Who is my neighbour?

This poor blog has been rather neglected of late. I may talk about the reasons in a future post.

So I think I'll jump back in at the deep end.

A friend of mine has recently been convicted of downloading child pornography. It was a struggle for me to use the word 'friend' in the last sentence: I nearly wrote 'someone I know'. But he was (is?) a friend. Not a close friend, admittedly: I knew very little about his private life, and he knows very little about mine. But I enjoyed his company, his talents, and his quiet dedication to the things he enjoyed. 

As I don't want to identify him, or enable him to be identified, or (if I'm honest) risk anyone associating me with him, I'm not able to give many details regarding his offences or his sentencing. I can say that the details of some of the material shocked the judge.

Of course I was sickened. So were other friends. You would be. I was sickened by what it told me about someone I thought I knew, and sickened at the thought of the trauma (both sudden and never ending) inflicted on children so that he, and others, could feed on the images at leisure. 

But...

What happens next?

My friend has probably lost his job. He may or may not have lost his liberty (I'm not saying which). He has been publicly humiliated: people he does not know have felt free to express their opinions about him in the frankest possible terms, and people he does know are distancing themselves from him. He has been excluded from the (wholesome) social activities that (appeared) to give his life structure and meaning, and were an outlet for his undoubted talents.

He hasn't got much left really.

How should we respond? What should we do?

Practically, there are obstacles. He is no longer contactable via social media. I have no other contact details for him. He will not be attending the social events at which I used to meet him.

Even if I can locate him, I don't really want to meet him at the moment (what on earth would we talk about?), but I do want him to know he's not forgotten. Whatever he's done, whatever hungers drive him, it doesn't sit well with me to just write him out of my life. And he must be so lonely.

'Love the sinner, hate the sin'. Those words have so often been used against gay people that they have a nasty resonance. And even when an act is clearly wrong the statement is still unsatisfactory, as it makes us the judge, defining and separating wrongdoers and wrongs. But it does prompt a question in me: when someone behaves in a way that is clearly wrong and so injures themselves and others, how can I keep that in mind and yet continue to love, in way that is not patronising or judgemental, but is practical and health-bringing.

And how can I not forget that Christ's heart was always for the outcast, and no-one is more an outcast today than the paedophile. They are so outcast that I am nervous of people wondering about me, simply because I raise the issue (or when they see that I have a DVD of that excellent film 'The Woodsman'. Will some government computer programme even now be flagging up the presence of key words in this posting?

The parable of the good Samaritan is well known, and we can glibly (though rightly) talk about our duty to love those who others would avoid. But a direct reading of this parable suggests a harder challenge is also being talked about: are we willing to allow the outcast to (re)join our society as one who loves, and cares, and contributes?

Sadly, I'm struggling with the first of these challenges, and have no idea even where to begin with the second.

Postscript

I've just read an article about a remarkable community in Florida, where half the population are sex offenders : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23063492

What's wrong with this picture?

Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

But when he was still far off he could see that the gate to his father’s estate was shut. As he got closer, he could see that it was locked fast. He held on to the bars, exhausted and hungry. And it started to rain.

Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields. When he came near the house, he could see his brother, huddled at the gate. He ran into the house and found his father upstairs, in his study, gazing out of the rain-splattered window.

“Father”, the older son said. “My brother is outside, at the gate! Give me the key and I will let him in!” His father turned to him, his face grave.

“You know I would love to”, he said. “But you also know my standards. I cannot tolerate or excuse bad behaviour. If I let him in, I would be condoning what he has done, and you know I cannot do that: it would contradict everything I stand for!” The older son pleaded with him, but the father would not relent.

Then the elder son said, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Why don’t I take my brother’s place? You could banish me and let him in in my place. You could let me take his failings on myself, and treat him as though he had obeyed your orders as I have”

The father said nothing for a while, but stroked his beard. Then he said, “Yes. That would be acceptable”.

So they went down together to the gate. The father unlocked the gate and the younger son staggered in. The father hugged him and led him towards the house.

And the older brother slowly walked away down the road in the rain. The gate slammed shut behind him.

