It is about
picking a side for yourself
in that old, drawn-out war
they call ‘civil’.

Then around you,
the ever-cumulous skies,
the revolting lands,
the tumultuous seas,
cannot even decide on their own names.

But oddly,
you know exactly
who you are,
where you stand.

Will you join me in the prayers of concern. Let us pray.

God the Creator, we adore you for creating the universe, full of potential to unfold; for creating our world, teeming with life and the possibility to develop.

God the Christ, we marvel that you have come among us; that we can find you in the least of these, the most unassuming of our neighbours.

God the Holy Spirit, we ask you to fill us with your power, now comforting, now challenging, as you invite us to participate in the continuing creation, transformation, and renewal of our cosmos.

We confess the shortcomings in the past few weeks, the inadequacies we felt in ourselves, especially in our democratic processes, during the election campaign.

We first confess that we have seen injustice but failed to speak out. God, forgive us in your mercy.

We confess our lack of compassion, our inconsiderate thoughts and ill-considered words against our neighbours.

God, give us time to amend our ways and the occasion to say sorry, to heal our community.

God, we thank you for the chance to talk to our neighbours – to find common ground in discussion, to argue the best way forward.

We thank you for the election officers, the vote-counting staff, and all who carry out their duties without fear or favour.

We thank you for the glimpses of heaven as we campaign for your realm to realize itself, so your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

We thank you for the kairos moment, the opening, that three days after the elections, we still feel empowered, not resigned to fate, but actively watching and participating in the formation of our common history.

We thank you for the camaraderie among friends and comrades, as we walked together, ate and drank together, struggled and worked together.

We thank you for the civility and courtesy between rivals during the election campaign: A polite nod across the hall, leaving room for manœuvre; firm handshakes at the platform, building bridges for future co-operation.

We pray for the winners. May they retain their spirit of service. May they gain in humility and in wisdom.

We pray for those who lost. May they not be devastated in disappointment and grief, but stay hopeful and connected, continuing to contribute to their neighbourhoods.

We pray for our country, having elected a hung parliament for the first time in decades.

We pray for those in the process of forming a new government, not just those behind closed doors, but also those who gather to continue to engage, and those who contact their representatives to support and advise them in their exploration.

We pray that this process does not simply become an abstract power game, but a transformation that will hold this society together more coherently, keeping in mind all of our neighbours, especially those most vulnerable in our community, those who live among us but have no voice, and those in faraway lands whose lives are nonetheless affected by what happens in these our islands.

Almighty Father, we pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit: one God, now and forever. Amen.

See also the earlier prayer ‘Praying for the elections, seriously’.

Last time I spoke from this lectern, I started by talking about a bank branch a few metres down High Street. I am going to talk about banks again. A nationalized bank at that. Seventy percent of the Royal Bank of Scotland is owned by Her Majesty’s Treasury … well, the better name is the taxpayers’ Treasury, our Treasury. In turn, RBS owns the NatWest bank in England; we have a branch down the road. Before I get too much into the banks, let me take a detour, and talk about oil. I promise to come back to banks … ’cause that seems to be where the action’s at, these days.

In 2003, I attended the Congress of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. In one of the sessions, I heard for the first time about the idea of extracting petroleum from tar sands. A representative of the oil company Shell Canada explained that, to extract the oil from the tar sands, one burns a quarter of the oil to extract the other three quarters of the oil. This sounded very inefficient to my ears. But as the world is running out of oil, the companies are counting on oil being expensive enough one day soon for this to be worth their while.

One of the places where tar sands are found is the Alberta Province in Canada: there is the Canadian connection. Land inhabited by the indigenous peoples (or First Nations) of Canada such as the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, will become wasteland because of the removal of trees at the open-pit mines, and because of the toxic waste products from the oil extraction process on site. I am now wearing a T-shirt: in front it asks: ‘eat money?’ On the back, it has a saying, a short poem:

Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realize we cannot eat money

Guess who said this? The Cree people. The same Cree people said this, decades if not centuries ago. A large area of Alberta, roughly the size of England, will be blighted in this way if it is not stopped.

