Law or Love?

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Recently the church both locally and nationally has been vocally campaigning to save marriage. Many churches and individuals signed up to the Coalition for Marriage's campaign to keep traditional marriage for just men and women.

Now I haven't got a problem with the church campaigning in this manner, I personally didn't agree with campaign - it seemed especially sad that their headline statement talked of exclusion and opposition - however I believe it is important for people of faith to promote the values they believe in.

On this matter I am pleased that both the new Archbishop of Canterbury and the new Pope are raising the issue of serving the poor.

I think remembering and serving the poor is central to the mission of the church, much more so than dictating family structures for people within and outside the church. It seems to me one comes from a position of law and another of love.

I hope all the leaders and churches who spoke out against the government change of the marriage status (which the Conservatives included in their election platform with the document Contract for Equalities in May 2010, see page 14) will also speak out against the changes which are affecting the poorest in society at the moment.

I hope the change we are seeing in the church is the reality of love winning over law.

The Straight Story

I recently watched a wonderful film called The Straight Story by David Lynch one of the great movie directors of the modern era. There is a scene in the film where the main character (Alvin Straight) is in a bar with an another elderly man he has met on his journey. They sit and talk, sharing something of what they each went through in the second world war.

As they talk their voices choke up and tears roll down their cheeks. They each tell their story, they listen to each others story. They have been through the pain of war but they don’t try and sympathise they just sit together. You sense the release in being able to share with someone who just hears and understands.

It is truly a beautiful scene, I was blessed by it but in a small way it betrayed a sadness. There is a sense they have held these feelings for decades unable to share them or speak them out. These old men came from a culture where men didn’t share and that was that. Is it so different now?

Yes we are more comfortable with people sharing struggles & issues but whilst they aren't frowned upon and told you shouldn’t do that we can be very quick to tell people to sort themselves out. Not directly to their face no but subtley by telling them, "Yes, I know I have that problem and I did ..." or "You mustn’t think like that" and variations on these themes. Even our response as Christians can be very quickly, "Oh, I'll pray for you" or a little more pointedly, "Have you brought it to God in prayer?"*

I was talking recently with a friend about a sudden bereavement I had learnt of and he shared about learning of a close friend who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He told me it took him three or four days to call as he didn't know what to say. Isn't that it, our problem is we always need to say something. Is that what people want? Or do they really just want to be heard?

So do watch this film the next time it is on, it is slow, simple and so beautiful.


* before I am declared a heretic let me just say - prayer is good and bringing our situations to God is the best thing we can do and we often need reminding of this, but if we only do these things are we really loving one another? We need to be with one another and know that we are being heard and held

Resurrection

Today, Easter Sunday, I walked down to church and as I walked I decided to take off my glasses. Without my glasses I can't really see, I can't see any writing, or the faces of people, everything is blurred. I can see but I don't really see. It the struck me that this is what resurrection is all about helping people to really see - to see the way, the truth, the life.

When Jesus was on the earth almost nobody saw who He really was and what He was telling them about. They were amazed by His miracles and knew He was special and a few even believed He was the Messiah. But until resurrection they saw this but didn't really see.

Through the resurrection it was as if they were given true spiritual glasses to really see Jesus for who He is and to hear and start to truly understand what He told them. The amazing power of resurrection is that this seeing or revealing has carried on through time and goes on into eternity. Whether we have experienced it or not we all live in the good of it.

Today all around the world we remember the power of resurrection and to coin a phrase we remember and again are thankful that "Love Wins".

Happy Easter to you.

Celebrating a life - what a joy!

Over the last few days I have been blessed, I have seen reflections of glory in the ripples of time. What have I been up to? I have been playing a small part in organising the funeral of Alec Tee.

In conversations with his family, looking through photos, seeing the tributes, hearing the stories and seeing the joy that comes of a life lived and ended (in our world) with God - I have seen the unmistakeable reflections of the glory of God. As I sit here I feel a warmth like you get when you've been out in the sun for too long - it's like I have picked up a residual glow.

There is also a little sadness, a small ache as I remember the greyness that surrounded my mum's funeral, especially within my family. So again I will entrust my mum to God and tomorrow at the funeral of Alec Tee I look forward to bask again in the remembrances of his life and the reflection of God's glory.

Investing in People

A few weeks ago I posted about my Dad's 80th birthday party. Another of the outstanding memories of that evening was seeing all the friends and relatives who came to his party and discovering how much time my Dad has invested in these people consistently over the years.

My Dad kept up a myriad of connections with his many sisters and brothers (4 sisters and 2 brothers lived into their 60's and beyond), cousins, nieces & nephews and work and army friends.  Often these relationships have been maintained over the years solely by my Dad taking the initiative of regular contact whether that be visiting, phoning, writing or exchanging calendars!

Hearing this first hand from Dad's friends and relatives, telling me of the love that they have for him was and continues to be inspiring and very challenging to me.  Which people have I invested in like this? Not many I fear.

Society is much more fractured in our time and our culture is one of immediate gratification and looking out for what we need and not what we can give others. And yet this contact and connection is what we all desire - to know and to be known.

Being a Christian in a church community there is also the added difficulty, indeed a paradox if you will. We are called to reach out to others, to make disciples, and in our church we are looking to see it grow in size and influence.  However, we must not do this by sacrificing others along the way, discarding old friendships for the 'fun and excitement' of the new ones.  Somehow we need to do both - care for our existing family whilst welcoming the new additions.

For me I know since leaving home many years ago I have lived quite independently of my family and always looked forward to building friends with work and church colleagues. But now I feel I need to make sure that the important people in my life - family and friends I have known for years - are invested in with time and effort.  I will welcome opportunities to develop new friendships in the future but I want to make those count too.

I guess as I get older, I might just be getting a bit wiser and I can look at my Dad see the way he invests his time (love) into his friends and family (and is loved by them) and truly say I want to be like him.

The greatest love of all?

Do you remember Whitney Houston’s 80’s hit “The greatest love of all”

I used to hate it with a passion, especially the lyric “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all”.

How self indulgent! What about others? Surely the greatest love is the selfless sacrificial love of others before yourself.

Well now I’m not so sure.

Jesus said, the two greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbour as yourself (Matt 22:36-40). Now lets read that backwards and what do you find that you can’t love your neighbour very well if you don’t love yourself.

What does it mean to love yourself? I think it means you really need to know and accept yourself, warts and all - and we all have warts (using mental & emotional ones).

I’m sure most of us have done some sort of personality or physcological test (Belbin, Myers Briggs, Emotional Health) these are useful for us to know ourselves, but how much do we really look at these to understand and accept and know ourselves.

I think we almost always need help to really understand ourselves.  Having had some counselling I know more about myself (and also about others) than I could have ever known on my own – no matter how many tests I did.

Richard Rohr said,
“How you love people is how you love God,
How you love God is how you love people,
How you let God love you is how you let people love you"

There is so much in this and it is so challenging. I want to add a line to this statement:

"How much I will love (know) myself I can love people and therefore God."

So take some time to know, accept and love yourself today.