Nosheen Iqbal Guardian/UK 24 February 2015
We shouldn’t be writing these girls off – the rockstar barbarism of Isis is designed to recruit impressionable teenagers, Grade-A students or otherwise
What springs to mind as I read through many of the comment pieces on the three schoolgirls who seem to have disappeared to Syria. Leave them to rot, scream the headlines. They’re colluding with evil! These jihadi devil-women know exactly what they’re doing, and will get all they deserve on arrival in Syria! But does anyone actually remember, in hindsight, how stupid they were at that age?
Like the neighbours of serial killers, no one voxpopped from Bethnal Green Academy can believe it: these were three bright young people with families and a future. Why would they do this? How could they do this? “Academically bright,” came one description from a source in the Daily Mail, “but naive and vulnerable.”
They have been brainwashed by an ideology many times more threatening than a regular cult: Isis is offering religious power to its victims, selling the idea that recruits become a type of turbo-Muslim, and that theirs is a legitimate adventure because it is one sanctioned by God. Isis has Hollywood-ised war, made barbarity so blockbuster, that it looks cartoonishly unreal to a young, malleable mind. Plenty of teenagers love violence – this isn’t new. The shock seems to be that girls, as well as boys, appear to have an appetite for it.
Like all predatory internet groomers, Raqqa’s warriors wield a sexual power; anyone who has seen their social media feeds will understand that Isis lads brand themselves as rock stars. Marrying one is a religiously approved way to channel the mad, hormonal energy that powers all teenagers – Muslim girls included.
Grade-A students aren’t exempt from grooming. If you make that your starting point in trying to understand why three teenage girls, yet to even sit their GCSEs, would run away from home to join the world’s most powerful cult, you are already one step ahead of the bile. Amira Abase, Shamima Begum and Kadiza Sultana are British schoolgirls, two of them born and raised here. Being savvy and confident enough to pack a duffel bag and board a flight without their parents or the authorities’ knowledge doesn’t make them immune from being manipulated. Being sharp and clever in class doesn’t make them any less impressionable as children.
This doesn’t absolve the three of responsibility – I’m betting each of them is self-aware enough to think that they’re independent, acting entirely of their free will and rebelling against their parents in the most perverse way they can: by becoming more pious, more extreme, than their families would ever tolerate. The reality is that they have barely lived. At their age, extremism and nihilism can easily take root, because real life hasn’t really happened to them yet. Isis knows this; that’s why it’s targeting teenagers so ruthlessly.
Spitting in a full-frothed outrage over both their audacity and their stupidity doesn’t make the problem go away, in the same way that trying to understand it doesn’t make you an apologist for Isis. Would there be this level of contempt for a victim of sexual grooming? What would the coverage look like if three middle-class schoolgirls upped and left to fight on the frontline of Golden Dawn? It’s worth asking, because the argument that we reject these girls and refuse them help is as dumb as the mistake they’ve clearly made.
It’s difficult to remember when a 15-year-old was last taken seriously as an adult in the national press. Why are we affording three brown Muslim girls that privilege now? [Abbrev.]
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/24/syria-bound-schoolgirls-arent-jihadi-devil-women-theyre-vulnerable-children
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Church of England calls for 'fresh moral vision' in British politics
C of E letter urging people to vote on 7 May laments ‘growing appetite to exploit grievances, find scapegoats and create barriers between people and nations’
Esther Addley Guardian/UK 17 February 2015
The Church of England has launched a strongly worded attack on Britain’s political culture, criticising politicians of all parties for offering only “sterile arguments” that are likely to make voters more apathetic and cynical in the runup to the general election.
In an unprecedented intervention, the church’s bishops have published a joint open letter warning that “our democracy is failing” and attacking the “growing appetite to exploit grievances” and “find scapegoats” in society. They call for “a fresh moral vision of the kind of country we want to be”.
It is the first time the bishops have intervened in this way before a general election, but one said the church had felt the need to counter the “sex appeal” of people such as Russell Brand, who have argued that people should disengage from Westminster politics.