And the surprise is that we all, all of us, are funding this destruction. Not directly of course, but through our collective ownership of the Royal Bank of Scotland. A recent report Cashing in on Tar Sands (commissioned by campaign groups such as People and Planet, and researched by the thinktank Platform) set out the specifics of the Bank’s investment in tar-sand projects. This was flagged up in the newspaper The Guardian. The corporate responsibility chief of the Royal Bank was allowed the right of response. What did he say? I quote: ‘RBS [...] has not provided any finance directly to tar sands projects in the last three years’: end of quote. Watch out for the weasel words … the adverbs. I repeat, quote: ‘RBS [...] has not provided any finance directly to tar sands projects in the last three years’: end of quote. On Thursday 11th of March this was printed in The Guardian. Unlucky for him, on Wednesday 10th of March, a local paper in Alberta, the Calgary Herald reported that RBS opened an oil-and-gas advisory office there. It quoted RBS Canada executive Larry Maloney’s announcement, quote: ‘we feel there’s a good niche for us to play’: end of quote.

If you are surprised and outraged, well, the Members of Parliament on the parliamentary environmental audit committee were too, Tuesday 9th in the same week last month. The Treasury officials seemed nonchalant, though the MPs turned up the heat on them: the Treasury just wanted RBS to make money – as much money as possible, whatever the cost. So here you have a caricature – a real-life, bleeding-edge caricature – of what the Accra Confession is trying to tell us, to get us to recognize. The big structure – the Empire – rolls on, growing in the wrong places and sucking resources greedily like cancer. This is sold to us as economic growth – as something of value, the only thing of value, against which all else must be measured. But people’s lives – especially those of the poor and the indigenous peoples – see little improvement if at all. The environment is ruined. And the worst: we are inextricably bound up in the whole business. And this goes on, as our planet turns, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long, whether we notice it or not.

It would be pretty bad, pretty sad, if that were the end of the story. Thankfully, it is not. Another bank, this time the Co-operative Bank, is funding the Cree people in their court case against the tar-sand developers. If you have not noticed, the Co-operative Bank is also owned by some of us, its customer–members. People and Planet, a campaigning charity, is taking the Treasury to court for a judicial review on this matter. Our sisters and brothers in the Reformed-church family, the United Church of Canada, is working on the ground, trying to reconcile those who are bent … hell-bent … on this kind of development and those who look upon it with horror.

So there is some hope, though the shape of it is not entirely clear yet … this, as we would recognize between Easter and Pentecost. What are we to do? How do we get this power back, that is rightfully ours? As consumers, as investors, and taxpayers, as voters, and as Christians, followers of Jesus Christ … in all, as citizens both of this country and of the other country: there is something for us to do. As our sisters and brothers remind us through the Accra Confession: There is some confessing to do. There is some repenting to do. Some changing of minds. Some naming of idolatry. Some rejection of anathema. Telling apart Mammon from God. Yes, there is some work to do. We can talk about this after the service. Perhaps the discussion, and the action, will take as long as our lives. God help us. Send the workers. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today Orthodox Easter, Western Easter, and the anniversary of Tom Lewis’s death all fell on the same day.

I celebrated with mass at St. Peter’s and a perfect picnic.

This week Matt Fox recorded a version of “I Dreamed I Saw Tom Lewis Last Night,” with lyrics by me and inspiration from Matt Feinstein.

This is based on a martyr’s song, though Tom was no martyr. He sure believed in resurrection, though. I think it fits.

A flower in Tom’s garden, photographed by Paul Gingras.

“Song for Holy Saturday”
Following tradition, here’s a link to this poem by James K. Baxter.

“Enjoy the Silence: Triduum, sexual abuse, and the disappearance of the crucified”
Michael Iafrate:

It is truly difficult to hear the continued reports of children raped by priests and not be struck by the presence of the Crucified One there. But this presence is denied—“I do not know the man!”—each and every time church leaders and members alike remain silent or utter words of defensiveness that embarrassingly fill nearly every news story or ecclesial statement covering the abuse.

“Who’d win in a wrestling match, Lemmy or God?”
Not sure about the theology here:

(Very much looking forward to the Lemmy documentary.)

Here are some of the things I’m planning to read and watch. No real curriculum here, just what’s on one man’s shelf.

