning.

Continuing our advent journey, here is another poem from We who still wait…

The comparisons are rather obvious don’t you think?

The bones behind his face

Are buried deep under all that privilege

Clothed in a royal robe of bloated flesh

Barely bagged by pampered skin

Puffed up by great importance

But I see him; the boy he once was

Shadowed still in the shape of him

Betrayer of old terrors and teenage fears that

All of the subsequently acquired power

Could never fully vanquish

One day it could all be snatched away

The fear of it stabs at his innards

His knuckles are white with all that grasping

And bloodied by keeping it exclusive

How much could ever be

Enough?

The beginning of the Advent story has nothing to do with Joseph or Mary or stables lit by starlight. Rather it centres around a childless woman weeping because what God has not given her.

Sure, the Gospel of Luke tells of a prophecy of a child to come called John who would be a joy and delight to his aged parents. But that was years down the line. She did not know. Her husband did not believe it possible.

There was just emptiness. Barren emptiness.

Elizabeth

They say every flapping scrap of life is

A brand new miracle

– I see them all in the street

Displayed there by their miracle makers

For the rest of us to worship

But I am earth

Not sky

I am dry desert soil

Blown around in the ordinary wind

I am empty

And can never be full

What use have I with all this holiness

If I am never whole?

Meanwhile in the temple

An angel

Whispered

Today, advent begins.

It is a season often out-clamoured by the churn and burn of preparation, in which we have no time for waiting. There is no time for quiet reflection when there are all those presents to buy.

It is an easy criticism because advertisements give us all the cultural indicators that we could ever want. It is they who define the season of advent after all. It seems that we need to order a new sofa and a new carpet for Christmas, and that Christmas is about… football.

But I would like to give you this seasonal invitation;

Take time. Peel back the surface of the season, just a little. Look a little more deeply when you can. Breathe deeply and remember that there is more. It may be wrapped up in mystery, but there is better- there is love. When you look for it, it is everywhere.

And what better to assist us on this gentle quest, than poetry?

So, as the advent season unfolds, I am going to offer you a poem each day- ones taken from this book; We who still wait. (If you should order a copy, you will get to immerse yourself in Ian’s meditations and Steve’s photographs also…)

So, on this first Sunday of Advent, we begin our season of waiting…

Advent 1

Here we are again.

Starting a new journey towards hope.

Setting out in uncertain times

towards a rumour glimpsed only in the shape of the stars

and the smell of something strange

in the changing of the weather.

Have I journey left in these brittle bones

what did it ever mean before?

How many false donkeys and tin foil angels can one man take?

We know that this Messiah fell from heaven not

on feathers, but to the stab and scratch of straw.

I get the humility, but when will things be different?

When will Kalashnikovs be melted into spades?

When will missiles be just fireworks in the shining sky?

When will Lions chose to nurture Lambs?

But here I am again

Starting a new journey towards hope

New moon sighs in sky anew

Younger now than me and you

What are we to do?

Emily is twenty two

Following on from yesterdays post, here is the poem I wrote…

Post-Tramp

They are everywhere

Hunched under blankets, cross-legged like broken Buddhas

Cups placed carefully in supplication.

Stubbed down like cigarette butts

They stink of the street

Soul-damped from all that recent rain

I walk by, wondering how it came to this?

What happened to the Welfare State?

Universal Credit, my arse. (1)

But despite my well-honed sensibilities

I catch a whiff of stale piss (and

Hegemonise,) because after all

We’re all Neoliberals now.

We must all self-actualise; pull on the power

Of positive thinking, lest we end up sitting here

On the street

With only ourselves to blame.

I walk on, eyes averted, but unable to fully

Escape the lingering stain of ‘we’

Polluting the place I made for ‘me’.

Perhaps there is such a thing as society (2)

(Or at least there was once.)

And what of these prodigal children?

Are they inoculated against love?

Or should each name should be spoken,

Each story woven up in purple prose –

Not as moral warning against the consequence of indolence,

But simply because it matters.

I have heard it said that we only truly know humanity

Whilst looking upwards

From very rock bottom.

But listen to me; what a middle-class, self-righteous twat I am

All I do is drop handfuls of inconsequential coin

Into wishing wells dug by other people’s

despair.

I am discomforted only in the direction of

poetry.

Meanwhile, William curls around the spikes placed to keep him clear of Waitrose. (3)

Emily can no longer sleep on the Camden Bench (4)

inclined as it is towards the right.

For even the cold ground has been subject to Mallification. (5)

It is hallowed now for holy consumption.

This new world only welcomes shoppers

like me.

There is no common ground any more

It has all been monetised.

Whatever happened to the Tramp?

