“Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.” Etty Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

 

The other day I was watching an old Frost television interview with Desmond Tutu. He said that after Nelson Mandela had been released from prison and before the first general election in South Africa, was a very dangerous time for the country. Nelson Mandela, who was held in very high esteem by many people but was looked upon with suspicion by others, was preaching reconciliation, but there seemed to be, as Tutu described it, “a third force”: a potential power of violence and destruction that threatened to undermine and overwhelm the whole country. In the end, Mandela’s stature: his determination, courage and personal actions of reconciliation seemed to win the day. Without him no one knows what might have happened.

I was interested in the Archbishop’s description of “a third force.” I have heard it used before, although not in those words, by others – people like the pacifist writer, Walter Wink, who describes how a new personality can seem to take over a crowd, so that individuals who would never dream that they were capable of violence, can perform the most atrocious acts together. Wink points out that we have seen this happen throughout history, again and again.

As we look at the news at the moment many of us feel bewildered at the upturn in violence and the extent of it, appalled at the stories of suffering, and helpless in the face of it. It is as if an evil third force has taken over in some places and its darkness overshadows and undermines all of us. How can we fight the darkness outside so that it does not take over our spirit and overwhelm us, too?

It may seem a selfish and even superficial response in the light of all that we hear and see in the news of other peoples’ suffering, but one way to fight is to encourage a sense of gratitude in our hearts, which in turn leads to praise, thanksgiving and joy. Today is the first day of the rest of your life and this day is the gift God gives you – not yesterday, that is finished, not tomorrow for we do not yet know what it will bring, but today, this day is the gift of God. Can we see it? Can we receive even a little of what God wants to give us? Even on the days when we feel really grey we can thank God for food in our stomachs, a roof over our heads and safety – things that many people do not have.

You have to work at gratitude. We are not, for the most part naturally grateful or thankful. We are much better at moaning and complaining. “Count your blessings,” is an old saying, and a wise one, for as we count them our hearts are warmed and we are blessed. A genuine love grows in us for the people and things of the world, God’s world, and also a strength and faith. People who have been terribly cruelly treated have much to teach us about gratitude, praise and joy even in the midst of extreme suffering. Etty Hillesum, quoted at the top of this blog, wrote from the Westerbork Transit camp in Holland before being transported to Auschwich. Anne Frank was also to pass through. Both these young women determinedly fought fear and darkness by turning to the light and giving thanks. St Paul, quoted below, did the same when he wrote from prison his marvellous epistle full of joy and thanksgiving to the church at Ephesus. This is the way to fight back against the darkness – with the light and life of gratitude, praise and thanksgiving.

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.     Ephesians 3: 18, 19

I apologise for being late in delivering my blog this week. I have had a rather disjointed but lovely past few days because my brother came home from Australia with his wife to celebrate his 65^th birthday.

My brother went to Australia when he was only 17. We then didn’t see him for thirty years as he established his life out there and brought up his family. When he came back for the first time it was very odd. The whole family turned out to meet him at London Airport and although we recognised him when he came through the barrier, we also didn’t recognise him. Who was this leathery-skinned man with grey hair and an accent you could cut with a knife? What was wrong with his eyebrow – oh, yes, that was where he had had an accident? The mask this man wore seemed to cut me off from the brother I remembered. And then there was a moment when his eyes twinkled and suddenly I saw him. His eyes were the same, strikingly blue, full of laughter. There was my brother and the years rolled away.

Since his first journey home he has come back several times but only about once every five years and due to his work as a farmer, only for very short breaks each time. These intermittent visit have made me aware of how, if you leave home at an early age, certain family myths and stories get fixed in a way they don’t if you remain at home. I do not know if my family is like others but there were certain ancestors and living people too, who were cast in the role of saint or sinner as were growing up. I remember realising in my twenties that in my heart I was condemning people I had never known, without understanding their side of the story. Because family members who can get together, share these family stories as they mature, and if things are healthy, the edges of negative criticism become softer. We realise as we share that other may see things differently and that their view point is just as valid as our own. We take into consideration that times change and that what was, for example, perfectly acceptable behaviour in the first half of the 20^th Century is not in the 21^st.

More than anything, if you are a Christian, hopefully you begin to see that whatever the ills of the past, and what so and so is said to have done to so and so, we are all both saint and sinner. Each one of us has done something that another family member might point out as being, unjust, unkind, negligent or even just thoughtless. All of us need forgiveness.

And that is one of the reasons why it is important that families continue to share the stories and do not let them become stuck in aspic. Even though my brother has had infinitely less opportunity to do this – and it shows – in the few visits home he has made, we have shared and he has softened towards one or two people. All families need healing and sharing family stories with that sense that, “I, too, have failed others,” is a good way of opening up our hearts and minds to all these people in the past, who probably, for the most part, did their best.

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!

 I get words all day through; First from him, now from you!

Is that all you blighters can do? (My Fair Lady)

Silence; we started the day today at Launde Abbey with shared communal silence, and it was bliss!  Today was the first day of our new prayer and services schedule all created with the aim of bringing more silence and stillness to the heart of Launde Abbey and to those who come to rest awhile in this place.  Instead of the old regime of morning prayer followed by the Eucharist, which was a demanding hour’s worth of liturgy first thing in the morning for our guests, many of whom need to rest, we now offer half an hour of silent contemplative prayer followed by morning prayer.  Midday prayer remains the same and then in the late afternoon we have another half hour of quietness preceding the Eucharist at 5.30pm.  Fewer words and more space to be still and to listen to God.

Like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, I am sick of words.  I think many in our culture are sick of words, too.  We are clamoured at from morning until night and if it is not coming from the outside it is the incessant conversations inside our heads that are so demanding and exhausting.  Words, of course, need not be just the spoken variety.  We are shouted at by billboards and advertising, emails and over-busy schedules; so to stop and be still becomes not just a luxury but a necessity.

God speaks, we read, and the world is created.  But God does not just speak in words and when he does use words they are not simply the giving of information: narrow and arid, but rather, salve for the soul.  The Word of God is Jesus in all he is.  The way Jesus chooses to speak is invariably in story and metaphor.  God speaks in Creation, in music, in poetry, in dance and in art, but we have to be silent to hear it and to see it.  We have to be quiet inside to be present to it.  God speaks in and through other people, but we have to be quiet inside to be present to them.  This quietness does not just happen.  It comes from a bank or a larder of silence that grows in us as we spend time in silence.

Launde Abbey is a busy place with so many people coming and going.  It is also a place that has to balance the need of some for quiet and others for conversation.  But I hope as we practice our new routine of shared silence morning and evening, that a deeper and more profound quietness will grow in the heart of the Abbey.  It will not be of our making.  It will not belong to us.  It will be God’s silence, God’s words speaking deep with us and creating calm and space at the centre of our lives.