• The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky (also planning to read the recent thesis “The Sister Karamazov: Dorothy Day’s Encounter with Dostoevsky’s Novel” by Michael H. Hebbeler)
• Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by Hume
• The Gospel of Luke
• News reports on the Catholic church’s German child-rape scandals
• The Last Temptation of Christ (have not seen this, though I signed a petition against it when it came out, something I’ve some to regret)
• Jesus of Montreal (have not seen this in years, and have mixed memories)
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (have not seen this)

If anything else comes in handy I’ll add comments or maybe a second post. Probably 2001 (my favorite movie) and Breaking the Waves (my favorite religious film, though not for everybody–I freaked out a friend yesterday just explaining the plot) will find their way onto my screen.

In the past 5 years or so, I have heard from time to time impatient proponents of a Green Senate, a committee for sustainability, a parliamentary chamber with a built-in long-term view and overriding power in favour of measures for sustainability. Famous proponents include Norman Myers, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and (most recently, this past Tuesday) John Strickland. I do not think such a constitutional arrangement would work.

First, who would we appoint to this Senate? Would they be 70-year-olds, having accumulated years of experiences and (one hopes) accompanying wisdom? Or would they be 20-year-olds, or even teenagers, who have a stake, with realistic interests, in the future? Or a mixture thereof? Then, what about the midlifers? Are they totally disinterested, and should only be shoved around by the young and the old?

And quickly you can foresee the second question: How would we appoint them? By popular election with pre-screening? By lot? Very soon I come to my main point, and I hope the reader gets it before I tell. With more than one person in the world, there inevitably comes politics. As much as we would like God to send edicts which we all equally receive with equal clarity, that is not the case.

Either we engage with politics, or we get apathetic and let others (the Pope, the King, the Prime Minister, the political class, etc.) run our lives for us. Politics cannot be circumvented or transcended. Or rather, the only way to transcend politics is to engage. There is no Enabling Act, no Guardian Council, no Workers Vanguard, that can deliver the Final Solution without real politics. There is no such thing as a system so perfect that people do not need to be good.

That means the only way to ensure sustainability is for those who care about sustainability to engage, to talk progressive talk with neighbours, to vote, to go to hustings and meetings, to agitate–educate–organize, to listen and learn, to run for political office and lose (sometimes), to win a few offices and use the power for good ends.

If you do not like the people running the system, aim to replace them. If you do not like the system, change it. But do not expect these to be once-and-for-all, straightforward, and clean. As much as there is no silver bullet, no single technological fix in environmental problems, the same applies to politics. It requires a collective change of mind, which will be messy and will take longer than we would like.

In the words of the prophet Bob Marley: ‘So you think you’ve found the solution, | but it’s just another illusion. | (So before you check out this tide,) | don’t leave another cornerstone | standing there behind. | We’ve got to face the day; | come what may: | We the street people talking; | yeah, we the people struggling.’ (So much trouble in the world)

And on the way, there will be setbacks, losses, defeats, wastage, betrayal, assassinations. (Though I hope the latter ones do not ever visit the present incumbent of the Presidency of the United States of America.) And what is the Christian response but to take these on with courage and hope? (Holy Martyrs, pray for us.) Was that not the way Jesus showed?

‘For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.’ (Romans 8:24,25 KJV)

There are no easy solutions: one can only go out to knock on doors and canvass. With this note, I relied heavily on the thinking of my friend Rupert Read, who taught that theoretical social studies in economics and politics are useless on their own except in praxis. He also demonstrated this brilliantly with his own life. ¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

Amendment after discussing with Rupert:

Yes, I think I should moderate my position.

To speak for the motion, a sustainability commissioner or committee only elevates the idea of sustainability in our constitutional architecture to the level that human rights already occupy. This is long overdue. To expand on the human rights mechanism: a minister certifies each Bill as compatible with the Human Rights Act; then there are enforcement mechanisms through domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights to induce revision of incompatible Acts of Parliament.

Then we might think what are the norms of sustainability to be enumerated? How do we articulate the remit of the Green Senate, the mandate for our commissioner? The bare ‘whether they like it and think it is sustainable’ may not be enough. For human rights, there is the European Convention etc.; this is along the same lines.

Even if we introduce such a commissioner or committee, we should still reserve the right to criticize it. We should stay vigilant and political. Our interlocutors would have no qualms hijacking a ‘Green Senate’, so we should feel free to criticize it if it becomes mere greenwash for expedient projects. I think I am preaching to the converted, as you, Rupert, are the leading critic of liberal neutrality! (A recent example of such a lapse has been pointed out by Chris Goodall: The Committee on Climate Change shouldn’t have answered the question it was asked [about Heathrow expansion].)

