In an article in last Saturday’s Guardian, Ben Okri describes how he has found it necessary to develop an attitude that he refers to as existential creativity. Okri believes we have to be strong dreamers asking unthinkable questions. Our whys ought to go to the core of what we are. Then we ought to set about remaking ourselves. The Archbishops of the Church of England claim to believe a radical (brave) new Christian inclusion is called for. For this to become a reality we, too, need to be strong dreamers asking unthinkable questions going to the core of what and who we are as people of God, called to set about remaking ourselves in the image of Jesus the Christ.
We are living through a three-decade long period of regression in our national life, a regressive movement found in other countries. I observe regression taking place in the social, political and religious realms. Fewer people speak with an independent mind, rooted in the wisdom that comes from commitment to truth-telling, integrity, and a deeply embedded set of values, whether they are grounded in Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Moslem, Hindu, philosophical, agnostic or atheist traditions. The regressive era we are living through needs an infusion of Wisdom teachers and practitioners. Without them, we lack the people capable of teaching us about ourselves, our behaviour patterns, insecurities and anxieties and addictions.
I’ve been reading The Christlike God written by John V. Taylor, formerly Bishop of Winchester and published in 1992. There is much in the book that echoes my own ideas about God, creation, evolution, and contemporary contemplative life. In the penultimate chapter, Dwell in me, I in you, (John 17.21,22), Taylor writes about the author Charles Williams and his use of the word coinherence to describe the relationship between God, the divine other, and us, human kind, Homo sapiens. I believe the universe, the divine Mystery and human life are seamlessly interwoven, coinherent, as Charles Williams describes.
Tucked away at the end of this blog is the revolutionary dynamite that was inspired by an article in the Guardian Review on Saturday 18 May 2019. Only a seamless vision of creation, evolution, Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the risen Christ, son of God, can hope to radically transform our relationship with our planet, the universe, our brothers and sisters in every continent of every race and gender and sexuality, overcoming our addiction to the defence of prejudice and difference.
On December 26 1986 I set off on sabbatical, flying round the world for three and a half months. The one condition given was that I should keep a journal. Recently I’ve been rereading the journal. Yesterday I reached the entry for Friday 26 May 1988, written to remind myself of the ideas and ideals that were paramount in my philosophy of life and ministry. Nothing that I encounter now in church on a Sunday morning comes remotely close to what as a parish priest I was seeking to create in 1988.
We can become too easily (and understandably) trapped in the binary, good and evil, us and them, loving God and punitive God dynamic on which the dualistic faith of conservative traditionalist Christians is founded. It’s New Year Resolution time: and for me it’s renewed decision time. Do I – do we – opt for and choose to construct from our interior conviction and from the Biblical evidence – a God of unconditional love who is entirely and unconditionally for creation and evolution and for us, we the diverse human community living on planet earth?
To live into life in all its fullness, we human beings have to let ourselves go ‘into something’ more than where are at the moment. We cannot move on without letting go. What will we be moving into? Into the next moment, for a start – the future moment, the new year, and a future which is always and inevitably a future of uncertain, unknown, mostly unpredictable events. We make New Year Resolutions in the hope that we might assert some control over the events of this new year. New Year Resolutions also express some hope that we will move in some way more deeply into ourselves, if we can – the person we would like to be in our idealised hopes and dreams – knowing that at the moment we are not quite who we dream of being and hoping to be, in 2018, more fully the person we could be.
Today I return to two themes which are fundamental to my vision. The first is the centrality of the contemplative/apophatic tradition and the second is the how question – how does transformation take place in the Church of England (or perhaps better put in the negative – why has the church lost the gift of radical transformation?). In three Church Times articles, the authors offer an interpretation of past events and current times, seeing the potential for a transformation of Christian life and witness. Each of them gets so far, but fails to communicate how this might become a reality in practical terms. Very few have the conviction necessary to turn such ideas into reality. Voices crying in the wilderness and grain falling on stony ground are the images that come to mind.
The outcome of the debate at Synod last week on the Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations report was positive from my point of view. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech at the end of the debate communicated that he knew change had to happen and his awareness was communicated in the statement issued soon after. Subsequently several bishops made statements or issued letters indicating that they also understood the need to think and do things differently. Did the culture and understanding of the bishops and archbishops undergo a sudden conversion? I doubt it.
