I have some sympathy for the MP's at the centre of the current row over their expenses. Many of us have joined a new organisation and received induction training about the process for reclaiming expenses. I wonder how many of us have chosen not to claim all that we were allowed to?
On the other hand, I find it incredible that expenses payments have been made to MP's for interest costs of housing loans (mortgages) that do not exist. I assume that these amounts, thousands of pounds, were reimbursed without sight of any receipts. Would you reimburse expenses in that way? So I wonder whether the system is more at fault than the individuals, and believe that it is right for the Speaker of the House of Commons to resign as he is accountable for this. Some of the claims appear to me to be theft, so shouldn't the police be taking a look at those?
There is clamour for an independent body to be responsible for reimbursing MP's expenses in the future. Yet how is it possible to set up an independent body that is not accountable to Parliament? Maybe Her Majesty should be getting more involved!
I note that leaders of the political parties want to oust those who have "broken the rules," yet the rules themselves are unsound, and the MP's collectively are responsible for those rules. In this there are levels of penitence. As a start we have MP's who (in effect) apologise because they have been caught, then there are those who recognise that they should not break rules, but what about bigger moral concepts that people have betrayed trust, been dishonest, and that right and wrong are not all about obeying rules?
As founder of much of the culture that supposedly underpins our democracy, surely Jesus would turn in his grave (if he were still there), but at least as a society we do care when such abuses are brought into the light.
I've finished listening to the Finding Happiness CD set, and my previous summary seems to hold good. The end point is that seeking happiness by clinging to one of the Eight Deadly Thoughts is an unhealthy route, and we need to let go of them, or shed them. This resonates with my view that living life to the full is about getting rid of the things (such as sins and unhealed wounds) that get in the way of us being ourselves. One may imagine that this is a route to selfishness, but the true self we discover is one that is able to heed the needs of others because we no longer feel a need to be self-protective.
On the way Christopher seems to have a bit of a rant, even if it is a wise rant, about the way in which youth culture in western society behaves as if all that anyone needs is to have friends, and that if everyone has a good close friendship group then it does not matter what is happening in the world because everyone is OK. He says that this is insufficient, and that people need to relate to wider community, and wider values, such as the church.
He also observes, more obviously, that in today's society we seem to keen to be busy, and to see such busy-ness as a good thing. This is shown by the approval given to the reply "keeping busy" when someone asks how one is. Activity is not necessarily a good thing, and - to use Stephen Covey's analogy that I like - the activity of climbing a ladder has little value if the ladder is up against the wrong wall. This links back to Christopher's main theme: if we are seeking to find happiness it's no good just being busy, or chasing after today's idols, we need to choose a route that will take us to the goal we seek.
Last night was interesting, as it turned out to be my first experience of the fast-growing city churches founded by Australian Phil Pringle.
I attended an event in Bath that a friend and colleague had invited me to. It was a rare opportunity to listen to founder pastor Phil, and people had gathered from the UK and Europe and people who felt called to found new churches were commissioned during the worship.
I was impressed that the style of the service worked in attracting young people, and that Phil had a real vision for reaching Europe with the gospel in a way that works for the changing balance of people groups in the continent.
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said yesterday that the economy would take time to heal.
Surely, as a system, the economy is fine. It is reacting sensibly to some people who have done some unwise things. So the economy does not need healing, but some people may need healing, including those who have been victims of the greed of others.
I’ve been impressed by a recent article in the magazine Engineering & Technology (5th May). It’s an extract by Steve Carter from his book “Road to Audacity.” He is a psychologist, fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and makes three fascinating points about handling change, which seem to me to be a good framework and to apply more widely than just the present recession. Here’s my summary paraphrase.
BURNING PLATFORM Things never stay as they are, so we need to be as attached to the present as we would want to be to a building that is on fire! Leaders must not offer false comfort, but be honest about what is happening now. We need to be in fully in touch with reality, and this includes listening to our staff.
A MOTIVATIONALLY RICH VISION So where to jump to? We can’t stay where we are; motivating people to avoid something does not work; and anyway if we avoid reality things may get worse not get better! We need to have prominently in front of us in our mind that which we are seeking to build. Know what you want to become, and be passionate about it.
A SMALL MANAGEABLE WORLD If the vision, the desired change, seems to be too distant, people feel not motivated but powerless. Therefore there needs to be a focus on small steps, that is realistic goals in areas that people can make an impact (compare Stephen Covey's "Circle of Influence"). People need to be clear about how they can contribute. So the leader’s task is to present the reality, the vision, and also the plan for this leg of the journey.
