Week 52.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Happy Christmas!

I hope that everyone (anyone!) who reads this blog will have a very Happy Christmas and that their New Year will be one of peace and hope. It will not be a very happy one for many people – for the bereaved and lonely for instance (and the kindness and sympathy of friends and relatives may only make that bereavement and loneliness seem even harder to bear!), those rendered homeless or jobless by the recession, and those who know that for any other reason, this Christmas will be a pale shadow of Christmases past.

Those who wish to denigrate the Christian message often point out that the birth of Jesus, if it occurred at all, almost certainly didn’t take place ‘in the bleak midwinter’ and that our Christmas festival is simply an adaptation of much more ancient pagan festivals, Yule for instance in northern Europe and Saturnalia within the Roman Empire.

I have always felt that that supports, rather than impedes, the Christian message. No one knows exactly when in the year Jesus Christ was born. What could be more appropriate though, than to celebrate the advent of the Light of the World just a few days after the shortest day and longest night………when pagans were celebrating the very first indications that the world’s plunge into darkness had halted? The sun was once again returning to restore life and light to all creation. C.S.Lewis, author of the Narnia books, and great Christian scholar, always maintained that God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ was the fulfilment of the pagan religions of Europe as well as that of the people of Israel.

The Nativity story, even if not all historical fact, surely tells us a great deal about the God revealed in Jesus Christ. He was born to a working-class girl whose home was in one of the few places in the Holy Land that don’t even get a mention in the Old Testament. By many of his contemporaries his parentage would have been considered dubious. At the time of his birth his parents were temporarily homeless, taking shelter in a ‘lowly cattle shed’, with a manger having to serve as a cradle for the baby.

The first people to be told of his birth were neither wealthy and powerful nor wise and pious. They were neither princes nor priests, neither prophets nor scholars, but farm labourers looking after sheep on a hillside. The first people to bring him gifts were not even his own compatriots but Gentiles who would have been considered to be among the ‘heathen’ by his fellow-countrymen.

Finally, very shortly after his birth, his parents had to flee with him for their lives, to become asylum seekers in a heathen foreign land. Christ’s Nativity and its aftermath is a theme that resonates throughout the history of mankind, today no less than at any time in the past! If part of it is mythical it surely is a magnificent myth, unequalled I believe, in any other culture.

One of the late Sir John Betjeman’s lesser-known poems is Advent 1955. It discusses the way in which we celebrate Christmas, comparing greetings and presents given with those received, and possibly mentally pricing both.

It concludes with the following lines:

The time draws near the birth of Christ,
A present that can not be priced,
Given two thousand years ago.
And if God had not given so,
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the Manger.

The God revealed to us through Christ’s nativity, life, death and resurrection is not ‘a distant stranger’. He is to be seen in the loving mother, the baby in the cot, the workman at his lathe, tending his sheep or, nowadays, bending over his lap-top, the suffering victim on the cross and in the modern ‘interrogation cell’…….and in the risen Christ triumphant over evil and over death.

Iraq – Before and After

It may seem inappropriate, even sacrilegious, to consider those under scrutiny in connection with the Public Enquiry into the War in Iraq at the same time as our celebration of Christ’s incarnation. However our God is one, ‘to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid’ and one of the titles of the Risen Christ is ‘Prince of Peace’.

Possibly to pre-empt the questioning to which he will undoubtedly be subjected at the Public Enquiry in the New Year, Tony Blair who, as Prime Minister, led us into that war, has been talking to national tv about his motivation. This, it appears, was not the threat posed to Britain by Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ as we may have imagined, but the need for ‘regime change’. Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator and, even had he known that there were no WMDs, our Prime Minister would have found some other justification for invasion!

That, I must say, is very frank. Just think. There was no need for that ‘dodgy dossier’ that was said to establish, beyond a shadow of doubt, the existence of these terrible weapons. There was no need for the ‘leaked intelligence’ that gave rise to scare headlines about ‘our boys in Cyprus’ being in danger from them. All Mr Blair had to do was to persuade the rest of us that getting rid of Saddam would amply justify the certain loss of scores of British and American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi ones, not to mention the laying waste of Iraq’s cities and destruction of its infrastructure.

Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator, but was not the only such ruler in the Middle East. In some ways his government was an enlightened one. There was a substantial and influential Christian minority that worshipped regularly and in safety. Where are they and their churches now that Iraq has been ‘freed’? Where are they in the lands of our Middle Eastern allies? Women in Iraq under Saddam enjoyed a freedom and the ability to develop their potential that their counterparts in other Middle Eastern countries would (and often do!) die for.

Whatever Mr Blair may have known and kept to himself, he won that vote for war in the House of Commons for no other reason than that he had persuaded sufficient of its members that Saddam Hussein did possess terrible weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them. Without having done that he would have, and should have, lost the vote.

I believe moreover that Messrs Blair and Bush were fairly confident that there were no such weapons. Had they not been, they would surely never have allowed that relatively leisurely build-up of troops, weapons and war supplies just over the Iraq border in Kuwait. Saddam would only have had to wait until the build-up reached a critical point, and then destroyed the lot with his WMDs!