Text of Church of England bishops' pastoral letter for 2015 general election
House of bishops has published a letter calling for a new direction in political life and urging people to vote on 7 May. While the bishops insist the letter is not targeted at any party in particular and criticise successive administrations for political failings, the 52-page document can be read as an indirect criticism of the government’s welfare policies.
“There is a deep contradiction in the attitudes of a society which celebrates equality in principle yet treats some people, especially the poor and vulnerable, as unwanted, unvalued and unnoticed,” the bishops write.
When those who rely on social security “are all described in terms that imply they are undeserving, dependent and ought to be self-sufficient”, the language deters others from offering informal support that in turn could relieve the welfare budget.
It is “game-playing”, they add, “to claim that anyone who cares about the impact of austerity on the most vulnerable members of society is … careless about the extent of national indebtedness”.
Britain has become “a society of strangers” and “individualism has tended to estrange people from one another”, proof of which could be seen in “the extent of loneliness in society today with the attendant problems of mental and physical health”.
They give credit to political leaders “that the impact of the [financial] crisis has been less severe in Britain than in some other European countries”, but argue that “the greatest burdens of austerity have not been borne by those with the broadest shoulders”. Instead, the less well off “have not been adequately protected from the impact of recession”.
But the letter also calls for a return of the values of the “big society”, which the bishops say was dreamed up by “thoughtful Conservatives” who drew “from earlier Christian tradition”. “The ideals the big society stood for … could still be the foundation for the new approach to politics, economics and community which we seek,” they write.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/17/church-of-england-calls-for-fresh-moral-vision-in-british-politics
See also http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/22/norwich-capital-church-of-england-campaign-country-conscience-justin-welby
Esther Addley Guardian/UK 17 February 2015
The Church of England has launched a strongly worded attack on Britain’s political culture, criticising politicians of all parties for offering only “sterile arguments” that are likely to make voters more apathetic and cynical in the runup to the general election.
In an unprecedented intervention, the church’s bishops have published a joint open letter warning that “our democracy is failing” and attacking the “growing appetite to exploit grievances” and “find scapegoats” in society. They call for “a fresh moral vision of the kind of country we want to be”.
It is the first time the bishops have intervened in this way before a general election, but one said the church had felt the need to counter the “sex appeal” of people such as Russell Brand, who have argued that people should disengage from Westminster politics.
Text of Church of England bishops' pastoral letter for 2015 general election
House of bishops has published a letter calling for a new direction in political life and urging people to vote on 7 May. While the bishops insist the letter is not targeted at any party in particular and criticise successive administrations for political failings, the 52-page document can be read as an indirect criticism of the government’s welfare policies.
“There is a deep contradiction in the attitudes of a society which celebrates equality in principle yet treats some people, especially the poor and vulnerable, as unwanted, unvalued and unnoticed,” the bishops write.
When those who rely on social security “are all described in terms that imply they are undeserving, dependent and ought to be self-sufficient”, the language deters others from offering informal support that in turn could relieve the welfare budget.
It is “game-playing”, they add, “to claim that anyone who cares about the impact of austerity on the most vulnerable members of society is … careless about the extent of national indebtedness”.
Britain has become “a society of strangers” and “individualism has tended to estrange people from one another”, proof of which could be seen in “the extent of loneliness in society today with the attendant problems of mental and physical health”.
They give credit to political leaders “that the impact of the [financial] crisis has been less severe in Britain than in some other European countries”, but argue that “the greatest burdens of austerity have not been borne by those with the broadest shoulders”. Instead, the less well off “have not been adequately protected from the impact of recession”.
But the letter also calls for a return of the values of the “big society”, which the bishops say was dreamed up by “thoughtful Conservatives” who drew “from earlier Christian tradition”. “The ideals the big society stood for … could still be the foundation for the new approach to politics, economics and community which we seek,” they write.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/17/church-of-england-calls-for-fresh-moral-vision-in-british-politics
See also http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/22/norwich-capital-church-of-england-campaign-country-conscience-justin-welby
My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
By Oliver Sacks NY Times Feb. 19, 2015
A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tum ors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.
