The Parish of St George, Stockport, with St Gabriel, Adswood

The novelist Aldous Huxley wrote, somewhat apologetically,“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’” 

Jeremy Clarkson’s article about Meghan Markle, evoked from him a kind of apology – after the largest protest to the Independent Press Standards Organisation since its inception in 2014.  He said that he had “put his foot in it”.  A  phrase we usually use when we have unintentionally made a faux pas.  I guess he would have thought a true apology to be a sign of weakness. The editor of the Sun must also originally have thought it was worth publishing it.

Kindness clearly isn’t seen to sell newspapers.  Being unkind, sensational and vitriolic, it seems, does.  But what encourages someone to write a piece for publication in which they say that they hate someone “on a cellular level”, or they’d like to see them “parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, ‘Shame’”?

We know that “hurt people hurt”.  We know it from our own experience.  When we feel hurt, our instinct can be to hurt back.  A much bullied Jeremy Clarkson was deeply unhappy at his boarding school.  Ultimately he was expelled for “drinking, smoking and generally making a nuisance of himself.” He seems to have continued to act out that persona.   He’s made a lot of money, but on the whole that approach doesn’t make for good relationships.

I’d rather go with the Dalai Lama: “Be kind whenever possible.  It is always possible.”

Chris Dawson

At the start of a new year we have often set ourselves challenges.  We’ve decided that there are  things we can do better, changes to be made and new things to achieve.  We are full of good intentions.

About now we may be telling ourselves what a failure we are, because we have already failed to meet the challenge.  We may not even have started.  I read somewhere that some 80% of those who sign up to a gym in January haven’t got there by February!

We could review, amend our goals and start again.  We could even decide that it wasn’t a realistic idea in the first place.  However, in our disappointment we often translate this “failure” into, “I am a failure”.  Repeated often enough this affirmation can come to be how we see ourselves and the basis on which we act and relate to others.

The Japanese art of Kintsugi is the art of taking the pieces of a broken pot and carefully putting them back together again.  To do so the artist uses a mixture of resin and powdered gold.  The restored pot is deemed to be worth more than the original unbroken pot.

In Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus heals a paralysed man, he says to him, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.”  To a woman who has been suffering from a haemorrhage for twelve years he says, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”  “Take heart “ could be good words to start our own positive affirmation.

Chris Dawson

Abba Poeman said about Abba Pior that every single day he made a fresh beginning.  That’s one Desert Father speaking of another back in the 5^th century.  Abba Pior was  able to leave behind all yesterday’s concerns, anxieties, failures and successes and start again.  Easy to say, but not so easy to practise. 

To help us re-balance and re-set each day, to help us make a fresh beginning, requires  a rhythm and a routine.   “Oh my goodness,” you say.  “Not a chance.  Life isn’t like that.” True the Desert Mothers and Fathers lived in a less complicated world and led simpler lives.  But simple does not mean easy. 

For them this was clearly a priority.  They had turned their backs on a materialistic existence. The Desert Fathers and Mothers were there to deepen their spiritual lives, to be in touch with God through meditation, prayer and the reciting of scripture.  That gave them their rhythm and their routine.

At the start of a new year, it seems fitting for me to ask myself what my spiritual priorities are and to ask myself if, in some way I can make a fresh beginning every single day.  Maybe just changing or adding one thing.  It’s an aspiration and I won’t always “get it right”.  Just one thing will do to set me on my way.  For, as the 14^th c mystic Meister Eckhart said of prayer, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, that will be enough.”

Chris Dawson

“How will you your Christmas keep?”  This is the first line of a poem by Eleanor Farjeon, author of the hymn ‘Morning Has Broken’. It crept into my head when I was reflecting on the pressures and the pleasures that Christmas brings.

Appeals from the charities Shelter and Crisis reminded me how for a whole host of people Christmas amplifies their difficulties and their dislocation from other people.  And it’s not just those who are homeless. 

The Christmas ideal is one of joyful connection and happy families, but what if you don’t have family, or relationships are strained.  Who do you share Christmas lunch with?

Christmas Day highlights our need as human beings to belong, to be part of a group, a member of a community. 