I am more than ever proud of the fact that my sons, grandsons, wives and girlfriends were all part of the million strong march that protested in vain against the war through the streets of London. I only wish that I had been physically capable of joining them!

The Christmas Crib

To get away, if only momentarily, from the rather grubby world of the 21st Century, here’s the Christmas crib at St. James Anglican Church Clacton-on-Sea, taken at Christmas time last year. Similar cribs will appear on Christmas Eve in tens of thousands of Christian churches world-wide, to remind worshippers that Christmas is not about illuminations, Christmas cards, over indulgence in food and drink, or even about Santa Claus. At its heart is the story of a temporarily homeless couple who found shelter in a ‘lowly cattle shed’ where a young mother gave birth to a baby who was the ‘Light of the World’.

‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth’
St. John 1.14

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Christmas is coming!

Christmas is coming……..and as sure as that there will be Carols from Kings and the Queen’s televised Christmas message, there will come a headline-grabbing little lecture calculated to dampen down and spoil the faith and joy of others. Sadly, it is often delivered by a no doubt well-meaning cleric.

This year, it is the Bishop of Croydon (did you know that there was one?) who, it seems, dislikes our traditional Christmas carols. Many of these, he says are the product of Victorian sentimentality and nothing to do with God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ. Particularly the subjects of Episcopal displeasure are two of the best known and, I think, most loved of carols; ‘Away in a Manger’ and ‘O come, all ye faithful’.

The lines in ‘Away in a manger’ to which the Bishop takes exception are, ‘The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes’. The point is presumably that the Church has always taught that Jesus was wholly human as well as wholly divine and that, as a human baby, he would have woken up crying. Perhaps …. .but if a baby is warm, full of milk and comfortable, and wakes to hear the gentle lowing of cattle, he may well remain silent on waking. Perhaps the Bishop has had an unfortunate experience of parenthood, but human babies really don’t cry all the time.

There are actually two lines of that carol that do make me feel uneasy. ‘I love thee, Lord Jesus look down from the sky, and stay by my side until morning is nigh’. I tell myself though that it is a carol intended for children. It is difficult enough for an adult to understand that Jesus can be ever-present while being outside time and space as we know them. ‘Above the sky’, is however a metaphor easily understood by children.

‘O come all ye faithful’ with its echoes of the Nicene Creed is surely the most magnificent of all the carols, and the one with which every carol service should end. The Bishop says it should be ‘O come all ye faithless’. I think he means that our message should be to those outside the Church. And so it should be, all through the year. Surely though, on the anniversary of the day that ‘the Word was made flesh’, if on no other, the faithful are allowed to be ‘joyful and triumphant’!

There are plenty of other hymns that do have lines that set my teeth on edge. How about ‘sufficient is thine arm alone and our defence is sure’, sung with gusto at an Army Church Parade, 'Take my silver and my gold, not a mite will I withhold’, sung by a comfortably-off middle-class congregation and ‘The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus his pardon receives'? Surely there must be contrition as well as belief. St. James in his Epistle says ‘the devils also believe – and tremble!’

Lord Bishop, do have a look through the rest of the hymnbook by all means, but please leave our Christmas carols alone!

A Fateful Decision

I was delighted when Barak Obama was elected as President of the US. I hope that it wasn’t simply because he wasn’t George W. Bush. It was obvious though that he was going to have a fight on his hands in a country where any good work carried out by a public authority is liable to be denounced as ‘communism’!

Since his election he hasn’t disappointed, and he has certainly had to fight every inch of the way. He has, for instance, made it clear that (unlike George W. Bush – not to mention our own MP, Mr Douglas Carswell!) Mr Obama does accept the threat from global warming and humankind’s responsibility for this danger. He is, in fact, attending the Conference of World Leaders and leading scientists that opened in Copenhagen this week to discuss climate change and how best to combat it.

He has ordered the dismantling of the rocket sites in central Europe that the Russians regarded as a threat (well, wouldn’t the Americans have regarded Russian, or Chinese rockets sited in Canada or Mexico as something of a threat?). At home he is desperately trying, despite ferocious opposition, to ensure proper health care for the millions of US citizens who simply can’t afford adequate insurance cover.

Is he making another wise decision in deciding to send another 30,000 US troops to Aghanistan, or is it one that he will regret for the rest of his political life? The time that he took to consider this issue suggests that he is well aware of the possibility of disaster. Generals commanding armies stalemated by their enemies are always confident that, if only they had more troops and equipment, they could make one final push and sweep on to victory. They are not always right though!

Supposing the Taleban are defeated and their fighters simply disappear from the scene? No doubt their leaders are well known and may well be captured or killed. There must be hundreds of rank and file though. Most of them could just disappear among the Indian sub-continent's teeming millions and concentrate on terrorist acts there and elsewhere. They could, of course, reappear in Afghanistan when the Brits and Americans decided that they had won and withdrew their troops.