I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.
It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it “My Own Life.”
“I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution,” he wrote. “I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company.” I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15 years allotted to me beyond Hume’s three score and five have been equally rich in work and love.
Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun,
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming. This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. The future is in good hands.
I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die they leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure. [Abridged]
Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, is the author of many books, including “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”
A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tum ors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.
I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.
It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it “My Own Life.”
“I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution,” he wrote. “I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company.” I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15 years allotted to me beyond Hume’s three score and five have been equally rich in work and love.
Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun,
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming. This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. The future is in good hands.
I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die they leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure. [Abridged]
Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, is the author of many books, including “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Talking offers hope of a peaceful solution. But we’re not allowed.
Robert Fisk Independent/UK 15 February 2015
The very precautions aid agencies now take have made them objects of suspicion
Should we talk to the killers of the “Islamic State”? Or al-Qaeda? Or Hamas? Or – let us cross the line – the Provisional IRA? Or should we join in the madness of “listing”, drawing up mammoth charts of those to whom we can and cannot talk: a “good” and “evil” list, defining those good “terrorists” (the PLO, the post-Good Friday IRA, the squeaky clean version of the Muslim Brotherhood) and the really horrible “terrorists” (Isis, al-Qaeda and any lesser creatures whom Israel and the US, and thus the UN and even the EU, deem utterly satanic).
Not long ago, I was chatting in Beirut to a Tory MP who had maintained moderately good relations with the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah militia. Only with the Hezbollah political party, you understand. Not those vicious anti-Semitic chappies who threaten Israel. But then Britain and the EU decided that all of Hezbollah – even those supporters who wouldn’t know one end of a Kalashnikov from another – were verboten, beyond the pale. End of all chit-chat, therefore, between a UK parliamentarian and Hezbollah politicos. Much good did that do.
And research by the Queen Mary University of London School of Law and the Berghof Foundation in Berlin strongly suggests that the “listing” of armed groups by governments – often for clear political reasons – prevents what the writers call “peace building”, hindering the host of NGOs, academics, lawyers and others who are trying to explain the benefits of human rights and political moderation to armed groups whose brutal methods have never been challenged.
In Gaza, for example, NGOs, human rights workers and others labour under intense political scrutiny from obedient government lawyers, Israeli propagandists and servile overseas charities. Suggest that a Western agency has been talking to a Hamas official about the purchase of land for a humanitarian project in Gaza and, bingo, the NGO has been negotiating with a vicious “terrorist” organisation that wants to destroy the State of Israel. Indeed, the very precautions that aid agencies now take to avoid accusations of illegally talking to “terrorist” organisations have made them objects of suspicion. When a humanitarian worker turns up at a Gaza home and demands the passport and personal details of an entire family – in order to employ a Palestinian – the reaction is one of fear. Why do the foreigners want all this information about those living under Israeli siege?
The 197-page report, to be published on 24 February, states that for those interested in peace and a non-violent resolution of conflict, the future looks bleak, “not just because the war on terror keeps producing enemies with whom, it is said, there is no negotiating, but because of the way in which political violence … is managed. At the heart of this transformation is the freedom for governments to apply the terrorist label to groups and individuals on the basis of very broad definitions of what ‘terrorism’ entails … leading to a glut of terrorist designations.”
International, regional and national lists of thousands of designated “terrorist” entities now span the globe. The war on terror, the report says, has “presented a formidable challenge to those seeking the peaceful resolution of conflicts caused by legitimate and long-festering grievances”. In short, how can professional mediators and “peacebuilding organisations” continue to work if they don’t know whether their activities are lawful?
The report is rather mild to the Western governments who threaten all those who “talk to terrorists” with legal action at home while doing deals with the same rogues behind everyone else’s back. The Israelis organise Hezbollah-Israeli prisoner releases, for example, via the German secret service.
