welfare – Grits and Grains

Exile

March 20, 2013March 24, 2013 David Herbert2 Comments

This beautiful photo By the Rivers of Babylon is by HungLiu. By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept.

This is one of the most poignant lines in Scripture (Psalm 137:1) recalling such sad times of exile. Those exiles wondered “how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land”.

Ben Quash, in Abiding, reminds us of the wisdom that the people of God are nearer to God “when they are in some sort of exile”. The Letter to Hebrews reminds us that “we have no abiding city” and Jesus has warning for those who feel too much at home in this world. Exile and the loss of home(land) must be an awful experience, shaking people to the roots of their identity. I don’t know whether it would be possible to sing any sort of song in such a strange land.

Quash, and many others, suggest that Christians should choose exile. This is “some sort of exile” which may, or may not have the brutality of violent removal and fearful flight. Quash refers to Hauerwas and Yoder who commend life lived “out of control”, “without the compulsion to hold on to the strings of power”. This is some sort of exile which is a walking with God who showed himself in Jesus as having nowhere to lay his head and who finished his days on the dump outside Jerusalem’s city wall.

The Jewish prophet Jeremiah points the way to vocation found in exile. He makes the “prison” of exile into a far more constructive way of life. He writes: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

It is countercultural and strange to live “out of control”, accepting exilic status and praying for our enemies. It means that we are no longer to see ourselves as “host” but as “guest”. (It may be that the Church can’t be trusted with being “host”. There have been so many complaints about the abuse of power by the Church “in control”). When Jeremiah suggests that the exiles “pray for the welfare of the city” he is encouraging them to be “good guests”. The exiles’ vocation was, and is, how to be a blessing to a host culture on territory which is strange, without losing heart.

I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.
Pope Gregory VII

Our own culture is strange. There are many things that go on in society which are strange ways. Many aspects of social policy (I am thinking of the “bedroom tax” and other impending welfare reforms and the impoverishment of families and children) are out of our control. We don’t see the world in the same way. Our values are different. In many ways, we are in a strange land. Most of us don’t bear the physical hardships of those in refugee camps, but there is much that we lament. How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

Singing the Lord’s song in this strange land is something Jeremiah and Quosh insist that we do. The worship offered by exiles is, according to Quash, both resistance and gift. Quash writes:

God’s will to restore people to freedom before him, to overturn the idolatrous service of other gods, needs people who will use their voices to ‘sing his new song’ …

The early Christians may have handled the currency of the Empire each day, but before any of that, before sunrise, they met as the people of God, as the Church. That was their true city, their real ‘kingdom’, their Jerusalem. Christians’ present challenge too, is to live and work in the world in such a way that the song they sing as people in the Church is strong enough and beautiful enough to relativise ad transform other less sacred songs.

Get me crying again

July 1, 2012 David HerbertLeave a comment

The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy reminds us, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land”. The reading community is told “If there is anyone of you in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbour. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.”

This remarkable passage (Deut 15:1-11) adds a further twist implying that it’s worth keeping on the right side of your neighbour in case “your neighbour might cry to the Lord against you.” I may not have noticed this had I not read Psalm 56 alongside the Deuteronomy passage. There the Psalmist says “”You have counted up my groaning; put my tears into your bottle.” Tears count for God and he favours the one who cries.

David Runcorn reminded a group of us this week that tears count, and that they should be regarded as a spiritual gift. For Orthodox Christians they are a gift as important as the ability to speak in tongues. Bishop Kallistos Ware, in a chapter in Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination, refers to Abba Makarios beginning an address with “Brethren, let us weep”. For Bishop Kallistos, it is only tears that count at the Last Judgement. (We can weep inwardly).

Hezekiah, king of Judah, prayed with tears. God prompts Isaiah to respond to Hezekiah’s prayer. He says, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; I will heal you”. Jesus wept over Lazarus and Jerusalem, and one of Jerusalem’s sacred sites, the church of Dominus flevit (Jesus wept) treasures that moment. There is a time to cry, and that is this time. The Psalmist says “those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy” (Ps 126:5) and it is only in the fullness of time that God will wipe every tear from every eye (only those who are crying?), and “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” (Rev. 21:4)

My own concern is my own increasing difficulty to cry. I am not easily enough moved to tears. Have my tears stopped because I have been used to managing grief and to managing lament and complaint? Have I preferred a quiet life? Have I changed sides? Do I side with the oppressor? And, as a society, have we put our fingers in our ears against the cries of the poor? Have we justified our tight-fistedness by austerity measures? The counting of tears doesn’t seem to be part of the economic measures we adopt, in stark contrast to the measures outlined in Deuteronomy, the Psalms and throughout scripture. Sadly, in our culture, crying is a shame.

I think I am ready, for the moment at least, to pray. “O Lord, hear our prayer, and let our cry come to you.”

PS. The photo of the church of Dominus Flevit is by Gashwin and shows clearly the tear bottles on the corners of the building used for measuring and treasuring tears. The photo of the Crying Giant is by Chris Murphy.

>Rhyl in Panorama

June 7, 2011 David HerbertLeave a comment

photo from Postcard Farm

It was friend +Tim Ellis who made me aware that poverty has been exported from our cities to our coastlands. For Jeanette and myself, Rhyl is a “day out”, refreshment and time for ourselves. We enjoy the wide spaces, and the walk from Rhyl to Prestatyn along the beach.

Jim Pickering outside
Rathbone’s Rhyl Taste Academy

Panorama presented a very different picture of Rhyl. Apparently in West Rhyl nearly half of the people are unemployed and on benefits, and these are the people the Government has in its sites in its welfare to work programme. We followed Adam, Steve and a few others. Adam did work experience at Morrison’s, which eventually resulted in his being all smiles over landing a job there for 18 hours a week. Steve described a hopeless situation of long term unemployment. It seems so sad that these people are “targets” and that they are seen as fraudulent malingerers. There are imaginative programmes aimed at helping some from welfare to work, including the work done by Rathbones in projects such as the Taste Academy and Rhyl Football Club “Strikers”.

Rathbone is a UK-wide voluntary youth sector organisation providing opportunities for young people to transform their life-circumstances by re-engaging with learning, discovering their ability to succeed and achieving progression to further education, training and employment.

The dark underside of the Government programme though is that those who can work but who don’t are going to be severely penalised (loss of benefit for three years). The little given now is going to be even less unless they accept the jobs they are offered – whether they like it or not. I don’t know where the boundary between work and slavery is, but maybe we are getting pretty close. Fitness for work assessments sound fine, so long as they are fair. MIND – the mental health charity – claims there are many problems with them.

I feel like DWP want to send me back to a workplace where I don’t have the skills necessary for coping. Whenever I deal with a government agency I feel pretty bad afterwards – it is like nobody takes me seriously and that because I don’t have a physical disability, I am somehow a malingerer or scrounger. This is not the case. (from MIND)

Rhyl beach – on the North Wales coast

I am glad I have a job I am nearly fit for. I would not want a job that didn’t fit.

For us Rhyl is a day out. We can afford to get there and we can afford to eat there (and we will be going to the Taste Academy). I’m afraid reduced incomes aren’t going to buy any days out for the people of our coastlands. It is no wonder that there are drug and alcohol issues – drugs and alcohol bring opportunities of days out – (not of place, but of mind), away from the frustration, anger and hopelessness.