“Kindness is the parent of kidness” said Adam Smith

This is a meditation that was published in last week edition of Arbroath Herald 14 October 2011. I took Dave’s advice and made it more down to earth!

“Kindness is the parent of kindness.”

–– Adam Smith

Last summer we planned to go on our first caravan holiday. Since we had not been to London on  holiday before with the children and at the same time we had the opportunity to meet with friends is family from the States who were visiting London, we decided to head south for part of our holiday.

London Holiday

We were all looking forward to see the Big Ben, the London Bridge and explore the Tate Gallery. On our way down we telephoned and booked a space at campsite in Welwyn Garden City – a good distance from the centre of London itself. Next day we were all up early and the children were very excited as we were getting ready to go into the capital. We found out that the best, and cheapest way, to the city was to take the train, but we had a short bus ride to the station. We arrived at the bus stop and as the bus pulled up we negotiated our way onto the bus with all our belongings. I was left to pay the bus fare which was just under five pounds for all of us. My wife and I are belonging to those people that use cards to pay for most of the things and do not usually carry cash around, so we found out that we were 30 pence short. I got out a twenty pound banknote to hand it to the driver. When the driver noticed that it was a Scottish note he informed us that he was not able to take it as the electronic reading machines took only English banknotes. We were now stuck as we were 30 pence short and our excitement and anticipation were starting to turn into frustration and disappointment. We were in the same country and not able to use our money.

As we were now panicking a gentleman who looked in his early thirties, took his headset off, slipped his right hand into his coat pocket and took out his wallet, opened it and with a very generous smile offered us thirty pence. Both my wife and I were very moved by this gentleman’s kindness and thanked him for his generosity. It was an unexpected and wonderful gesture of kindness, it was not very much but it meant so much to our family.

Last weekend the Young Foundation published the results of a research on the state of civility, or the way people treat each other in the UK. The report concluded that there is no evidence of decline in the level of civility in the UK, but that in some areas there is even an improvement in the way people treat each other (i.e. falling level of racism in the UK). The authors claim that “in general Britain remains a well-mannered and courteous country”.

For a society to prosper and flourish it needs to be built on and cherish the principles of civility which according to the authors of the report “involves mindfully adapting our own behaviour in the light of others’ needs”; a behaviour then that is governed by generosity, kindness, respect and support for one another.

For us as family the kindness the stranger on the bus in Welwyn Garden City showed us saved our day. It was a small gesture which brightened our day. We could recount many more such acts of kindness. We in our turn hope to show other people in need the same kindness, not only because we experienced them but because we experience the ultimate act of kindness of God in Jesus.

At the heart of the Gospel message that Christians are called to live and proclaim is the command of Jesus to love your neighbour as yourself. This is the heart and the apogees of civility. But for us Christians the command of Jesus goes even further, to love even those that consider us enemies.

Living a life of love

Here is a piece I wrote for our local paper Arbroath Herald on 26 August 2011 edition.

The call to live a life of love

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence”. Erich Fromm

The last issue of Philosophy Now, a highly regarded publication in the field of philosophy, and which has as one of its main aims to make philosophy accessible to the masses, was dedicated entirely to the subject of Love. The subtitle of this issue is ‘What is love’. In a number of articles the authors seek to explore this very important issue for our human existence. The authors seek to address the nature of love from both nonreligious but also from a religious perspective. The general consensus of the authors is that love is the ingredient that we humans can’t live without.

In one of the articles, Is Love and Art, Kathleen O’Dwyer explores the questions of what we mean by love and how we humans should express it. Her attempt to define “mature and perfect love” leads her to describe love in very similar terms as Christians understand the love of God for humanity. In her words “real love is motivated by the urge to give and to share rather than by the desire to fulfil one’s own needs or to compensate for one’s inadequacies”. This is a self-giving love which does not expect reciprocity, a love that respects the other for what he/she is. This love is based not on desire to control but on the desire to care for the other with respect and humility. This kind of love makes one vulnerable and risks self-exposure.

When we talk about practising this love Erich Fromm, a French philosopher, argued that love is not primarily about a relationship to a specific person but, love should be an attitude, a way of living, “an orientation of character” which should determine all our relationships, our relatedness.

It was so fitting for a publication like Philosophy Now to focus on the subject of love at this time, as today more than ever the issue of love is so relevant and urgent to our world. Our lives and our society seem more and more removed from forms of relatedness that are governed by love.

In the recent past we as a society have experienced a number of crisis that have shaken the foundations of our social order, and let us just remember a few: crisis in our political system when our politicians were exposed for fiddling their expenses, leading to loss of credibility in the system; The economic and financial systems have been discredited by the greed and intemperance of many and as a result we are still living in a turmoil which by all means does not seem to be ending soon; The recent telephone hacking scandal has also brought a cloud of suspicion over our press and even the police. The massacre that happened in Norway, coupled with the terrorist threats, show the extent of hate towards “the different other” and desire for harm the other, which exists in our society.

God has shown us his perfect love in action, as he came to us in Jesus. We see in Jesus’ life and death the manifestation of God’s love in action. Therefore we are challenged and called to be transformed by that love and as a result live by it and build our relationships by it. It is an urgent call for all of us to rediscover and live out that love, no matter in which institutions (religious or otherwise) we are, in whatever stations of life (young or old) we find ourselves, and with whichever system of belief. Only when we seek to live by this principle of love, only then we would be able to live balanced personal lives and build a fair and happy society.

