Hope Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Unforced Rhythms

April 24, 2016

Banksy on the mount IV: Be the change you want to see in the world…

Now when he saw the crowds,

he went into the urban jungle

and began to paint…

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…

for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

No-one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

.Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink;

or about your body, what you will wear.

Is not life more important than food,

and the body more important than clothes?

And why do you worry about clothes?

See how the lilies of the field grow.

They do not labour or spin.

Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged.

For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged,

and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you..

Ask and it will be given to you;

seek and you will find;

knock and the door will be opened to you.

In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…

but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven.

But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

To see the rest of the series, Click on Let Justice Roll>Banksy on the mount

March 26, 2016March 26, 2016

Easter Weekend: Holding Hope along with Anger

Just days after writing my two ‘angry’ blogs (SIDS, restorative justice and big tobacco: why I’m feeling angry; and George Osborne’s budget: more reasons to be angry), Europe was racked by another terrorist attack, this time in Brussels. Violence continues to shake our streets. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, innocent women, children and men continue to flee from their homes in terror, and risk their lives in desperate bids for freedom. And, closer to home, it seems to me, as I walk through the streets of Coventry, that the number of homeless young men is once again increasing.

The inequalities, the injustice, the violence, hatred and greed seem to continue unabated.

And yet, in this same week, we saw David Cameron’s government do a U-turn on cutting disability benefits; a WHO report highlighted that the proportion of British 15 year olds who reported having their first cigarette at age 13 fell from 24% to 17% from 2009-2010 to 2013-2014; and the House of Lords voted to amend the immigration bill in order to require the government to allow 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees into our country.

In spite of the darkness, there is always reason to hope.

Good Friday

Yesterday, I sat in silence and tears for our Good Friday service; angry still at the injustice of our world.

Like many other good men and women, Jesus was assassinated because he dared to confront the unjust powers of his day. He walked the road of non-violent confrontation, and it cost him his life. Others, too have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed for speaking out for justice and peace: one only has to think of people such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Romero, or Aung San Suu Kyi.

When I wake tomorrow, 2,000 years after Jesus gave his life, the injustice will still be there. So, too, will the terror, hatred, greed, violence, and the untold suffering of millions around our world.

So I will still be angry.

But I will also carry with me a ray of hope.

Easter Day

If (and I accept that for many this is a huge ‘if’) Jesus truly did rise from the dead as the gospels tell us, then there really is hope. The resurrection of Jesus boldly proclaims that violence, suffering, injustice and greed do not have the last word. That ultimately death itself is defeated and has no power.

So I will hold onto my anger, believing that this world should be different. And I will hold onto hope, believing that this world will one day be different. And I will celebrate the gift of love that is stronger than death.

January 27, 2016

To a semi-circle 2: seeking joy

I greet you once again – transected;

put asunder, rent in twain.

This sudden loss – so unexpected;

fullness fractured, comfort slain.

Those shadowed hours creep, oh so slowly.

Earth’s deep pain: a silent roar.

We see in part that thing, most holy

promise of a brighter shore.

Tears of grief rain down, unbaden

the sun, concealed, completes her arc.

The dove returns once more, unladen,

weary of the lingering dark.

Till from aloft the lookout shouts, “Ahoy!”

The half-bow that we see against the rain

is but a herald of a world made whole again.

Helen making rainbows in the waterfall at Tanay, Manila, January 2012

December 20, 2015

Where is my God?

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God.

For I will yet praise him, my saviour and my God.

Psalm 42

And yet my soul is troubled. Downcast. I long for something more.

Where is my God?

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Where can I go and meet with God?

I lay in bed last night, troubled and disturbed by judgemental attitudes – in the church and in our society – attitudes that condemn and blame, that offer no hope. That say to the messy, troubled parents at Dudley Lodge[1], or to other young people, pushed out by the very society that condemns them: “You’re not good enough”, “You don’t deserve this.”

But I don’t see that. They are beautiful, mixed-up, traumatised kids who surely deserve something better than what life has dealt them. Surely they deserve a hope and a future – for themselves and their children (and isn’t that, after all, what Dudley Lodge is all about – offering a hope and a future?) Not to be written off, cast down, given up on.

Where is my God for them?

I hate the abuse, the violence, the control that messes people’s lives, that destroys both the abuser and the abused; that says to its victims (abuser and abused), “You are filth, scum. You are no beloved child of God – created, beautiful, in God’s own image. NO – you are worthless, ugly, not worth the bother.”

How can I go “with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng”?

Where is my God when, behind closed doors, women and children scream out in silence?

And where is my God while the bombs fall on Syria? While hundreds of thousands leave their homes in terror, risking their lives in search of something better? Or stay, amidst the gunfire and explosions, desperately longing for a peace that will not come?

All your waves and breakers have swept over me.

[1] A local family assessment unit where Lois and I have recently started spending some time each week with the residents and their babies.

October 19, 2015October 19, 2015

A Raja of the Road

Balvinder Singh, son of Punjab Singh, Prince of Taxi Drivers, may your moustache never grow grey! Nor your liver cave in with cirrhosis. Nor your precious Hindustan Ambassador ever again crumple in a collision – like the one we had with the van carrying Mongo Frooty Drink.

Although during my first year in Delhi I remember thinking that the traffic had seemed both anarchic and alarming, by my second visit I had come to realize that it was in fact governed by very strict rules. Right of way belongs to the driver of the largest vehicles. Buses give way to heavy trucks, Ambassadors give way to buses, and bicyclists give way to everything except pedestrians. On the road, as in many other aspects of Indian life, Might is Right.

Yet Mr Balvinder Singh is an individualist who believes in the importance of asserting himself. While circumstances may force him to defer to buses and lorries, he has never seen the necessity of giving way to the tinny new Maruti vans which, though taller than his Ambassador, are not so heavily built. After all, Mr Singh is a Kshatriya by caste, a warrior, and like his ancestors he is keen to show that he is afraid of nothing. He disdains such cowardly acts as looking in wing mirrors or using his indicators. His Ambassador is his chariot, his klaxon his sword. Weaving into the oncoming traffic, playing ‘chicken’ with the other taxis, Balvinder Singh is a Raja of the Road.

Continue reading “A Raja of the Road”