Easter is a time when it is easier to be cheerful, with the arrival of primroses, daffodils, and other spring flowers and sunnier weather (in the northern hemisphere anyway).
There is also the message of the church of the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, which I enjoyed hearing afresh this morning.
"Eternal life" is a phrase that we can underestimate, because arguably we cannot understand it anyway. It conveys the meaning of life outside of, unconstrained by, time - not just an everlasting life that goes on forever. If God created, then he also created time, and somehow exists outside it as well as within it - being both the beginning and the end (as the Bible puts it) but more than that. So the gift of eternal life is the invitation to be with him in this way.
Julian of Norwich is famously quoted as saying that "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." This leads to a Christian hope that even if things do not seem well now, it will be O.K. This was one of her "revelations." However if our life is eternal, then what is a future hope can also be recognised as (present) reality.
So (as Christian writers such as Anthony de Mello put it) not just "all shall be well," but "all is well", and we are able to discover this. Such a fresh way of seeing life and experiencing life must be good news, whatever situation we are in.
Here are the related quotes from the Bible. God has given us eternal life... (1 John 5:11) Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)
I enjoy chocolate Easter eggs, but I don't expect to be fascinated or educated by them. So thank you for the Divine Fairtrade egg that is made from cocoa beans from Ghana, and includes some pictures of Adinkra symbols which express the values of the Akan people of Ghana.
These symbols are for:
Wisdom, creativityananse ntontan Democracy and shared destinyfuntunfunefu-denkyemfunefu Wisdom & knowledgemate masie Humility & inner strengthdwennimmen Learning from the pastsankofa Family and solidarityfi-hankra Adaptabilitydenkyem Charisma and leadershipadinkrahene Endurance, perseveranceaya
It's an impressive list: if I wanted to invent healthy values for a society I don't think I could do much better.
What experience have monks had that may help ordinary people to be happy? I've been intrigued to find out from Christopher Jamison as I've started to listen to an audio book that a friend gave me.
You may remember last year's television programme called The Monastery: a handful of people were filmed as they experienced monastic living for the first time at Worth Abbey in England. This programme created a surge in interest in spirituality and the Abbot of Worth, Christopher Jamison (who featured significantly in the programme) has published a book called Finding Happiness.
I've only listened to some of the chapters so far, and I am already impressed by the talented way in which he clearly explains the benefits to society today of spiritual practices that monks have used for centuries. This is about finding happiness through knowing good and doing good, rather than through just trying to feel good.
What has fascinated me in Christopher's description is the relevance of the teachings of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers), who were the pioneers of monasticism in Egypt around the fourth century AD, and how some of these teachings were lost during adaptation. It seems to me that these losses give us a blind spot when it comes to looking at the condition of our society today.
We need to take on board some details now. The Desert Fathers were keen to develop spiritually by dealing with their inner life, and they were concerned to do battle with Eight Deadly Thoughts. As Christopher describes it (and the three groupings in italics may be his rather than original), they saw these as the demons that they had to fight. They were:
of the body: gluttony, lust, avarice (greed, or covetousness); of the heart and mind: wrath (anger), sadness, acedia (or accedie); and of the soul: vainglory, pride.
This list was developed or refined by Evagrius Ponticus (AD 345-399) and was intended to be diagnostic, that is to help readers identify temptation and the thoughts from which sin can spring. Several centuries later these Eight Deadly Thoughts became the more commonly known Seven Deadly Sins: gluttony, lust, avarice (greed), wrath (anger), sloth, pride, envy. According to the Wikipedia article about Evagrius, this transformation was the work of Pope Gregory the Great (in AD 590) who rolled sadness and acedia into sloth, combined vainglory with pride, and added envy.
So today we have lost sight of acedia and vainglory. Acedia is a word that does not have a translation in English (as is true also of baptism, for example). The original meaning is to do with carelessness, that is a lack of care. It is in particular a lack of care about God, and his involvement, and about spiritual awareness itself. Vainglory is related to vanity. While vanity is about a person having too big a belief in their abilities of appearance, vainglory is about wanting to be known for those (false) attributes. Within vainglory there is the sense of the Christian wanting glory for themselves rather than for God. That is, "It's all about ME!"