We are desperately trying to transform the Afghan government’s army into a force that can stand up to and defeat the Taleban without our help. Are we absolutely sure that they will want to? We gave covert financial and practical support to the ‘gallant Mojihadin’ in their guerrilla war against the Soviets only to see them transform themselves into ‘fanatical insurgents’, every bit as determined to get rid of us as they were the Russians. The western trained Afghan policeman who turned his weapon against his trainers, and the Muslim medical officer, who in the USA, is accused of suddenly murdering his comrades, could be straws in the wind.

Why are our forces in Afghanistan? Is it to introduce the Afghans to the joys of freedom and democracy; to encourage the education of girls and to ensure justice for women; to encourage religious tolerance? Hardly. It is surely to protect ‘the West’ from terrorist attacks like those in New York, London and Madrid.

I think it likely that the best way to do that might be to withdraw our troops completely from every Muslim country. That is what both extremist and moderate Muslims would like us to do. It would, at a stroke, remove a factor that turns ‘moderates’ into ‘extremists’ and feeds Al Quaida with a constant trickle of enthusiastic recruits. It would release NATO troops for their job of defending the peace of Britain and Mainland Europe.

A Question of Mobility

I have remarked before that although I feel far from comfortable with the zeitgeist of the 21st century, I am more than thankful for the many twenty-first century blessings that help to make life worth living, even in old age. None of my family lives very near and I would have little contact with them were it not for the telephone (particularly perhaps the mobile phone), my laptop and the Internet. And, of course, my sons living in London both have fast cars with which they come to see me regularly. Failing eyesight makes me less inclined to read than I once was (though oddly enough, using my laptop doesn’t seem to tire my eyes!) but radio, television, a video tape recorder and a DVD Player make good the deficiency

I think though, that the modern convenience that makes the biggest difference in my life is my electric mobility scooter, my ‘iron horse’. Luckily I have a shed large enough to house it, to which a kind neighbour has taken an electricity supply so that I am able to keep its batteries charged. I use it almost every day…..for shopping, for going to the Post Office, to Church and to the Quaker Meeting, for keeping doctor’s or optician’s appointments, for visiting friends and, on occasion, for going to the seafront for a breath of fresh air.

As the months pass I find myself less and less able to walk. Were it not for my ‘iron horse’ I would be totally housebound, able to leave home only with a taxi or when someone was able to give me a lift in his or her car. My electric scooter gives me freedom and mobility. It is the possession that I would be least willing to give up.

For all of those reasons I was totally shocked when I read in the Clacton Gazette that lack of funding is compelling Clacton and Tendring Shopmobility, a charity that has served local elderly and disabled local people for over a decade and a half, to close down for good on New Year’s Eve.

Shopmobility, based in Clacton’s Pier Avenue, rents out mobility scooters to those who need them for short periods at cut-price rates. It has provided a first class service to people like myself who are unable to purchase a scooter of their own (they are quite expensive!) or who would have nowhere to store it if they did purchase one. Last year they rented out scooters no less than 4,000 times and their membership almost trebled!

Shopmobility is staffed by volunteers but it does cost £45,000 a year to run. Earlier this year its management applied for lottery funding which would have secured its future for five years, but they were unsuccessful. Nor would Tendring Council help them despite the fact that the charity expects to be in a position to support itself within two years.

Shopmobility’s manager, Julie Hewes-Gardner, says, ‘People are distraught. Many will now be housebound. They won’t be able to get out to the shops and banks, or to socialise’.

I wonder on what Tendring Council is spending our money that is more important than brightening the lives of some of Clacton’s least privileged and most vulnerable residents? It is tempting to denounce them as Scrooges but that is hardly fair on Ebenezer Scrooge. He did, you’ll recall, mend his ways just in time for Christmas. There’s little sign of the Council doing anything of the sort.

Bankers’ Bonuses

Those with brilliant brains at the top of the Banking World will, so they say, desert us and sell their brilliance elsewhere if they do not receive their accustomed astronomical ‘bonuses’ on top of their already more-than-generous salaries.

I think that the instant reaction of most ordinary people is ‘let them go – and good riddance. If they are that brilliant, how is it that we had to bail them out with millions of pounds of our money?’

I think though that the threat raises a more fundamental issue. Most people whose work demands skill and experience, work primarily because they enjoy exercising those qualities. The only skill that I have ever possessed is that of stringing words together to produce the kind of material that I hope others enjoy reading. It was very nice when I was paid for doing so. Nowadays, I am not. My income is however sufficient for my quite-modest needs and I exercise my writing skills, in producing this weekly blog for instance, because doing so gives me satisfaction and pleasure.

Can it be that those whose skill lies in the manipulation of finance, come to believe that this is life’s only reality, and that work has no purpose or meaning beyond the acquisition of more and more money, from whatever source it may come? If so, I feel truly sorry for them. Despite their great wealth they are poverty-stricken indeed!