The paper looks at terrorist “listing” in Somalia, the Palestinian occupied territories and Turkish Kurdistan, but its analysis of Hamas “listing” tells the whole story. The EU’s exclusion of Hamas from diplomatic relations – the EU obediently following the Israeli-US lead – resulted in Europe’s marginalisation in Palestinian talks. Jimmy Carter’s US-based “Carter Centre” ended conflict-resolution talks with “Hamas” leaders. An EU mental health project in Gaza collapsed because of “a prohibition of dialogue with relevant [Hamas] officials”.
A truly surreal remark from a Palestinian NGO deserves a finale all of its own. “I believe that we need to talk to Hamas to educate them and we need to let them know what’s going on,” he said. “But we cannot make a workshop, we cannot offer a Nescafé or cappuccino for any one of them. It’s considered as materialistic support … can you imagine it? You cannot offer them a coffee!” [Abridged]
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/talking-offers-hope-of-a-peaceful-solution-but-were-not-allowed-to-do-it-10047640.html
The very precautions aid agencies now take have made them objects of suspicion
Should we talk to the killers of the “Islamic State”? Or al-Qaeda? Or Hamas? Or – let us cross the line – the Provisional IRA? Or should we join in the madness of “listing”, drawing up mammoth charts of those to whom we can and cannot talk: a “good” and “evil” list, defining those good “terrorists” (the PLO, the post-Good Friday IRA, the squeaky clean version of the Muslim Brotherhood) and the really horrible “terrorists” (Isis, al-Qaeda and any lesser creatures whom Israel and the US, and thus the UN and even the EU, deem utterly satanic).
Not long ago, I was chatting in Beirut to a Tory MP who had maintained moderately good relations with the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah militia. Only with the Hezbollah political party, you understand. Not those vicious anti-Semitic chappies who threaten Israel. But then Britain and the EU decided that all of Hezbollah – even those supporters who wouldn’t know one end of a Kalashnikov from another – were verboten, beyond the pale. End of all chit-chat, therefore, between a UK parliamentarian and Hezbollah politicos. Much good did that do.
And research by the Queen Mary University of London School of Law and the Berghof Foundation in Berlin strongly suggests that the “listing” of armed groups by governments – often for clear political reasons – prevents what the writers call “peace building”, hindering the host of NGOs, academics, lawyers and others who are trying to explain the benefits of human rights and political moderation to armed groups whose brutal methods have never been challenged.
In Gaza, for example, NGOs, human rights workers and others labour under intense political scrutiny from obedient government lawyers, Israeli propagandists and servile overseas charities. Suggest that a Western agency has been talking to a Hamas official about the purchase of land for a humanitarian project in Gaza and, bingo, the NGO has been negotiating with a vicious “terrorist” organisation that wants to destroy the State of Israel. Indeed, the very precautions that aid agencies now take to avoid accusations of illegally talking to “terrorist” organisations have made them objects of suspicion. When a humanitarian worker turns up at a Gaza home and demands the passport and personal details of an entire family – in order to employ a Palestinian – the reaction is one of fear. Why do the foreigners want all this information about those living under Israeli siege?
The 197-page report, to be published on 24 February, states that for those interested in peace and a non-violent resolution of conflict, the future looks bleak, “not just because the war on terror keeps producing enemies with whom, it is said, there is no negotiating, but because of the way in which political violence … is managed. At the heart of this transformation is the freedom for governments to apply the terrorist label to groups and individuals on the basis of very broad definitions of what ‘terrorism’ entails … leading to a glut of terrorist designations.”
International, regional and national lists of thousands of designated “terrorist” entities now span the globe. The war on terror, the report says, has “presented a formidable challenge to those seeking the peaceful resolution of conflicts caused by legitimate and long-festering grievances”. In short, how can professional mediators and “peacebuilding organisations” continue to work if they don’t know whether their activities are lawful?
The report is rather mild to the Western governments who threaten all those who “talk to terrorists” with legal action at home while doing deals with the same rogues behind everyone else’s back. The Israelis organise Hezbollah-Israeli prisoner releases, for example, via the German secret service.