As we look at attitudes to morality today, for example through what is written in newspapers, there is some awareness of the behaviour listed in the Seven Deadly Sins, although it is not necessarily condemned. For example people may see that some of today's problems to do with the 'Credit Crunch' come from greed, but not necessarily be willing to go as far as to recognise the evil of greed itself and the possibility that we may all suffer from it. However there seems to me to be a blindness to the way in which problems may flow from a lack of interest in God (acedia) and from spin. I do not use spin to refer to rotating objects, but in today's sense of seeking to publicise something in a good light and where people (at worst) seek to publicise achievements which are not real. This is as close as I think I can get to vainglory in modern English.
Thinking of 'climate change' as another example, I find myself wondering whether the concept of acedia demands that we cannot consider such an issue without considering God's involvement. I also wonder whether our human belief that we have caused these changes to the climate entirely on our own is a kind of vainglory.
Reviewing Pope Gregory's revisions, I think he would have done better to leave the list as eight items, and I don't think he needed to add envy as surely without greed there is no envy. Furthermore Christopher describes sloth as a symptom of acedia, so to replace acedia by sloth is to miss the point. If it is helpful to have a checklist against which to measure our spiritual health today - whether nationally, corporately, or individually - it seems good to me to put the clock back and stick with the Eight Deadly Thoughts of the Desert Fathers.
There are a couple of other things that I like about this approach. Firstly, Church teaching can focus on sin (by which they mean actions) and the way in which it follows temptation (which may be thoughts). So the teaching is that we all get tempted; the task is to avoid acting from that temptation. The Desert Fathers' approach reminds us that it is thoughts that lead to sinful action, and that it is important to recognise that link and to deal with the thoughts rather than to let them fester. Secondly, the inclusion of sadness in the list is interesting. People may not see sadness as a problem for them in the same way that they may recognise anger. It reminds me that a state of mind of sadness is not what God intends for us (He does not want us to be unhappy) and that it is not just a symptom of something else but can be dealt with in its own right.
All this talk of sins and deadly thoughts may seem deadly. It would be good to finish with the more positive theme from the abbot's book: a happy life is not just about avoiding the bad but about nurturing the good, that is cultivating a life of virtue. There is a classic list of virtues, the Seven Holy Virtues: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Helpfully, these are broadly the opposite of the Seven Deadly Sins, which is probably why they are also sometimes called the Seven Contrary Virtues. I find it curious that honesty is not on this list: perhaps that is assumed to be part of the context.
Making progress towards virtue or away from sin requires honesty, starting with being honest with oneself. Christopher writes of the way that the Desert Fathers used to share their disturbing thoughts with others: destroying the thought's secrecy did much to defuse them. This practice of just listening to thoughts without comment, but perhaps giving a Bible verse as a source of help, was certainly an antecedent of sacramental confession, and may be a precursor of modern psychological methodologies. I see that one of the gifts that the church offers to the people is loving support in such honest self-examination, for example through Spiritual Direction.
To avoid confusion (I hope) I note that there is another list of Seven (Heavenly) Virtues in the tradition of the church (derived from Plato, and described by St Augustine): faith, hope, charity, justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude.
In Finding Happiness, Christopher uses a further list that appears to be more contemporary. At this stage I am not sure whether he invented it, but I like it as a description of the virtuous behaviour that we may travel towards, in opposition to the Eight Deadly Thoughts:
of the body: moderation, chaste love, generosity; of the heart: gentleness, gladness, and spiritual awareness; of the soul: magnanimity, humility.
While these correspond well with the Seven Contrary Virtues, we have the valuable addition of spiritual awareness to combat the lost thought of acedia.
In summary: don't lose out on happiness because of acedia, and do read the book!
I was at a SIMA training event yesterday, which finished with a look Jill Bolte Taylor's story on TED.com. You have to watch this! I hadn't come across TED.com before: it's a site full of significant video presentations. So follow the link to take a look, or watch the YouTube version below.
Jill is a scientist who studies the brain. She had a stroke which disabled the left side of her brain, and thus part of the right side of her body and also her ability to use language, and from which she recovered over eight years. She describes what happens - not seeing it just as a disability but an awesome discovery of the capability of the right side of her brain. In her mind this is a powerful spiritual experience, as she explains the way in which this increased her sense of perception and connectivity to the power of the universe, as against her usual left hemisphere domination with her individuality and sense of time.
It's good to see that my friends at SIMA have launched a new programme to help people in their late teens and early twenties with career choices (including 'A' levels and cv writing) by helping them to recognise their unique abilities.
A few years ago I remember reading an article which said that the countries with the best overall quality of health were those with the least income gap between the richest and the poorest.
Will Hutton this week writes in The Observer about a new book called The Spirit Level. This has a similar theme, that more unequal societies are more dysfunctional across the board. Our instinct is to be collaborative, but where there are big income gaps the rich no longer fear the censure of the poor, and the poor no longer feel able to bridge the wealth gap through their own efforts. This results in a ruder and more violent society.