Every year there is at least one Christmas card depicting a village Christmas scene.  You know the one.  It has snowed.  The lights in the church are glowing warm, so are the lights in the houses and the old fashioned shop close by.  Choir boys – always in red – are out singing in the snow. The people in warm coats, scarves and hats are heading towards the church.

This  idealised scene is all about community, belonging and togetherness.  A great message.  But we don’t need to live in an idealised community to express that.  We can give that message every time we encounter another human being.  One moment of true attention says ,“You belong.”

Chris Dawson

When did you first hear of Black Friday?  A ploy dreamed up by retail executives in the US to sell more goods, has rapidly spread over here.  What about Giving Tuesday? Where did that come from?  Again, it was a movement started in America, this time to encourage philanthropy.  It too has spread across the world. 

At least the Giving Tuesday movement is run and promoted by a social enterprise company.  I say ‘at least’ because I do feel pressured by constant email reminders from charities to ‘give today’, as if this is the only day in the year for giving. 

But is this what giving is about?  I admit that I, like other human beings can be self-centred and do need a reminder sometimes of others’ needs.  To be reminded too that charitable organisations, including our own church, need resources to carry out their work.

This season of Christmas is certainly a time when we focus on giving and receiving.  As we write our Christmas cards and wrap presents, we are giving and we are connecting – and in some cases reconnecting – with family and friends.  Through charitable giving we can show our connectedness and our empathy and compassion for others beyond our immediate circle.

St Paul famously said that it is more blessed to give than receive.  Indeed, some of us find it hard to receive.  However, I think they are two sides of the same golden coin.  I think that we need to be open to both.  The title to this piece, taken from a poem by Alberto Rios, the inaugural state poet of Arizona, sums that up perfectly for me.

Chris Dawson

It’s understandable that we celebrate the coming of the light at Christmas.  In the build up to the celebration of the Nativity we light an Advent candle each Sunday and already tree lights and decorations are twinkling in windows and public places.

But without the dark there is no light.  The darker it is, the more  we can see the stars. Both the light and the darkness are a stimulus to spiritual growth.  As the Buddhist saying goes, “No mud, no lotus.”

Talking of mud, what could be a darker place than under the earth.  Yet what is happening at this very minute?  Life among the insects, fungi and plants is stirring.  Some will continue their journey in the dark, others will make their way to the surface. 

The dark earth is a place of fertility and richness and a place of gestation and growth.  It’s also a place where things are hidden and waiting for us to find.  “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13:44)

The light and the dark are complementary partners in stimulating our spiritual growth.  For the mystic, John of the Cross, a mystic who emphasised the way of darkness, even in the darkness “bright flows the river of God”.  The darkness was not for him frightening or demonic, but an intimate, safe darkness.  Like the intimate darkness of a room where two friends are sharing time together.

Chris Dawson

the light and the dark 

How many followers have you got on your Twitter account?  How many ‘likes’ have you received on your Facebook page?

We all want to know that we are liked and accepted.  At an unconscious level we are regularly checking that we are safe, that we are acceptable, that we are accepted.

I spoke recently to a man sitting on the pavement, slumped against a local shop window.  One of my former students.  He was homeless.  I think that if I had asked him if he felt safe, acceptable and accepted, the answer would have been ‘No’.

You don’t have to be destitute for the answer to be ‘No’.  It may be an exaggeration to say that we are all trying to be ‘someone else’, to create an image, to be other than we are.  But I think that there is some truth in it.  We all care to a greater or lesser extent about our identity, to know who we are and how we fit into the world.

In this age of social media, we can find ourselves under even greater pressure over the image we present.  An interviewee on Radio 4’s The digital Human, said she would never appear on Facebook without make-up.  On Twitter she wasn’t seen and so it was easier.  However, before appearing on Facebook, or posting on Twitter, she said she became very anxious: “ I suffer from performance anxiety.”

What would Jesus have posted on Twitter?  How many ‘likes’ would he have received for his Facebook posts?  I think he may just have said something like, “Be yourself.  You are enough.  You are infinitely precious.  Even the hairs of your head are numbered,” and that would have been enough to set off a Twitter storm!