The paper looks at terrorist “listing” in Somalia, the Palestinian occupied territories and Turkish Kurdistan, but its analysis of Hamas “listing” tells the whole story. The EU’s exclusion of Hamas from diplomatic relations – the EU obediently following the Israeli-US lead – resulted in Europe’s marginalisation in Palestinian talks. Jimmy Carter’s US-based “Carter Centre” ended conflict-resolution talks with “Hamas” leaders. An EU mental health project in Gaza collapsed because of “a prohibition of dialogue with relevant [Hamas] officials”.
A truly surreal remark from a Palestinian NGO deserves a finale all of its own. “I believe that we need to talk to Hamas to educate them and we need to let them know what’s going on,” he said. “But we cannot make a workshop, we cannot offer a Nescafé or cappuccino for any one of them. It’s considered as materialistic support … can you imagine it? You cannot offer them a coffee!” [Abridged]
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/talking-offers-hope-of-a-peaceful-solution-but-were-not-allowed-to-do-it-10047640.html
Facing Cancer
Ian Harris Otago Daily Times Feb. 13, 2015
How do you bear reality if your reality is an incurable cancer? It’s a question too many of us have to face, one my wife faced over the past year.
It’s also a question that challenged an influential shaper of modern theology, English Bishop John Robinson of Honest to God fame, just over 30 years ago. It calls on all a person’s resources of meaning, identity, purpose, resolve and, for the lucky ones, faith (by which I mean a trusting orientation to life and its possibilities for good).
Indeed, Dr Bernie Siegel, an American surgeon who has treated hundreds of people with cancer, writes from his experience of four faiths that help patients in this situation: faith in themselves, their doctor, their treatment, and a spiritual faith that enables them to find peace. All these work together to give people a positive bearing on the life still ahead of them, even though with terminal cancers – and not all cancers are terminal – the final outcome is already known.
Robinson tells how, before his diagnosis, he conducted the funeral of a 16-year-old girl who had died of cancer. He said then, to no little consternation: “God is in the cancer as much as in the sunset.” Of course Robinson never intended to blame God for the girl’s cancer. That would imply a totally inadequate notion of God – “it would make God a very devil.”
Two years later, preaching his last sermon in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge, before his death in 1983, he referred to his comment at that funeral, and conceded it had been an intellectual statement. Could he say it now of his own reality? Could I say it of my wife Jill’s?
Robinson found he could. He said God (I prefer to call it Godness) was present in the way people responded to his illness with love and kindness, the honesty and sensitivity of his doctors, and above all in deepened relationships both within the family and beyond. It was “a time of giving and receiving grace upon grace.”
My experience just before Christmas was similar. As I sat with my wife, watching her life energy slowly draining away, I was at first overwhelmed by a sense of God’s absence. I was devoid of any spiritual or emotional connection whatsoever, full of aching and grief.
But then I thought, given the way I conceive of God, the supreme symbol for everything that is of ultimate worth for life, and love, and meaning, what do you expect? A symbol has no life or emotion of its own – only the life you give it as you shape your life around it.
And Godness was certainly all around us – in the loving presence of family, the gentle caring of hospice staff, the many messages from friends of affirmation and support, the sense of peace in the hospice’s garden setting. I didn’t need a “beyond” kind of God, because the beyond is in our midst – which is what the Christmas doctrine of Incarnation is meant to convey.
Unlike a sudden death, cancer usually gives people time to prepare. I once heard such preparation crudely likened to swotting for your finals: if you pass, you’re off to heaven; if not, the other place. But fewer and fewer people believe in heaven or hell today, whether as a physical location or even as a spiritual existence on the other side of death.
That shouldn’t squelch any notion of eternal life, however. It simply makes it necessary to relocate the concept to life as we live it in the here and now. Eternal life then ceases to point to everlasting endlessness for a disembodied soul, as once was assumed, but instead to living in light of all that is of ultimate worth for life, love and meaning. It is life at depth – for Christians, life “in Christ”, a phrase evoking Christianity’s distinctive archetype of love, grace and meaning.