The comments on the web under Will's article do not dispute the statistics, but some comment that statistics cannot show causation. So these things may be true, but does one cause the other, or are they both caused by something else?
It's a good question, but it seems to me obvious that where there are big differences of wealth it indicates that the rich care less about the poor and so the outcomes he cites are likely.
Philip Whyte, a guest columnist in the Times, is seeking to lay to rest the myth that Britain's manufacturing base has shrunk. This interests me because with an engineering background I enjoy manuafacturing, and also because recent "Credit Crunch" events should discourage us from being overly reliant on the finance sector.
He writes that manufacturing in Britain forms a larger proportion of GDP than in France of the USA, and that - before the recent recession - our industrial output was higher than ever. So, our industry has grown, but services have grown more, he writes.
It's good to see British women doing well in the Vendée Globe again. Ellen MacArthur preceded her impressive round the world voyage with a Vendée Globe success.
Sam Davies completed the coure in ninety five days and impressed people by not moaning about hardships but marvelling at the beauty of the natural world. "It sounds strange, but it was easy," she said. "It felt as I was doing something normal." It sounds like she was 'in the zone!'
She was closely followed by Dee Caffari who thus became the first woman to sail solo around the world non-stop in both directions, despite having a broken sail.
It seems to have been snowing all week, which we don't remember happening for the last eight years, and according to the weather forecasters this is the biggest snowfall we have had for eighteen years. It's fun to make snowmen, but not so much fun if you're car is stuck in a snow drift. Ours are just stuck in a car park, so it's good that we can work from home.
Here's some snowmen from our back garden and our creative local florist! Click on the photos to see them in full.
Following a couple of earlier articles about God getting a mention (here and here) it's interesting to read that Tony Blair is enjoying his new found freedom from British public office to invoke God's blessing.
Perhaps because he wanted to, but was purportedly prevented from, ending a speech with "God bless the British people" he has been first among British leaders to meet new president Barack Obama at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in the U.S.A. He finished his speech there with: "By the way, God bless you all."
It is curious that a short trip across the Atlantic Ocean allows things unsaid to be said. It is Grace Davie, Professor of Sociology at Exeter University, who has written particularly about the unique secularism of Western Europe. I wonder whether, if we become increasingly entrenched in this, we may find it increasingly difficult to relate to the other 95% of the world's population.
Surprised this morning to see snow falling here in Corsham. It feels cold in the house too. Although there is just a thin covering here, England is experiencing "the heaviest snow for 18 years" - that's since 1991.
Maybe this is the last challenge open to man on the surface of the planet - to row round the world. Olly Hicks has just started rowing round Antarctica, from Tasmania, and expects it to take several years. A few people have attempted this before but not succeeded. This builds on his solo rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.
According to David Miliband, UK Foreign Secretary, we have not been using the phrase "war on terror" for the last few years, and now that President Bush (who invented the term) is retiring we are able to say so.
We are now seeing that the right response is to recognise the diversity of disparate terrorist groups and seeing that the right response to the threat is "to champion law and human rights - not subordinate it" and to seek to win through gaining international co-operation.
This sounds good to me: better to aim towards something good and tangible, than away from something we don't like. It's more likely to work! Furthermore, the only way to fight terror is not with weapons but by not being fearful. As President Franklin D Roosevelt put it in his inaugural address in 1933, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." (Feel free to search this blog for my other thoughts on "fear.")
A friend of mine who has recently become an expert on reindeer tells me that male reindeer shed their antlers in the autumn, and female reindeer shed their antlers in the spring. Pictures of Santa Claus and his reindeer that I have seen always show them with antlers, so they must be female.
Why does he prefer female reindeer? Does his most famous reindeer, Rudolf, know that she is female?
As we move into the start of a New Year when much seems unknown and uncertain, I find myself reminded of words used by King George VI on Christmas Day 1939.
In the meantime I feel that we may all find a message of encouragement in the lines which, in my closing words, I would like to say to you:I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied, "Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way."
May that Almighty Hand guide and uphold us all.
The quote he used, by Bristol author Minnie Louise Haskins, has often been requoted since - even though the rest of her poem seems difficult to find - probably because it is so evocative. I find that it resonates within me as I look out into our present circumstances.
The context of the speech was the King seeking to encourage his people shortly after Britain and France had declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. Since I can imagine that this must have been one of the scarier moments in British history, perhaps we should appropriate its imagery and encouragement now.