“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation” Rainer Maria Rilke.

Political Jesus

I saw this on facebook and I think is so powerful. Hope my American friends will see it not mainly a political statement but a challenge to rediscover Jesus.

 

The necesity of evil in a creative world according with Sheldrake

I came across an interview with Rupert Sheldrake on Enlighten Next Magazine website. This guy seems quite remarkable – does a lot of work on consciousness. Among other things he comes with a refreshing perspective on ‘God’ that challenges the mechanistic view of the Enlightenment. He also suggests (with some justification, I may say) that science is based “on all sorts of assumptions about nature that are essentially theological or metaphysical”

I share here a fragment in which he argues for the necessity of evil in a non-static (or should I say evolving or creative) universe. Not a new formulation but I like the way he puts is. In another part of the interview he blasts Dawkins and his clan of ‘deterministic’ materialists. You can read the full interview here

“Well, I think if there’s a universe of diversity and of becoming, which is what our universe is, then all things are mortal. Nothing lasts forever in a universe of becoming. If we lived in a frozen, crystalline universe where nothing ever changed, I daresay there’d be no claws and no blood. But the nature of existence, as we see it in the universe, is that all things come to an end and are recycled. Even the most long-lasting things we know of, like stars, come to an end. The forms in which things come into being have a limited life span, so all organisms are going to die sooner or later. And it’s the very nature of animal life that animals make their living by eating plants or other animals. So, if you are going to have animals that by their very nature have to eat other organisms, you’re going to have red claws and teeth somewhere or other. Decay, disease, death, and suffering are built into the very nature of an evolutionary universe of this kind. So, if we have an evolutionary universe in which change and development are built-in, in which there is a constant becoming of forms and dissolution of forms, these are inevitable features. The God of such a universe, the consciousness of such a universe, has to encompass these kinds of processes. You could, perhaps, have a different kind of universe, as I said, where everything is frozen in crystalline unity forever. But that would be a different sort of universe, a universe without becoming, without development, and also without creativity. It seems to be an inevitable consequence of the kind of universe we have that there’s going to be red teeth and claws around, and suffering, decay, disease, and death”.

Quote of the day

“It could be said that the clue to the whole history of the social sciences, and to their unpopularity, is that they have demanded continual unlearning. To understand an alien culture we must give up a great many assumptions which not only are difficult to recognise and to part with, but which also have been very firmly instilled into us by our own society, and are regarded by it as being highly important”.
Don Cupitt, Only Human, SCM Press, 1985, p. 144.

Quote of the day “Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus”

” White Evangelical Christians (in USA) are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus….. Before attempting an answer, allow a quick clarification. Evangelicals don’t exactly hate Jesus — as we’ve provocatively asserted in the title of this piece. They do love him dearly. But not because of what he tried to teach humanity. Rather, Evangelicals love Jesus for what he does for them. Through his magical grace, and by shedding his precious blood, Jesus saves Evangelicals from everlasting torture in hell, and guarantees them a premium, luxury villa in heaven. For this, and this only, they love him. They can’t stop thanking him. And yet, as for Jesus himself — his core values of peace, his core teachings of social justice, his core commandments of goodwill — most Evangelicals seem to have nothing but disdain”.

Phil Zuckerman, “Why E vangelicals Hate Jesus”, in the Huffington Post, read the rest of the post here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-zuckerman/why-evangelicals-hate-jes_b_830237.html.

An alarm bell indeed! Let’s hope it is not to late to wake up.

Apocalypse: A radical analysis of Captalism

Quote of the day

“And so let me end as I began: if we can elevate religious values to the heart of the debate about global development and our global society, can we continue to consign religious values to only the fringes of the debate about the future of our national economies and societies?

My religion and reason tell me that we cannot for long be truly happy in any place when we see opportunities denied in every place; we cannot feel fully secure at any time when we know millions are feeling insecure just about all the time; and we cannot be wholly comfortable anywhere when the left out millions are found everywhere.

So I conclude; yes, for people of faith there is the risk of the sin of commission. So we must be humble enough to guard against theocratic error when faith enters the public square. But yes too, there is a greater risk, the sin of omission and we must never again allow the voices of faith to feel excluded from their rightful role. So let the trumpet sound. The voices of faith must and will be heard.”

Faith in Politics? Lecture by Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister of GB

on Wednesday 16 February 2011 hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury

Quote of the day

“If you don’t love you die, if you do love they kill you.”

Fr. Herbert McCabe, as quoted by Terry Eagleton, Uncertain Mind event organised at St Paul’s Cathedral, London 17/01/2011, on the tragic essence of life that is the central tenure of Christianity.

Quote of the day

“Verbal agreement or mental assent to a particular set of doctrines does not make a Christian, nor does a claim to a particular experience. Yet, both what one believes to be true and what one claims to have experienced in relationship with God, others and the wider world are at the heart of the conversation that takes place as individuals give themselves to the search for meaning.”
Karen E Smith, SCM Core Text on Christian Spirituality, SCM Press, 2007, p. 22.