Missing Lunch

There are few things in this world which warrant missing a meal.

But as a write i am consciously eschewing the pleasures of midday nourishment in the hope of scoring several free books. and this provides incontrovertible proof, if any were needed, that i am officially a geek - albiet a slighter thinner geek.

The End of Tolerance?

As 4 more bombs cripple London's transport network and futher deepen the mental scars of millions of commuters, perhaps it is time to ask whether the events of July 2005 will mark the end of the long reign of tolerance as our age's cardinal virtue.

Tolerance is essentially a fair weather friend. Its vacuous smiling indulgence of personal morality is ill equipped to stare down the threat of the jihaders whose eyes and hearts are cauterized by the assurance of virgins and paradise. It is also unable to offer us any protection. So today, we hear reports that the security services have asked to be allowed to detain terrorists suspects for up to 3 months. This will, no doubt, raise the hackles of Locke's disciples but in the face of mortal threat, the individualised, random nature of which is impossible to downplay or dismiss whatever the statistical chances, what else can you do?

Good old Tony is still clinging to a faith in reason and technology. The Guardian reported that he is planning on implementing the correct machinery and to face down the terrorists with reason. Reason and technology - Blair is stuck with the redundant faith of the West and in a sense all of us are. While our most sophisticated weaponary has faced down pretty much all national threat, we have woken up and realised that reason is simply not going to do it anymore. Without the liberal consensus, reason lacks any kind of moral, spiritual clout - it punches against a shadow boxer who simply won't stand still to be hit. It is somewhere else completely.

And so our weapons are redundant - unless you happen to agree with the constructive suggestion of Thomas Tancredo to bomb Mecca (no joke) if America is attacked again. What is more frightening is that this isn't some redneck from Oklahoma but a Senator sitting on the Committee for Foreign Relations. And it seems as though the distilled wisdom of the French Revolutionaries, the American founding fathers and the writers of the Declaration of Human Rights is unable to defend us.

Things look bleak to me.

An Essayist's Prayer

Samuel Johnson before starting his series of essays in the Rambler prayed these words

Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour is ineffectual, and without whose gracee al wisdom is folly: grant, I beseech Thee, that in this my undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation of myself and other: grant this, O Lord, for the sake of thy son, Jesus Christ, Amen.

Where to Find Elegance

Several years ago, I found myself lingering, or more truly, loitering at the entrance to the Syndey Opera House. This building as anyone who has ever received more than a few postcards knows, is the most stupendously weird and aquatic building. Perfectly situated on the edge of the harbour, it just fits. As I was musing on this, a train load of opera goers started to amble their way by. I wonder what the generic term for the opera goer is by the way - no doubt something befitting their assumed, or sometimes perceived, elegance and standing. Women wore dramatic evening gowns and men handsome suits which struggled to conceal the consequences of good living. It was all very pleasant and cultured.

I speak of this night as it not only reminds me of a wonderfully exotic and exciting time rushing around the surburds of Syndey, thinking that life doesn't get much better than this, but because I am wondering where one finds elegance.

Elegant and svelte are two of my favourite adjectives. They go much further than 'stylish' and have a lighter touch than 'beautiful'. They are romantic and have a kind of inherent movement and swish to them. But how to define them and where to find them?

Some people find elegance in the haute couture of the cat walk. The cuts and lines of clothes certainly do have a certain attraction especially when enlivened by siren like models. Others visit the national galleries to glimpse the economy and brushes of the masters. Still more darken the doors of theatres and chambers in the hope of finding the classics rendered once more in simplicity and elegance. Me - I turn on Sky Sports.

As a young child, one year Father Christmas brought me a swing ball. Since then I have been addicted to sport. Sport is unneccessary and peripheral but somehow becomes an arena which captivates whole nations. It also can provide moments of such transcendance which make the 9-5 wrothwhile.

My first idol was Boris. I learnt how many times he bounced the ball before serving, how many times he swung the racket before winding up to serve - pretty much everything. There was something dashing and hopeful about him diving around Centre Court, as though anything were a possibility. But our house was split down the middle - Becker or Edberg. Everytime I went for Becker, the German panzer against the Swedish artisan. Where Becker bullocked, Edberg caressed.

Now I think I would go for Edberg. He had a slightly haughty air about him, which accompanies all the greats. Today Federer has that same kind of presence which can transport us to the sublime with a flick of the wrist or a smash of the forearm.

Perhaps the most elegant of all time was Ali. In the most brutal and carnal of sports, he was physically stunning and weaved a story which encompassed far more than the ring and fight halls. Its plot extended from the racist ghettos of the deep south to the cold war arena of Vietnam to the tyrannical poverty of Zaire and lastly to the fraility and falability of human existence.

The Clash of Civilizations

Since's last week's bombings, the reality of the clash between civilizations can now longer be talked about in an abstract, academic way. The plurality of major belief systems in the world today, codified most famously by Huntingdon, doesn't simply produce interesting anthropological theses or an extended curator's explanation of the Taj Mahal or Angkor Wat's Buddhas or the Golden Palace at Armistar. The clash of civilizations is just that - a clash. And don't be fooled that Islam is the only civilzation which suffers from dubious hermeneutics; witness Buddha's warriors wreacking havoc in Sri Lanka, militant Hindu's waging war in India, the anarchists on the streets of Genoa, and even Christianity's later day fighters in Northern Uganda.