It's taken me a while to get into switching off over the Christmas and New Year period, but I got there in the end and it's been good to relax with family and friends.
Amusing vignettes include my young niece bringing food for Santa's reindeer that was composed of oats and glitter (I hope they have robust digestion); the local Crib Service which involved lots of children one of which fainted; a "grow-your-own toupee" that hardly grew; discovering Winter Pimms in several local pubs; and a quote seen on a narrow boat on the Kennet and Avon Canal, near Bradford on Avon on New Year's Eve:
"Only dead fish go with the flow!"
I'd also like to thank all those who would not have sent me Christmas Cards but nevertheless e-mailed me to say that they were giving the money to charity instead.
Today I received a letter saying that, further to my application a few weeks ago, my experience as a coach and consultant has been recognised through election to membership of the Institute of Business Consulting.
A few years ago (and before I started this blog) I remember majoring on how the most precious gift we receive at Christmas is Jesus himself, and how we need to enjoy "unwrapping" that gift.
This year I find myself reflecting similarly that it is awesome that God's response to a fallen world riven with rejection, misunderstanding, and alienation, is to give himself - through his son Jesus. He gives himself unconditionally, not requiring a partiuclar response but giving us a choice. Will we receive this gift? Will we accept him?
So in a world where people want to be known, loved and accepted, God does not encourage us to seek acceptance, but to be one who accepts.
If you mention "Prosperity Gospel" Christians will usually react badly, and perhaps they should because of the teaching of those who seem to think that Christianity is all about financial wealth. On the other hand I could say that the Bible is all about prosperity, in the sense that prosperity is about health and wellbeing - individual and corporate - in the broadest sense.
While not believing that being Christian necessarily results in financial wealth, there are Christian teachings which if followed are likely to result in a growth in wealth and prosperity for the whole community. One of these is the encouragement to be trustworthy and to seek to trust others. This is mentioned specificaly, and also encompassed in "Do to others as you would like them to do to you." The reason for this is that trust is necessary for trade to thrive, which is presumably why "my word is my bond" was once the motto successfully lived out by the City of London.
So it is with considerable sadness that I see greed and a lack of trust as underlying recent financial collapses (the "credit crunch"). As another example, I have heard of local farmers (in the UK) who have agreed prices for the sale of their grain to one of the trading at a certain time in the future. The price of grain has dropped and the traders seek to renege on their contracts as it will be difficult for them to sell on the grain. Of course they would not worry if their sale prices had gone up.
Trust takes time to build, and can be easily damaged. Perhaps the most important thing the business community can seek to do at the moment is to build trust, through being trustworthy. This is about a focus on relationships, not on solving a "financial problem."
Interestingly, in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey speaks of the importance of trust, and how we need to start to build that by keeping the promises that we make to ourselves (individually). As is so often the case, we need to start with ourselves.
From time to time I receive newsletters from Revd Dr Clifford Hill, of C&M Ministries Trust, Moggerhanger Park, Bedfordshire. Formerly he was a pastor in East London, and has a challenging prophetic ministry drawing on his learning as a sociologist (it is in sociology that he has a PhD). He's written some interesting books, and he sees that much of what he foresaw is now coming to pass.
His latest newsletter draws attention to the way sociologists recognise five major social institutions, and that there is an invariable rule that when significant change takes place in any one of the five, all others are affected. They are:
The Economy
The Family
Education
Law and government
Religion
He speaks of how all these except the economy have undergone major change since the 1960's so today's financial problems were predictable. Since this is the result of a domino-effect to do with changing values, a solution based on just addressing financial issues will not be suffiicient. The full article is worth reading here. His home page here.
A while ago I wrote about leg room on Monarch Airlines flights. They wrote back to me on 8th December, in reply to my letter of 3rd September. They had acknowledged my letter, but it has taken them longer than they said they hoped (eight weeks I think they said) to reply to my letter.
I had commented that the leg room available seemed inadequate, and there seemed to be no system in place to ensure that the taller people who needed it had preferential access to the limited number of seats with more leg room. In their reply they don't seem to acknowledge the need, just to say they are "in line with the majority of UK carriers" and complying to "CAA and manufacturer's guidelines" and CAA "rigid safety criteria." What safety? I contend that a significant proportion of the population would find it physically impossible to adopt the advocated "brace position" in an emergency in the amount of space provided.
It saddens me when a company's idea of creativity and customer service is limited to not contravening rules and regulations and being in line with the "majority of" others who are presumably similarly unimaginative.