Chris Dawson

Last Saturday evening I played a game of Happy Families with my granddaughter.  Here it was a dark late Autumn evening.  With her the sun was shining.  It was breakfast time on a late Spring day.  She was on one side of the world and I on the other. 

Someone somewhere is always beginning anew.  As the late Hilary Mantell said in her novel Bringing Up the Bodies, “There are no endings….They are all beginnings.”  The calendar year and the Church’s year are like that.  Nature too.   Repeated cycles but always new beginnings. 

That can be the same for us.  In our dark northern hemisphere the theme of ‘light’ shining in the darkness is a powerful image.  An image of hope and renewal.  One that Jesus gave us when he said , ‘I am the Light of the World’.  As we begin the Advent season, we could make this a particular time of personal spiritual growth.

On our journey we wouldn’t have to light bonfires to celebrate and renew the light – though they do at the Up Helly Aa (Up Holy Day) Festivals in Shetland. We could just decide that we would find a routine of renewal that suits us.

In so doing, we could use the opportunities that the church and St. George’s in particular, present us.  The Christmas Tree Festival with all those lights and the Advent Carol Service, with its journey from darkness into light, could both support us in a new beginning.  Or we might decide that a single candle is sufficient to light the way.

Chris Dawson

It’s the season when every presenter on television and their guests are wearing a red poppy.  I wonder if anyone ever refuses or says they would prefer to wear a white poppy – or both.

1914-1918

“In August 1915, at the age of 17, Les and I went to Hinckley barracks. As the recruiting sergeant ushered us into the Captain’s office, he reminded us to, ‘Stick to it that you are 19.’

So to the suburbs of Lens and into the shell-torn houses, where on that lovely July morning in 1917 we cooked our breakfast in the cellar and then went up above to enjoy the sunshine and a mug of tea…suddenly shells dropped close and that was the end for some of us….’That doesn’t look too good’, said Corporal Hemmings as I received First Aid…and it wasn’t.”

1939-1945

“I was born 6 months after my father left to fight in North Africa.  He fought at El Alamein and then up through Italy and all the way across Europe to Berlin.  When he arrived home in 1946 I didn’t know who this stranger was.  There was always a quiet distance between us.  He seldom spoke of the war, except to those who had been through what he had.”

10 October 2022

“What was in Vladimir Putin’s mind on October 10, the day he decided to repeat February 24 in Ukraine and carry out a rocket attack on Kyiv?

Among the dead from the Russian shelling was a young oncologist from the main children’s hospital.  She had just taken her daughter to kindergarten and was on her way to work.  Her car was incinerated by a rocket explosion.”

“I am a soldier of Christ; I cannot fight.”  St. Martin of Tours

Chris Dawson

The Bible doesn’t say much about football, but it says a fair amount about wealth, power, corruption, justice and freedom.

Doha, capital of the tiny gulf state of Qatar, is hardly a hotbed of high level football – but Qatar does have money.  Lots of it, from its revenues from oil and gas, which puts it into the top ten richest countries. Money talks, as the cliché goes, and it is alleged that some of it – $3.7 million – was paid as a bribe to FIFA for the right to stage the competition in Doha.

Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA when the hosting of the games was awarded to Qatar,  now says, 12 years later, that it was a mistake to have done so.  He says that their dubious human rights record was not discussed, nor their attitude to the LGBTQ+ community, nor their treatment of migrant workers, only that it would be too hot to host the competition during the Summer.

FIFA officials have tried to tell the 32 teams taking part to stick to playing football and not get “dragged” into ideological or political “battles”, or “hand out moral lessons.”  It sounds a little like, “keep religion out of politics.” 

10 European football associations, including those of England and Wales, have said that ”human rights are universal and apply everywhere.”  The England squad will fly to Qatar on an LGBTQ+ Pride themed jet called Rain Bow with the LGBTQ+ icon Oscar emblazoned on the side.  The Danish team will wear “toned down” black kit to protest against Qatar’s human rights record.

It’s a very Old Testament type story, with the old king and his officials repenting too late the consequences of past judgements and being swept aside by a new generation who wish to “do justice and to love kindness,” as the prophet Micah puts it. 

Chris Dawson