The best thing about entering a charity beard competition is telling people with a straight face: “I have entered a charity beard competition.”

Thanks to the organizers for raising money for the Worcester County Food Bank and giving us an excuse to stop shaving!

WINNERS: Burly Man – Derek Ring; Facial Topiary – Mike Benedetti; Fan Fav – Peter Mascitelli; Best in Show – Duncan Arsenault.

L’Osservatore Romano did not like Avatar, some suspected due to alleged pantheism. But the philosophy therein was not really pantheism, but can be more accurately described as panentheism (as my friend Dr George Zachariah of the Mar Thoma Church taught): finding God in everything; finding the image of the divine in everyone. I would have to struggle if I had to deny this as Christian.

[...] Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries [...]

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The scene was indicative, where the scientist Dr Grace Augustine presented her results about the synaptic nature of the biosphere on the planet Pandora, and the businessman Parker Selfridge dismissed her thus: ‘what have you been smoking!’ Science is only accepted when it conveniently serves the imperial–rationalist exploitation: at all other times it is dismissed. As Dr Lawson pointed out (and echoed by the Reverend Dick Wolff), this has been going on in the climate-change debate: ‘If you are a committed free market fundamentalist, you will never accept the climate change facts, as they are incompatible with your ideology.’

I will be going to the Conference of the Green Party of England and Wales this Saturday; expecting Green hugs.

Luke 15:11–32 (Prodigal Son).

May I speak in the name of God: Creator, Christ, and Comforter. Amen.

A few years ago, I went to the National Theatre in London, to see Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo, in a version by David Hare. With 20th-century hindsight, the German playwright Brecht retold the life-story of the 17th-century scientist Galileo Galilei. Today, on this Ash Wednesday, I want to talk about the nature and motivation of scientific pursuit: this play happens to provide some hooks for my thinking. So, at the risk of substituting a theatre review in the place of a sermon, here I go.

If you recall, Galileo championed the theory of Copernicus that the Earth orbits the Sun. The Church forced him to recant this view. The famous British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking says, ‘Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.’ Is this modern science a good thing in the round? Was the Church right to slow Galileo down after all? Galileo’s 17th-century contemporaries did not have the benefit of hindsight and retrospection: They were riding the wave of the Renaissance, pregnant with the prospect of rationalism’s triumph in the 19th and 20th centuries.

But now, a few decades after Brecht, no one in our times can be so sure of the liberating promises of rational progress anymore. It appears we are about to destroy many of the existing species in our biosphere, and make life more difficult for most of our own species, through man-made climate change. We may soon run out of cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels, leaving a large fraction of us too unskilled to cope with fuel poverty.

The longest-living legacy of the human species is likely to be our radioactive waste. It would be good if a few pieces of paper in the desert and some stone carvings survive this. But that looks unlikely; even if that is the case, those that survive would be the so-called ‘atomic-heritage’ manuals, teaching those to come how to safely manage the radioactivity. (Yes, some scientists are actually planning for this.) This is not the worst case scenario actually. But these manuals are not as interesting as the works of Dante Alighieri, depicted in one of the chapel windows.

There are two survival strategies open to us, the Homo sapiens species. The first is advocated by the so-called transhumanist extropians. These are people trying to live in gated communities, walled countries, with large arsenals of arms to keep everybody else out. These are people trying to preserve their bodily selves – or rather, their (near-)dead bodies – in cryogenic suites. (But who is going to keep them plugged in and frozen when our energy runs out?) These are people planning to colonize the Moon and Mars. This is rationalist thought, carried to its logical conclusion.

The second strategy is that of (what we now call) ‘the poor’ and the ‘hippies’. These are resourceful people who are self-sufficient and resilient, who have not been too-absorbed into the globalized monetary economy. They are of all sorts, and more likely to emerge from (what we now call) the global South. ‘All sorts’ are the keywords here: ‘all sorts’.

Let me return to Brecht’s depiction of the dynamics between Galileo the scientist and the Church of his times. The conventional, rationalist wisdom blames the Church for trying to limit the progress of science, and counts it fortunate (or, inevitable) that reason’s march cannot be halted, if paused by the ‘martyrdom’ of Copernicus and the forced recantation of Galileo. ‘Traitor of science!’ they cry, against Galileo.