Are there still ‘Gentlemen of the road’ who wander free,

Unconstrained by convention?

Were there ever?

Perhaps the Tramping never was a choice,

Rather just what happens when people are trampled down

By the myopic mythology of privilege.

The Tramp was only ever a ghost;

A white Golliwog. (6)

Tramp no more, for we are post-Tramp.

The Tramp has been Trumped,

Replaced by “Bad People”

And “Immigrants.” (7)

But then again, to paraphrase Jesus,

(Who did some Tramping himself, remember)

Perhaps the Tramp will always be with us.

While we walk past on the other side of the road.

Pointing our pulpits at interior, individual evils

(Because Our Lord was Neoliberal too.)

The permissive society is the problem-

Forget the Tramp.

But there I go again, throwing stones from distance.

Unlike the Religious Folk,

I serve no soup on the cold November streets.

I provide no shelter from the helter-skelter winds of winter.

I bank no food for hungry families.

These words fill no bellies –

Not even mine.

But I have spent a half-life responding bureaucratically,

Policing the ragged edge of a shrinking Welfare State.

Trying to address symptoms, never getting near to a cause.

I wore a professional role stiffer than serge and tried to fit people into boxes

Which seemed deliberately shaped to chafe.

Sure, I never knowingly left anyone of the street

But I learned enough to conclude that Maslow got it wrong; (8)

In the hierarchy of human need,

Shelter is not always the foundation of the pyramid –

Not for the unloved.

Those of us who were never held

Will fall forever.

Society is a cold sea berged by jagged realities;

Poverty is ugly.

It stinks.

It makes brutes of us all.

It stains souls like nicotine.

And the broken people, they break things-

They may break you.

So, tidy them away if you can;

‘Care Manage’ them, then  (9)

Close the case and move on, for

There are always more.

But blessed are the Vagrants

(According to the Book)

Holy are the holes in the shoes they walk in.

Blessed are the Hobos, for each one knows

That the Kingdom is theirs for the taking.

Blessed are the Down-and-outs,

for each one counts for more than me.

Blessed are the Beggars with their

grails of Polystyrene.

And blessed are the Tramps,

For they are the Chosen Children of the Living God.

And he is Jealous;

He wants them for his own.

He wants them for his own.

In the curve of a dripping arch

By the waters of Basildon

James sat down hard

And there he wept

For he had no Zion

And he had not slept for a week

His road was never walked as a pilgrim

It was a greased shit-chute

Which spat him here.

And James shouts into the darkness;

“Curse you, God-in-abstract.

Curse your cold stone steeples.

Curse your pigeon-stained glass.

Just give me a clear pane to look through.

For what use is a dry hereafter

When the winter rains come falling down?”

But when his rage receded

James pulled out his mother’s rosary

And prayed.

1. Universal Credit; a controversial new system of benefits allocation brought in by the UK government, driven by Austerity and a wider agenda around ensuring that people who receive benefits are pushed towards work. It is widely regarded as driving people towards debt and homelessness.
2. No such thing as Society’. A famous quote from a speech by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
3. Business premises have been employing spikes embedded into the pavement outside their offices and trading spaces to stop homeless people from sleeping there.
4. The Camden bench is a bench designed to be uncomfortable for sleeping on and unusable for skateboarders. It won a design award.
5. In major UK cities, there is an increasing debate about the way that public spaces are increasingly ‘Mallified’. In extreme cases, private companies have taken over management and control from local authorities, but more commonly, priority is given to retail and commerce above all else.
6. Golliwog; a Blackface stereotypical ‘cuddly’ representation of a Negro that was a famous marketing toy for Robinsons Jam in the UK.
7. A reference to one of President Trump’s many Tweets.
8. Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of needs’ is an attempt to describe and prioritise how humans are motivated to meet their own needs. He suggests we start will survival needs; warmth, shelter, and it is only when we meet these basic needs that we are freed to seek wider psychological needs or self-fulfilment.
9. Care Management; a system of assessment, care planning and resource allocation used by social care systems in the UK.

A few weeks ago now, I read a poem at a wonderful art event in Leeds. It was a long poem, written in response to some powerful photographs taken of people sleeping on the streets of Bristol by Steve Broadway.