(The first three paragraphs (and a few other phrases) are © NIV)

World Aids Day

World Aids Day has a different feel for me than I suspect it must for many contemporaries. I spent my early adulthood in the late eighties and early nineties surrounded by the evangelical church and evangelical culture: I was exiled from a world where I could express my sexuality – an exile that left me with problems I am still trying to unpick – but it also protected me from the icy blast that was sweeping through the gay world at the time. And so, unlike many gay men of my age, I am not haunted by the young faces of old friends who withered away before their eyes, nor do I share the collective memories of a community under a terrible siege: memories of fear, ostracism, and anger.

So my approach to World Aids Day has to be different. While I share in the concerns expressed on intellectual and political levels, and while I recall and pray for those of my friends who live, now, with HIV, I have to find another story to earth the day in my own heart.

In 1994 I left the church community house I had been living in for 6 years, and moved out to stay with a kind friend in the suburbs. I was unemployed, lost, and fairly seriously depressed. I temporarily stopped attending the inner city church I was familiar with and which was the simultaneous cause of much of my stress but also most of my meaning, and started attending a large, thriving, evangelical church near where I was staying. I will not name it here, as that would not be entirely fair on the church in question, and I did receive kindnesses there. However…

It so happened that towards the end of my time in this neighbourhood this large church experienced something called ‘The Toronto Blessing’. If you are a fellow evangelical: do you remember that? If you’re not, well… Depending on whom you talk to, it was either a refreshing revival for the church in which the Holy Spirit visited congregations and healed hurting people, or it was a series of linked experiences of group hysteria. People affected in a meeting would fall down, start laughing wildly, weep uncontrollably, and sometimes make animal noises (though generally not all at once).

One evening I attended a service where the Blessing descended on the congregation. Everywhere I looked people were laughing, shaking, or falling over. Much praying in tongues was evident.

My feelings about all this were complex. Well, actually they weren’t really: I hated it. However, I did wonder: what if it was from God? If it was, why was I left out? I should say at this point that one of the leitmotifs of my emotional life is the feeling of being Left Out. Whenever I’m in a situation where I perceive this to be occurring, I generally go to pieces quite quickly. So, there I was (again, for I had had many experiences of this before), feeling myself to be observing a celebration, a party, to which God had not invited me. I was separated from the life around me by impenetrable plate glass.

I knew I needed to get out, and get out soon. This was less easy than it sounds, as I was afraid that if  I made any sudden moves this might be interpreted as the work of the Holy Spirit and result in eager Helpers coming to my aid. When I eventually picked a moment that seemed safe, someone started manifesting in the entrance foyer.

Some time later I was able to escape, and found myself on the pavement outside. I cannot remember if I cried, but I can recall being desperately miserable, and feeling very lonely.

And then I met an old friend. I will name him, because he deserves it: he was Chris P. It was odd to meet him there, as he lived in inner Manchester. I had not seen him for months.

He was one of a number of people that I and some other Christians had befriended and been ‘working with’ as part of the work of my old church to reach out to the marginalized. More about that story could certainly be told, but for the moment it is enough to know that Chris had not been instantly appealing. He seemed to be perpetually on the brink of taking offence at almost anything: as he also had a very bad stutter this could happen easily. He painted detailed posters for the church, which weren’t really what we wanted but which we accepted anyway, and drove the church minibus willingly but extremely badly.

My breakthrough with him occurred when he knocked a pot of his paint all over my bible, turning much of the Old Testament yellow. I had been furious and stormed out, slamming the door. He was so refreshed to have someone stop being nice to him and lose their temper for a change that our relationship improved considerably as a result. I learnt a certain amount more of his back-story, including a history of abuse from his father.

He was the last person I was expecting to see that evening outside that church.

We went for a curry, at his suggestion. He paid. I can’t remember what he talked about, but I do remember that I found myself disclosing my sexuality to him (a newish experience for me at the time), and that he told me that he was also gay. At the end of the meal we hugged, and parted.

I never saw him again.

Many months’, possibly some years’, later, I learned that he had moved to London, and after this had died, from Aids-related illnesses.