Western Europe is no longer immune from the turbulence, now measured in lives and lims lost, caused at the fault lines of ideology. Suicide bombers are no longer confined to the streets of the West Bank or Gaza; they live in our midst, and bomb in our midst. We have not experience such a fundamental clash of ideology since the superpowers of the Cold War faced off against each other. Even then the conflict was played out not on the streets of London, but in Angola, Korea, Indo-China and Cuba. Before that Hitler and his ideologues ensured that many of our city ccentres have a modern look about them. These conflicts and clashes were fundamental and intractable but arose out of the same heritage. Hitler and Churchill would have read the same classics, learnt the same history, listened to the same composers. They were the flip sides of the same coin. Nietzsche and Russell are least shared the same cultural soil. This produced a faternal squabble that sucked in big brothers who would reap untold havoc and destruction for six years.

But today we are confronted with the what Fukuyama has called the end of history. Liberal democracy has won the ideological battle we are told. Really? Has the cultural output of the West so dazzled the rest into friendship? Or doesn't the rest hate the west for its denegration of women into objects of lust, its captivity to the market?

And in the face of people undaunted by the Western baubles of money, women and power do we possess the resources - philosophical or religious - to offer a viable alternative to what Blair calls an evil ideology? The challenges that we face are not familiar to us and are not accents readily understandable. But as Christians we must start to delve into what we actually believe. Not what our culture has lured us into thinking we believe but what God's revelation in Jesus actually mandates us to do and believe. Otherwise, we will remain silent looking at each other and just hoping that sheer numbers and tabloid invective might cow the bombers into hiding. We live in a period in which our deepest held beliefs and institutions are being challenged, on every level and here is the chance to tell again the story of Israel chosen and elected and her Messiah, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the peace child who brings shalom to the world.

And ah! bright wings....

When young men carry death with them on their backs and detonate destruction in the heart of the city, and 8 men in suits sit around finest mahogany tables with the lives of millions in their hands; hear wisdom from Heschel.

We have not only forfeited faith; we have lost our faith in the meaning of faith. All we have is a sense of horror. We are afriad of man. We are terrfied at our own power. Our proud Western civilization has not withstood the stram of cruelty and crime that burst forth out of the undercurrents of evil in the human soul. We nealy drown in a stream of guilt and misery that leaves no conscience clean. What have we done with our power? What have we done to the world? The flood of wretchedness is sweeping away our montrous conceit. Who is the Lord? We despair of ever regaining an awareness of him, of ever regaining faith in the meaning of faith. Ineed, our of system of ideas where knowledge is power, where values are a synonym for needs, where the pyramid ofbeing is turned upisde down - it is hard to find a way to an awareness of God. If the world is only power to us and we are all absorbed in a gold rush, then the only god we may come upon is the golden claf. Nature as a tool box is a world that does not point beyond itself. It is when nature is sensed as mystery and grandeur that it calls upon us to look beyond it.

What is Wrong with Us?

I hate our culture.

i hate that we have exchanged big ideas, even wrong big ideas, for fake tan and botox. i hate that our most powerful energies go into getting stuff - houses, cars, holidays, key rings with dead animals in. and here's the thing, we even know that this stuff won't last and won't do it for us when the next 'it' comes out. but what else it there to do?

i hate that wandering round london on a saturday night, all you see if humanity's resources being poured out to getting laid. people dressed to the nines in dresses and suits with italian names trying to dodge anonymity's grim reaper. and you see energy coursing around, eddying around bistro tables catching people up into moments of selfish difference. i is all. come and join the party but only if you get the game. but no-one really seems to know what everyone is doing.

and in one week live8 happens and london is bombed. even millions of 'those poor africans' dying and tens of londoners getting blown to pieces only gives us momentary pause, a brief respite from the games we play. someone needs to sound the hooter, or turn the lights out or flood the whole fucking court, because tommorrow brings more broken hearts.

tommorrow young girls will be told to starve themselves or face living with self-loathing. tommorrow whole countries will get ripped off by suits in shiny buildings talking the corporate language which might as well be ethnic cleansing. tommorrow women will get gang raped in god-forsaken countries where bush and blair don't give a damn because it's not in their interests.

how have we got here? how do we get out?

To the Ends of the Earth

Oh Blessed sapling shoot who would bear the sins of the world,
Whose every splinter and shred would witness red,
Of the love of God in humanity's bed,
Laid down to sleep while night draws on.

And those on each side of the blessed mystery,
Whose dying breaths showed beauty bright,
and signalled suns blistering the night,
Until darkest sepulchures blazed with light

We sit orderly and upright, badged and buffeted,
Pondering again Your Son's gift to us all,
Teach us, we pray, to love mercy, do justice,
and walk stooped low under our bloody crosses
Until we bleed scarlet red to the ends of the earth.

The Difference between Men and Women...

My wife cried on our wedding day.

I cried when Liverpool won the European cup.

Prayer

To live without prayer is to live without God, to live without a soul. No one is able to think of Him unless he ahs learned how to pray to Him. For this is the way man learns to think of the true God - of the God of Israel. He first is aware of His presence long before he thinks of His essence. And to pray is to sense his presence.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

This quote reminds me of a talk one of my heroes once gave. She reminded us that prayer must be 'on the run' - not closeted and squeeze lifeless into 'times' and 'moments'. but we pray on the run, always aware of the one who goes before us, the one who is reigning and the one who knows us. "Don't spend time telling him who fantastic he is, he already knows!' Prayer is for me the practice orientating yourself to the father of Jesus. It reminds of a small child being carried in one of those marsupial contraptions that straps the baby to the chest. The baby can look from side to side, and dribble and cry and fight, but always is kept close to the chest.

Prayer is like that. Close enough to feel every heart flutter and temor. Close enough to sense every emotion and whisper. and, i suspect, that god has the ultimate go-go gadget arms to absorb our failing and kicking.