Brecht, a socialist, cannot bring himself to totally demolish this rationalistic paradigm upfront, but he still questions it as any thinking person in the 20th century has to. The present production at the National Theatre had images from the Visible Earth project for the backdrop, but equally appropriate, if anachronistic and less subtle, there could have been a mushroom cloud, an utterly disappointing scene for gung-ho believers of absolute rationalism.

Following Brecht, I would also not go so far as to say that the Church had it right all along, but rationalism and blind progress certainly did not have it right all along. No, the Church definitely cannot smugly say ‘I told you so’. Perhaps the Church did not express herself in quite the right way? Can we, both as Christians and as scientists, learn from history?

‘What are we for?’, Brecht’s Galileo asks: Are we scientists to be ‘inventive dwarfs for hire’, working for the highest bidder? Or can we have ‘science in the service of humanity’ (as often attributed to Marie Curie)? ‘human-scale science’? Is it possible for the scientist to work, not for fame or profit, not even for the gratification of gratuitous ‘curiosity’, ‘Reason’ with a capital ‘R’, or ‘science for science’s sake’; but as a bird makes a nest, as a tree bears fruit, as a beaver builds a dam, as bees make honey? Or is this one of the human activities where it bound to be more complicated than that? Is it asking too much? or indeed, too little?

What I am trying to ask is: whether the scientific pursuit can be without the alienation of labour, as in the Marxian analysis – after Karl Marx; equally in the Christian sense, can it be a vocation. That is to say, can a scientist say nowadays: I am doing this neither for greed nor for fear? The Prodigal Son, in our reading this evening, was first bound … spellbound by greed for the imminent inheritance; then bound by the threat of poverty; before finally finding his home again, where he started. Can a scientist say: this my scientific pursuit is where my deepest joy meets the world’s deepest need: this is truly my calling?

These questions are even more poignant nowadays. Giles Fraser, a radical Christian cleric from St Paul’s Cathedral in London, wrote in the Church Times last month: ‘As modern science is so extremely expensive to conduct, often even too expensive for governments, it becomes something done by pharmaceutical companies and those manufacturing weapons. These days, it is in places such as these that most scientists work, and not in universities. This means that science is now done mostly by big business and to make money.’ Some present in this chapel know well that even the research and teaching done in universities are now driven by the profit motive, by the drive for commercialization, by the requirements of UK plc, rather than driven by curiosity and education.

[Story about freshers’ first physics tutorial in Oxford – ad lib.]

I ask again: Can we, both as Christians and as scientists, learn from history? Almost ten years into the new century, I am still trying to understand the last one. (Can one speak of ‘coming to terms’ with the 20th century?) It is as if humanity, or at least a large part of it, after learning how to read, write, and take the square root, has now graduated from school and reached adolescence. This young man (allow me to be gender specific here, which is not entirely inaccurate) – this young man, he then proceeds to squander the inheritance which his parents and ancestors stored up, all in a very short time, spending it in a self-destructive way, however instantly gratifying.

Does this sound familiar? Perhaps, one day he will find himself down with the pigs and suddenly change his mind (μετάνοια) – change his mind – repent. I just hope it won’t be too late to go back to his dad. What would his brother, living in the South, out in the farm, say? ‘Dad, I have always worked for you, but you never cooked a little young goat for me. This chap, he spent all his money at the brothel, but now you give him all this bling-bling and throw a big party for him!’ Me – after thinking this through, I now know slightly better how the Prodigal Son will feel, upon hearing this.

If you remember the two strategies open to our species I mentioned earlier: which one are we to choose? Bob Marley sings in his song ‘So much trouble in the world’: ♪ ‘You see men sailing on their ego trips | Blast off on their space ship | Million miles from reality | No care for you, no care for me.’ ♫ Prodigal endeavours, such as space exploration, only become a legitimate exercise once we learn how to live sustainably, within the bounds of a planet. Rather than engineering ourselves to get out of this planet post-haste, we should first try to engineer ourselves to be able to stay in comfortably.

Maybe the Prodigal Son will eventually settle down, have a small family, and start thinking for his children. One can only hope. Amen.