And so, at every World Aids Day, and at every Aids Vigil, I light a candle for you, Chris, you cantankerous, straggly bearded, paint-spilling, stuttering, mad-driving old thing. To use the words of a hymn, you held the Christ light for me in the night-time of my fear: you held your hand out to me and spoke the peace I longed to hear.

You were Christ for me that evening, Chris, and I honour and remember you.

'Cyril' – A Postscript

'Cyril' – A Postscript

It turns out things weren’t quite as bleak as I thought they were.

I hadn’t missed the funeral; it had just taken a while to arrange. And I was able to get time off work to attend it, and the committal.

There were more people there than I had expected: a gathering of, mainly, neighbours and nurses and social workers. Mr Mohammed was one of the pall-bearers. There were no relatives.

One of the hymns was ‘I, the Lord of Sea and Sky’, which includes the lyrics:

I the Lord of wind and flame,

I will tend the poor and lame.

I will set a feast for them.

My hand will save.

Finest bread I will provide

Till their hearts be satisfied.

I will give my life to them.

Whom shall I send?

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?

I have heard You calling in the night.

I will go, Lord, if You lead me.

I will hold your people in my heart.

[Daniel L Schutte, b 1947]

The words serve as an inspiration and encouragement; and a gentle reproach…

Elegy for 'Cyril'

Last month an old man died: I shall call him ‘Cyril’. He was my neighbour.

He was from the Caribbean: I don’t know which country. I don’t know his surname. He had a wife, I believe, but they had separated many years ago and were not in contact. On very rare occasions an adult son would visit, but not stay.

I do know that he used to work as a welder, for many years in a local factory – now closed down. Some people say he used to work night shifts, and that this was why he was most active at night and often slept during the day.

During the ten years or so that I have known him he has never been away, never been on holiday, In fact he very rarely left his house, except to go shopping with a battered old shopping trolley.

He kept the front of his terraced house tidy, until near the end, painting the windowsills and the top of the wall around the tiny front garden (which was filled with a mixture of wheelie bins, boxes, and odd pieces of hardware).

Most frequently, though, he could be found on his front door step, or at the gate in front of his garden-terrace house, generally dressed in a chaotic assortment of the sort of clothes one might expect to garden in, (or in some cases to sleep in). He would greet passers by (everyone seemed to know him) and was keen to chat.

His conversation was of the style that is generally referred to as ‘holding forth’: he was not a good listener. His main theme was the extent to which a wide variety of persons and institutions had ripped him off in various ways: banks who had stolen his money, plumbers who had walked off with his tools, relatives who had let him down. Everyone he encountered seemed to be ‘boogers’, as he put it, out to exploit him.

Despite this, he was generally affable and friendly to me, and to the other people who stayed to talk (or, rather, to listen). He was something of a hazard if one was going out and in a hurry, as there was an implicit expectation that one wander across to ‘say hello’, an activity that might cost ten minutes or more. I sometimes used to peer nervously from my spy hole, and wait for him to disappear indoors before venturing hastily to my car.

He liked to know about everything that was going on, which did mean that our street had a sort of one man neighbourhood watch, but, on the other hand, also meant that I couldn’t receive a single houseguest without comment and questions. When indoors and awake, he would frequently stand at his upstairs window peering at the world outside, and unashamedly watching me as I pottered around in my study, which always left me feeling a bit unsettled, as it would have been the height of rudeness to draw the curtains.

About a year ago Cyril was diagnosed with lung cancer. He told me (proudly, it seemed) that the prognosis was poor and that he was expected to die from it, which indeed he did.

The initial period of the illness seemed to mainly consist of a new opportunity to identify new targets for his complaints: nurses, social workers, care assistants.

It did seem, initially, that he had some cause for complaint. A promised, and much needed, oxygen cylinder and mask failed to arrive for weeks. However, it soon became clear that things were a bit more complicated.

Apparently the house had been found to be cluttered and messy, to an extent that left no room to safely install the oxygen tank. Worse, the house was filthy: mouse droppings lay deep over every surface, the fridge and freezer were full of decaying food. Some workers, understandably, refused to visit.