Here is one of Steve’s images, and this is what he said about his piece;

“This year, I’ve spent more time talking to some of the rough sleepers in our city.
They’ve all got their stories…
The thing that has struck me most is their quiet dignity and their gentle friendliness. 
I’ve never been threatened or verbally abused and they’re always happy to talk. 
None of them likes the way they’re forced to live. 
Some of them live in doorways.
Some live in small make-shift tents.
Some live in squats. 
Some get the occasional respite of a night shelter. 
Some are there because they lost their jobs and/or could no longer afford to pay their rent. 
Some are there because of their own foolishness in the past. 
Most are there due to circumstances beyond their control. 
There are sad stories of broken relationships, broken homes… of being unable to cope. 
There are sad stories of being verbally or physically abused by passers-by or rowdy drinkers. 
There are sad stories of being robbed of what little money they had or having their tents slashed.  
Many feel ashamed by their circumstances. 
Many just want to be given another chance.
Many simply feel hopeless… utterly hopeless.
Most feel that society doesn’t care about them.
The sad reality is that, once you’re down, it’s very difficult to get back on your feet again”.

Too right Steve…

Then, last week, Michaela and I visited London. It was the first time she had been since 1989. We walked ourselves to the ground, and spent hours in the Tate, but one of the memories that will stay with me for ever was of all the people on the streets. How is it possible to walk past, unmoved? My lovely wife made sure that she held the hand of each one we stopped to talk to, but even then it felt utterly tokenistic to drop coins into their hands. Each encounter left us more impoverished, in a way that had nothing to do with money.

Around the same time, I visited my home town, a sleepy backwater in Nottinghamshire- the sort of place where people may be poor but this is not seen on the streets, until now. For the first time ever, I saw someone begging outside the local supermarket. A common sight elsewhere, but all the more shocking when seen there.

Steve’s portraits have been nagging at me since I saw them. As usual, when processing things like this, I turn to the keyboard and start to write… I try to find a way to respond to what I have seen that is honest and from within.

(Not one of Steve’s photographs. Think this was from The Guardian years ago)

My contention is this; in sociological terms, rough sleeping should not been seen as a singular problem, rather it should be understood as a litmus test for the health of our society. When the numbers of people rough sleeping rises, something is seriously wrong with society.

It should act then as a warning for the rest of us. Time to take a look at what we have become.

Estimations of the numbers of people rough sleeping are notoriously difficult for obvious reasons, but there is no doubt that the numbers are increasing dramatically.

(Another photo from an old Guardian article)

The individual stories these pictures tell are important. We should know their stories. Their stories should be told. But there is a danger in that too…

An iniquitous narrative has dominated our response to poverty in this country. It gained traction through politics, through social media, through rag-top newspapers, through all those ‘Benefits Street’ type of TV programmes. The narrative goes something like this;

Wealth and success are virtuous.

Poverty is shameful, and the proper reward of indolence and bad character.

Therefore, the benefits system should punish the poor. It should drive people away from state support by becoming so toxic and unyielding that no right minded person would want to continue receiving it.

The danger is then, that individual stories individualise the problem. In that dreadful neoliberal way, we ignore the collective- those complex societal reasons that cast people out onto park benches and drive them to food banks and advice centres.  We site the locus of the problem in THEM, not in US.

This allows us to avoid asking questions that might actually make a difference;

What if greed is not good? What if all human interactions can NOT be summed up in the language of free-market economics?

What it rampant inequality destroys all of us?

What if poverty is a cancer that brutalises and ravages down the generations? Surely then the proper focus should be on alleviating poverty, not punishing the poor?

What if the real problem is brokenness in society? A break-down in our relating-  an increased focus on one-step-removed-on-line-relating that strips flesh from our community and replaces it with silicon.

Our grandparents fought and died for a principle called universal benefits, seeking to banish the crippling shame of poverty forever. Each and every one is being dismantled. The only one left now is child benefit, and this will be gone soon.

There is a huge concern about the state of our health services- but remember that back in 1979, after a ten year enquiry into public health inequalities, the Black Report concluded that the issue of health was actually one of poverty. Everything else grew from there. Thatcher’s government buried the report under the thunder of war- the Falklands war.

In the face of all this, I am inadequate. My poetry, written from the comfort of my rural home, clangs like a hollow gong.

But after half a life time working in social work, it is all I have.

Tomorrow, I will post the poem…

This evening, I will be reading and listening to poetry…If you are within striking distance of the Roundhay area of Leeds, please come and listen too.

We will be at St Edmonds Church, Lidgett Park Road, Roundhay, Leeds, from 7.00 this evening, as part of the fantastic ‘World Upside Down’ exhibition, which is an artistic response to The Beatitudes in a time of Trump and austerity Britain.

Facebook details here.

Instagram preview here.

The ‘world upside down’ that the title refers to is perhaps well summed up like this;

So, this week we mark the 500th anniversary of that famous, brave and necessary protest by a German monk and theologian called Martin Luther, when he nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. Or did he? It seems there is doubt about the nailing up bit, as this might have been added to the story later. No matter though, as there is no doubt that what he wrote lit revolution across the Christian world.