That appears to have coloured the way Robinson lived his last months. Told he had six, maybe nine months to live, his first reaction was shock. Then: “Six months is a long time. One can do a lot in that. How am I going to use it?”
Jill’s answer lay in renewing and deepening relationships, completing her fourth novel for children and young people, then preparing for publication a selection of liturgies she had written for this new era. Purposeful living, with a focus beyond herself, helped her to bear the reality of her cancer. She died having achieved much, and at peace.
How do you bear reality if your reality is an incurable cancer? It’s a question too many of us have to face, one my wife faced over the past year.
It’s also a question that challenged an influential shaper of modern theology, English Bishop John Robinson of Honest to God fame, just over 30 years ago. It calls on all a person’s resources of meaning, identity, purpose, resolve and, for the lucky ones, faith (by which I mean a trusting orientation to life and its possibilities for good).
Indeed, Dr Bernie Siegel, an American surgeon who has treated hundreds of people with cancer, writes from his experience of four faiths that help patients in this situation: faith in themselves, their doctor, their treatment, and a spiritual faith that enables them to find peace. All these work together to give people a positive bearing on the life still ahead of them, even though with terminal cancers – and not all cancers are terminal – the final outcome is already known.
Robinson tells how, before his diagnosis, he conducted the funeral of a 16-year-old girl who had died of cancer. He said then, to no little consternation: “God is in the cancer as much as in the sunset.” Of course Robinson never intended to blame God for the girl’s cancer. That would imply a totally inadequate notion of God – “it would make God a very devil.”
Two years later, preaching his last sermon in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge, before his death in 1983, he referred to his comment at that funeral, and conceded it had been an intellectual statement. Could he say it now of his own reality? Could I say it of my wife Jill’s?
Robinson found he could. He said God (I prefer to call it Godness) was present in the way people responded to his illness with love and kindness, the honesty and sensitivity of his doctors, and above all in deepened relationships both within the family and beyond. It was “a time of giving and receiving grace upon grace.”
My experience just before Christmas was similar. As I sat with my wife, watching her life energy slowly draining away, I was at first overwhelmed by a sense of God’s absence. I was devoid of any spiritual or emotional connection whatsoever, full of aching and grief.
But then I thought, given the way I conceive of God, the supreme symbol for everything that is of ultimate worth for life, and love, and meaning, what do you expect? A symbol has no life or emotion of its own – only the life you give it as you shape your life around it.
And Godness was certainly all around us – in the loving presence of family, the gentle caring of hospice staff, the many messages from friends of affirmation and support, the sense of peace in the hospice’s garden setting. I didn’t need a “beyond” kind of God, because the beyond is in our midst – which is what the Christmas doctrine of Incarnation is meant to convey.
Unlike a sudden death, cancer usually gives people time to prepare. I once heard such preparation crudely likened to swotting for your finals: if you pass, you’re off to heaven; if not, the other place. But fewer and fewer people believe in heaven or hell today, whether as a physical location or even as a spiritual existence on the other side of death.
That shouldn’t squelch any notion of eternal life, however. It simply makes it necessary to relocate the concept to life as we live it in the here and now. Eternal life then ceases to point to everlasting endlessness for a disembodied soul, as once was assumed, but instead to living in light of all that is of ultimate worth for life, love and meaning. It is life at depth – for Christians, life “in Christ”, a phrase evoking Christianity’s distinctive archetype of love, grace and meaning.
That appears to have coloured the way Robinson lived his last months. Told he had six, maybe nine months to live, his first reaction was shock. Then: “Six months is a long time. One can do a lot in that. How am I going to use it?”
Jill’s answer lay in renewing and deepening relationships, completing her fourth novel for children and young people, then preparing for publication a selection of liturgies she had written for this new era. Purposeful living, with a focus beyond herself, helped her to bear the reality of her cancer. She died having achieved much, and at peace.
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