The bridge from Strasbourg to Kehl

Rainbows, bridges of dreams.... they get everywhere.... a perfect synthesis of science and imagination....

John Hume, Peace Negotiator
I regularly get drawn into an absorbing project, abandoning myself in the merciless whirlpool of the siren call of knowledge and thought…. Last week I reproduced a shortened version of John Hume’s thoughts about DIFFERENCE being “an accident of birth.” During the week I’ve read as much as I could find about the man and reproduce at the bottom of this post a longer extract from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (which explains the title of this week’s blog and connects the personal to the political.) But I’ll get there via the words of another historical figure who said some stuff that is still, 2000 years later, as radical as they come.
An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind
The saying in the subheading above (An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind) was a favourite quotation of the late John Hume which he attributed to Dr Martin Luther King Jr, though many have suggested it was a Gandhi quotation.  My research reveals that Louis Fischer, the American journalist and author, used the phrase twice in books mentioning Gandhi but never claimed the peace protestor said them. The origin of the phrase is first recorded in Jewish scripture and it concerned legal arguments, but it became more well-known via the Old Testament’s An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth in the books of both Exodus and Leviticus.  Jesus, however, knocked the Old Covenant’s concept for six in the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 5), with a typically challenging and subversive set of suggestions:

Turn the other cheek
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Love your Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Standing on the bridge…. (John Hume Nobel Prize Speech)
In my own work for peace, I was very strongly inspired by my European experience. I always tell this story, and I do so because it is so simple yet so profound and so applicable to conflict resolution anywhere in the world. On my first visit to Strasbourg in 1979 as a member of the European Parliament, I went for a walk across the bridge from Strasbourg to Kehl. Strasbourg is in France. Kehl is in Germany. They are very close.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge and I meditated. There is Germany. There is France.

If I had stood on this bridge 30 years ago after the end of the second world war when 25 million people lay dead across our continent for the second time in this century and if I had said: “Don't worry. In 30 years’ time we will all be together in a new Europe, our conflicts and wars will be ended and we will be working together in our common interests”, I would have been sent to a psychiatrist.

But it has happened and it is now clear that European Union is the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution and it is the duty of everyone, particularly those who live in areas of conflict to study how it was done and to apply its principles to their own conflict resolution.

All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality. The European visionaries decided that difference is not a threat, difference is natural. Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace – respect for diversity.

The peoples of Europe then created institutions which respected their diversity – a Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament – but allowed them to work together in their common and substantial economic interest. They spilt their sweat and not their blood and by doing so broke down the barriers of distrust of centuries and the new Europe has evolved and is still evolving, based on agreement and respect for difference.

The UK is about to be a former member of, in the words of John Hume, "the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution." Time will tell if it's a price worth paying....

Jesus the Feminist

Women in the Catholic Church

Ordaining women priests would be a way for the Catholic church to tackle the crisis of recruitment to the priesthood.  Women are often strong advocates of the values of church life; women are active agents in the organisation of church community events; women often lead the way in the Catholic education system (especially mothers in supporting school events) and what do the gospels show about the women in the early church?

Women were THERE

Women were present in key events throughout Jesus’s life, including being selected to be the first witnesses to the Resurrection. Given historical, community or spiritual perspectives, there are surely no sensible reasons for the Catholic authorities to put restrictions on what women are capable of.

It has happened and it happens anyway

In extremis, women have had priestly powers in the past: during times of plague, women were allowed to baptise, give the last rites and bury people (especially when the male priests were too afraid to enter a village.) “Emergency baptisms” by midwives were encouraged by the medieval church when a priest could not get to a dying baby in time. The Anglican church in the present time has fully embraced female vicars. Many other religions throughout human history have given women prominent roles in sacred rites: from Ancient Egyptian priestesses to modern day female rabbis.

Jesus was a feminist

Jesus’s treatment of women was radical: 

• He ignored ritual impurity laws about menstruation (Mark Chapter 5 Verse 25)
• He stated men and women should be treated equally in divorce (Mark Chapter 10 Verse 11)
• He expressed compassionate concern for widows (Luke has six positive references to widows)
• parables often have parallel male/female stories (see the stories starting at Luke 2:25, Luke 4:25, Luke 4:31, Luke 7:36, Luke 17:34)
• He interacts with “sinful women” (Luke Chapter 7 Verse 37)
• He accepted women in His inner circle (Luke Chapter 8, Verse 1)
• He taught women contrary to the restrictions on female education (Luke Chapter 10 Verse 38)
• He used equalizing language like “daughters of Abraham” (Luke Chapter 13 Verse 16)
• He talked to foreign women (John Chapter 4 Verse 7)
• and, to cap it all, the key event of Christianity shows the men running away from the Crucifixion (apart from John) or disbelieving the Resurrection but
• the women are fully present at the death of Jesus and given the first sightings of the Risen Christ.
  