Enter, stage left, ‘Mr and Mrs Mohammed’, Cyril’s next-door neighbours. They took it upon themselves to clean his house for him so that the carers and nurses could visit, and so that Cyril’s needs could be addressed. This was a literally thankless task: Cyril resented their intrusion into his home, his life, and when Mr Mohammed bought and fitted a new fridge-freezer to replace the previous noisome monstrosity, Cyril was convinced that he had overcharged him for it: in fact, the fridge was considerably more expensive than Mr Mohammed told him, and he had withheld the bill to protect the old man’s pride.

The scene was now ready for the caring services to take full control of Cyril’s life. The oxygen cylinder arrived, a rota of home carers started to visit. It was decided that Cyril would benefit from improved kitchen and bathroom facilities, and the builders arrived.

For a while Cyril continued to appear, occasionally, at his front door, ready to rail against the injustices visited upon him. More often, he would open the door and flap it open and shut, moaning loudly as he tried to fill his dying lungs, as unashamed of this as he had been, in the past, of gazing keenly across at me in my study.

Then he stopped appearing. I never saw or heard him again.

He was admitted to hospital, where some neighbours visited him. He should have stayed, should have died, in hospital, but he complained that he wanted to go home, so his wishes were complied with, and home he went.

I continued to see the flickering light of the TV in his downstairs front room, and the procession of carers in, and out.

Then one day Mr Mohammed came over to me. He told me that he had heard Cyril banging on the party wall. He had gone over and found him, soiled and hungry. The home care worker had failed to attend, and he had been left, unfed and lying in his own shit, for 24 hours. Mr Mohammed cleaned him, and fed him. I later saw a visiting nurse, and raised my concerns.

The next day he was seen at his front door, shouting and begging for food.

The next day he was dead.

Mr Mohamed told me and another neighbour that he hoped to find out the day of the funeral, so that we could attend, but either he was unsuccessful or he forgot to tell me. My understanding is that none of his family expressed an interest in attending. I believe that a social worker took his ashes back to his Caribbean home.

I’m not writing this to complain about how he was treated by the authorities: I believe, on the whole, they did their best for a difficult old man in difficult circumstances. I think I am mainly writing this because I think his life, and his passing, should be acknowledged.

But I am also writing this because I am ashamed of my part in this story: my complicity in a society that allows someone to die like this.

I do not, on any significant level, grieve for him, very much. My life goes on, much as before. He was a walk-on part in the play of my life. I don’t think anyone will be grieving for him much. He was not very useful, liked but not greatly loved by his neighbours, and as he died he watched the small castle he had built around him get dismantled, piece by piece, until there was nothing left.

The manner of his death diminishes me: forgive me, Lord.

Rest eternal grant him o Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.

Embattled and Far from Home

I’m feeling a bit embattled today. Everywhere I look I hear and read people to whom a materialist world view is self-evidently the only plausible one. Their arguments are compelling and I feel out-gunned. Of course, the person who wins an argument isn’t necessarily (or even normally?) right: they could just be a better arguer. But it still has a wearying effect.

(It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that one of my weaknesses (strengths?) is that of being easily convinced by anyone who is confident in their own position. Thus I will spend time in the company of a believing friend of mine whose intellectual horsepower appears to exceed my own and feel my reposts crumbling to dust, then meet an atheist friend and find exactly the same thing happening. I end up thinking how similar the two people are, and how different from me. And yes, I am one of those people who (briefly) believed it when I was told that the word ‘gullible’ had been removed from the dictionary…)

Mind you, it’s not surprising that I’m feeling a bit vulnerable at the moment. I’ve been overworking for months (last week 46 hours for a 35 hour contract) and it’s now a bank holiday Monday and I’m alone, so there is plenty of scope for an unhealthy reactionary ennui (i.e. I’ve kind of flopped). Also, a much anticipated trip to Egypt, due to begin in about 2 weeks time, looks like being cancelled due to a new advisory from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Both my parents are rather unwell. I have a tiresome chesty cough. And I am dissatisfied with my last post, which ran out steam before the end.