Most from a Protestant persuasion and many from the Roman Catholic world too, would regard Luther as a hero (of course we do not use the word ‘Saint’ as this would be rather against type.)

But back to that word ‘revolution’. This is not exaggeration. Firstly, there was a theological revolution. The power of the Church to dictate and control salvation, orthodoxy and patronage was fractured. What we would regard now as heresies that had become common practice in the church of the time were directly challenged. It excited the highest passions and brutal opposition. People like Patrick Hamilton were burned at the stake unwilling to relinquish the new truth they had found in the protest against the religious powers of the day.

I used the word ‘necessary’ earlier. The Reformation started out as a protest against corruption, injustice and the rampant, systematic miss-use of religious power. It proclaimed that individual salvation was available to all, by faith, and was not mediated by church or state. It liberated the Bible from the priesthood and thanks to the invention of the printing press, weaponised it as an instrument of mass sedition.

In turn, the children of the revolution also turned to violence (Remember the Covenanters?) 500 years later, the splinter lines are still visible in our communities- particularly in Scotland and Ireland.

But this is not a history lesson- rather I reflect on the legacy of The Reformation in our country now. For 500 years, the Protestants have been scrabbling to reform again and again and again in pursuit of purer and more exclusive versions of the truth. However, I would contend that in doing so, we still stand in dire need of a new Reformation. A new break from the power of the Orthodoxy. A new break through into a new landscape of faith that engages with systematic abuse of religious power. Dare I say more?

Luther wrote 95 lines of protest in his Theses. I am no Luther, but I would start with 6…

I would suggest that the Reformation has now accumulated new heresies. These need to be named and nailed to the doors of our churches;

1. The relationships between Church and State. Think about the relationship between muscular Evangelical Christianity and Imperialism. Greed and slavery justified on the basis of saving the Heathen. Think about Donald Trump quoting the Beatitudes in his inauguration speech. Think about how the new colonial power (the USA) conflates and confuses God, the flag and the State, as if God is a protestant white American.
2. The promotion of the Bible above all other sources of religious truth. Stay with me on this. I don’t just mean the old fundamentalist/liberal dichotomy, rather I mean the way that we have come to revere the Bible as the fourth person of the trinity. How we forgot that it is a library of books of history, poetry, wild prophetic utterances, sectarian eye-witness opinion, ancient legend. But remember that until the revolution, for one and a half millennia, followers of Jesus did so without the Bible, or at least the Bible as we know it. I say this not to devalue the Bible, but to suggest that we take it out out of the glass case and actually read the thing. It was not dictated by God, it was inspired.
3. The promotion of doctrine over the defining principle of love. Perhaps because of number 2 above, somehow the Church came to believe that our job as Christians was to define the saved from the unsaved. We used our own narrow readings of Scripture to define and police a binary world in which correct belief (doctrine) was more important than anything else. Sexual sin gets special attention. Other sins such as greed, avarice and religious bigotry (the things that Jesus got really angry about) hardly register by comparison.
4. A distortion of the Great Commission. ‘Go ye therefore and make disciples’ were the last words Jesus is recoded as saying to his friends. The implication being that they, and we, are to seek to encourage people to be like him. But somewhere in the depths of the reformation this was reduced to saving people from hell when they die by getting them to say the sinners prayer.
5. Moralistic therapeutic deism. Religion reduced to ‘feeling good’ and ‘doing good’. Faith that fits neatly into a lifestyle that values most the attainment of a life full of ‘me’ experiences, ‘me’ relationships, a great job and a great house in a great location. God is employed as a talisman, or a life coach for our attainment, our success and our consuming power.
6. Wealth and excess became synonymous with the WASP world. We may eschew gold encrusted minarets, but the protestant world has fitted in neatly with an industrial revolution driven by forces of exploitation, division and wealth accumulation that is as far removed from the poverty of Jesus as it is possible to imagine. From the ‘Protestant Work Ethic‘ to the pervasive power of the prosperity gospel heresy, earthly success and accumulation has never really been seen as problematic, despite all evidence to the contrary from the words of Jesus in the Gospels. At a time of increasing inequality, denudation of resources and global warming, this is perhaps the greatest indictment of the legacy of The Reformation in our times.

There are signs that things are changing, that things have changed. But the world is very different now. The Church is a shadow of its former self- we no longer can claim to be the arbiter of morality in what is no longer (was it ever?) a Christian nation. Perhaps the final reformation has to be one of rediscovery of passion. A re-encounter with the way of Jesus, not the religion we tried to form around him.

Hmmm- I’m off to the local Church with a hammer and nail.