iStockphoto Ingmar Wesemann
This is written on Remembrance Sunday, being the nearest Sabbath to November 11 th when we remember more than at other times those who died or were terribly injured in all the wars we have fought. In the case of Britain , we still have three men left who fought in World War One. All of them are well over 100, actually two 106 and one at 108, I believe.
And we should also think, and care, about all those who were bereaved or crippled in any way, and be more than ever grateful for our own safety, freedom and privileges. Tragically there are many now in our present wars, who are young and still suffering and losing the things we too often take lightly.
Most sane people hate war, but we must not let that allow us to ignore those who have fought on our behalf. We are so desperately grateful to them at the time, but when peace comes we want to forget the hardships, and sometimes in the past that has led us to celebrating our own relief, and wanting to turn away from those for whom the pain will not end.
On the subject of gratitude for gifts we can take lightly, this letter is written in London on the way to a speaking engagement in Folkstone on the south coast of England . We set out driving just after sunrise yesterday morning. I don’t think it is because I am newly home from travelling, it really did seem the most glorious morning I have ever seen. At this late time of the year, less than six weeks from the winter solstice, the sun is very low so far north, and the light has an unusual quality of brilliance. The air seemed to burn with golden warmth filling everything with colour, catching every leaf, every outline.
It was almost cloudless, just a few banners in the south-east. The whole arch of heaven was unstained. The sea was blue, the hills to the north and west soft grey and purple. Closer to, the stubble fields have not yet lost their harvest sheen, and the trees were afire with glittering bronze and yellows of every shade from pale primrose to gorse gold. There were dark outlines of Scotch pine, always elegant. They don’t know how to be ugly. Plenty of birds were out, black crows, the occasional tawny brown buzzard, now and then wild swans in flight.
In the fields brown and white cows gathered together looking as if they were deep in conversation. The villages were awakening, but there were very few cars on the road, at least not on the main road along the shore’s edge. Every bend brought a new view, each more breathtaking than the last.
Thank God for sight.
And thank God for hearing, for the glory of sound, and for the beauty of silence when your eyes tell you that all is well.
And I must admit that being at home again in the country, well outside even the village, and where I have no streetlights and at night no other houses with lights on, thank God for the darkness as well. There is amazement and wonder at the sweep of the stars, especially on a clear winter night. I don’t know if they really are brighter, or only if they seem to be.
And there is peace in real darkness as well, a special kind of rest. That brings me to an entirely different side of the subject. Apparently scientists have been dealing with dark matter recently and have frozen and captured some. They are keeping it tightly contained down a very deep mine shaft. I think they have little idea as to exactly what it is. But they say that without it the rest of matter, the ‘light’ matter that we are familiar with, cannot exist – which is more or less the rest of the universe.
In this we are speaking of physical matter. But do we not know this of spiritual matter, and have we not always been taught so? ‘There must needs be opposition in all things’! Without the possibility of evil, and therefore also its actual existence, there cannot be goodness. Without choice, and the opportunity for deliberate or accidental error, there can be no virtue, no achievement, and so no happiness.
This is all doctrine we know. I wonder if we always comprehend the depth of it, and the beauty, even the necessity that it must be this way? I hear people speak of eternal peace, eternal rest, but without struggle and the possibility of failure, can there be success? Can there be achievement if there is no need for labour? If you are assured of success, whether you work hard or not, whether you think, stretch your mind, bend your back, then can achievement possibly bring any joy?
Does the great doctrine of agency lie at the core of this? One of our eternal concerns is the love and teaching of others. Because they also have agency, which will never be taken from them, they will not always choose the better path, just as we must certainly have not always done. Therefore no matter how hard we try, we will not always succeed with them, any more than God has always succeeded with us!
Life here, and in eternity, is absolutely real, failure hurts, and success is true happiness. Do we want to exist where day after day is just the same, and all passion is blunted because it is predictable and people no longer have an edge of uncertainty, of surprise, the pain of failure and the glory of success? Would that be so very different from a kind of death?
Surely the greatest gift imaginable is the one we have already been promised, that if we do our best we will have the joy of growing, learning, teaching, loving and creating for ever! That truly would be eternal life. The alternative simply of existing endlessly, but on a virtually meaningless road of repetition without achievement, would be a kind of death – but without the peace of real death.
We have a wisdom and a glory in the vision of eternity we have been given. Let us never lose gratitude for that, either in the joy and the hope within us, or in the outer demonstration of it by living in such a way that we share as much of it as anyone is willing to hear.
That, of course, may be not much, because it is far from the teaching of any other kinds of thoughts. When I can do so without risking too much offence or distress, I ask people what their faith teaches of eternity, and I have yet to hear an answer which is more than ‘eternal rest’, ‘eternal praising God’ (which does NOT include learning to do His work and become steadily more and more like Him) or ‘eternal peace’, eternal happiness’. I ask ‘doing what?’ And there is no answer.
We have knowledge of the greatest gift imaginable in the universe – it is without end, it is possible for every single being who will strive for it – and it makes sense! To love and be loved by others, to labour in God’s work does mean joy. I don’t believe there is anything else that could do.
But back to more immediate concerns. Since I last wrote we have had some alarming times financially. The certainties that we took for granted in the world’s management of money have wobbled and fallen apart. We have been reminded that people are stupider and more fragile than we assumed (for the most part). We are facing difficult times and will have to alter some of our plans. A new, cold reality is on us. Let us hope it finds us both prudent and generous. We need to be wise stewards of what we have, and not be unmindful of those who have less – and not too judgmental of how they became that way. A lot of help may be impossible, and may even be inappropriate, but a little may be the kind of grace we ourselves so often need. Who among us can afford to get by with only what we deserve?
Of course we can in some respects – but there are others where we may be surprised how far from our deserts our needs may be. Perfect in one area may be disastrously lacking in another, and much in need of mercy. We can be pretty selective over where we look!
Again, a little gratitude would also sweep away pride and the imagination that we have achieved our own safety, and everyone else can and should do the same.
My father used to believe that the greatest of all sins was unkindness. That encompasses an enormous amount, from the lack of a gentle word, the lack of encouragement, belief, simply a smile – all the way through to the most horrendous cruelties conceivable. Mostly we are guilty only of self absorption, indifference to others, passing by on the other side. But people wither from such things, they fail to grow and achieve, continually they lose hope and dreams slip from their grasp. And there will always be the one time when their need was so great they actually died of it.
The one whose need we ignored, whose friendship we snubbed because he or she was not like us, was God’s child. And God was watching! Do I scare you? I scare myself!
Christmas is not very far away. It is a time when more than ever we tend to think of our families. Perhaps a little more thinking of Christ would be good. Don’t let us be among those so busy with our own that when the stranger in need is at the door we tell him ‘Sorry, no room at the inn. We are full up with our own concerns. Never mind loving our enemies, we don’t even care about those we are not related to. There is no room here for strangers. We are not interested in the lonely or the ‘man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? We are having fun.’
There are many, many things for which we are given opportunities all our lives, but there are some parties we may be invited to only once.
The feast is spread for all of us – the table is laden with every possible gift, some we have not even imagined, and they are more beautiful than our greatest dreams. We can come only if we are grateful, and eager to share not just with some but with all.
Happy Christmas, hope, excitement, achievement and joy in 2009, and above all faith in Our Father in Heaven who knows us all, without exception.