I’m tempted to grasp hold and cling to my faith as a person in the sea would grasp a log (or a frightened child a teddy-bear) but I try not to. Apart from anything else it’s undignified. I try to let the waves carry me, to accept the apparent bleakness and let it lead me into wisdom.

But, to all you atheists and materialists out there, I ask you to remember one thing. Yes, for believers faith is a comfort (sometimes: other times it’s a colossal inconvenience). We live believing things for which there is no scientific evidence. But be careful. There is no scientific evidence for free will, nor for our sense of time as progressing from past to future. Yet you live as though there were and your heart believes that there is. In fact if you tried to act as though there weren’t I suspect you’d end up as a psychopath.

On a broader level, we generally believe that what we do matters, in the infinitesimally short and tiny flickers we call our lives. But in the grand scheme of things, cosmologically speaking, it’s hard to see why. Yet to believe that what you do doesn’t matter is generally a clear indication that your mentally unwell.

In other words, I contend that no-one really thinks as rationally as they purport to.

But back to me.

Comparing grumpinesses with the rector at church yesterday (he was the one who had arranged the trip to Egypt) he pointed out that Egypt has an odd place in Judao-Christian thought. It is the place God’s people try to escape from, it is a place of exile, like Babylon, far from home, a place of suffering, exclusion, and barrenness. Yet the Israelites time in Egypt was a very necessary part of their experience. Their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land was, arguably, what came to define them. I’m an exile, far from home. At the moment I feel far from home. But maybe I should welcome this…

Rain

(This is the post I was going to make  on 14^th July but then didn’t, because I diverted myself into issues of honesty [link]. These thoughts were prompted by an experience about a month ago: fortunately, though, it’s rained quite often since to remind me about the experience)

(Hence, though, my use of the Historic Present…)

I am sitting, alone, in my conservatory, and it is raining. Heavily. Water throws itself against the windows and pours onto the roof. It dances on the patio outside, each drop appearing to leap up from the ground before falling again. The door is open so I can clearly hear the rain hissing as it lands, and feel the freshness in the air (while my doormat gradually gets wetter and wetter and a dribble of water grows towards me).

Sometimes the storm appears to ease a little, but sometimes it increases, abruptly, in intensity, like a child having a tantrum who suddenly puts their whole being into their screaming, like a heavy metal fan turning the volume to ten, or a driver finding a clear road ahead and putting their foot to the floor. It’s full-throated, exultant…

Except that it’s not, of course. It’s just rain. Water droplets, accumulated from water vapour suspended in the atmosphere, falling when they are too heavy to stay up. The  variations in intensity are simply due to complex and chaotic, but explicable, local circumstances.

Even today, knowing what we do, it’s hard – impossible? – not to anthroporphize a rain storm. We can’t help it. How much more so would people in the pre-scientific era attribute personality and emotions to the weather. How could they not infer the existence of a rain god?

This train of thought is clearly a troubling one for theists like me, for obvious reasons. It’s not hard to see how humanity could start attributing personhood and power to the weather, to the sun, to the seasons, etc, and end up with the monotheistic belief systems we know and, er, sometimes love today.

Troubling, but not, hopefully, surprising. Any believer in possession of a reasonably serviceable brain who hasn’t considered such things is plainly only paddling on the edge of the sea of intellectual rigour.

But wait a moment: where does this stop?

I attribute emotions and personality to the people I meet: I sort of me-morphize them. Obviously neither I nor anyone else could function if we didn’t do this. But doing this is based on an assumption; that people are basically the same as me. It’s a reasonable assumption (especially if one takes into account what astronomers refer to as ‘the principal of mediocrity’ which says that what is local to me is likely to be true elsewhere as I’m unlikely to be unusual). But it is an assumption.

And what about myself? I attribute emotions, personality to myself. I believe that I make decisions that effect what happens next. I believe that there is, objectively, something called me. Obvious. Well, maybe. Certainly we all think like this (I presume?). But it’s hard to see where these things come from in a deterministic universe.

Note: I am not saying that because the concept of personhood is a mystery that rejection of the theism is illogical: that would be silly (I think). I’m simply saying that the rainstorm set off some very unsettling thoughts…