Paul at his worst

Much of what we have inherited of restrictive Christianity comes from the letters of Paul or the Old Testament. The words of Jesus are far more subversive and simple. And therefore challenging with their focus on love, forgiveness and mercy, traditionally feminine qualities. In Colm Tóibín’s Testament of Mary, Tóibín presents an authentic woman insisting on the truth, even though the gospel writers caring for her have “outstayed their welcome.” Mary confides that “Words matter” and she resists the attempts of her carers (interrogators? jailors?) to remember events in Jesus’s life that suit their own narrative. One of her minders, she complains, “is ready to scowl impatiently when the story I tell him does not stretch to whatever limits he has ordained.” Mary wants to tell the real story, “or else everything that happened will become a sweet story that will grow poisonous as bright berries that hang low on trees.” Paul, rabidly egotistical after his conversion on the Road to Damascus, I think, has been the seed-source of the poisonous berries in terms of the Catholic Church’s attitudes to women. Paul’s misogyny is so yesterday….

Hans Speckaert's Conversion of St Paul on the Road to Damascus

Paul at his best – 1 Corinthians Chapter 13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when that which is perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I became an adult, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly, but we will then see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Virgins and Whores, Feminist Men and the Dangers of Custard

Am I a feminist?

I started life as a son to a mother, a nephew to nine aunties and a grandson to a grandma. Soon I became a brother to a sister, an uncle to eight nieces and a friend to many female friends. In adult life I line-managed professional women and looked up myself to a great number of female bosses. Before long I became a husband to a wife and a father to daughters. You betcha I’m a feminist.

Masculinist

How could I not be? I’m a “masculinist” too, or whatever the word might be, and I’ll write about that in future. But equal opportunities starts with the greatest divide on the planet – the gender divide. In my retired dotage I can’t help but reflect that religion bears a massively significant responsibility for fostering unhealthy attitudes to women.

The Two Mary Syndrome

I grew up with the saintly image of a blue-clad Virgin Mary (the apotheosis of other scriptural heroines like Esther, Ruth, Abigail and Hannah) and a second image of a biblical not-so-virginal temptress (Jezebel, Delilah, Potiphar’s Wife, Bathsheba and Herodias – “bad girls” all – that reached their culmination in the New Testament’s Mary Magdalene.)

Abigail, Hannah, Mary, Mary M, Esther, Ruth, Jezebel, Potiphar's Wife and Delilah

During my feverish adolescent hormonal years, I therefore bounced between competing notions of Catholic femininity:

• the ideal woman who was soft-focus, virginal, motherly and nurturing (Virgin Mary, Perfect “Mother”)  
• the temptress woman who was alluring, sexy, mysterious and dangerous (Mary Magdalene, Forbidden Fruit)

Even as a child I knew it wasn’t so straightforward.  After all, bad-ass Virgin Mary squished snakes with her pretty feet on those otherwise demure statues – not an action I imagined I could do even now.  And Mary Magdalene got a starring role in the key event of the Resurrection – so she must have been exceptional for God to pick her to be the first witness to the Risen Christ.

Real Women

But the Two Mary Syndrome persisted in the way the media portrayed women: good girl or bad girl, virgin or whore – these ideas were planted long before I even knew what “virgin” or “whore” meant. Yet my own mother fulfilled neither stereotype and my younger sister seemed to be as complicated as the girls at school: brainy, ambitious, dynamic, sporty, courageous, funny, adaptable, independent, quirky, persistent, philosophical, witty, determined, tough, rational, emotional, modest, brash – I could keep going with the adjectives. In real life women and girls seemed to be more multi-faceted than the archetypes offered by the Two Mary Syndrome.

Eve

Wrestling with Original Sin has really messed up the Church’s ethos – not bad for a creation myth. How can we blame Eve for losing Paradise? Shouldn’t Adam’s spinelessness be equally condemned? And what about the initial blame being attached to sneaky Satan for offering the fruit in the first place? And God is hardly blameless for setting such a stupid test on the Seventh Day…. Why does Eve get the bad reputation when there were four protagonists in Eden – and three of them were ostensibly men?

Stupid boys, stupid girls

As a teacher I am proud I never let sexist comments from pupils go by. My usual line was to ask a teenage boy spouting offensive language to imagine how they would feel if someone was saying what they were saying about their own mother, sister or daughter. Girls of course can be equally culpable of attaching negative name-calling to other girls who transgress a conservative view of what a girl is allowed to say or do.

The Media

The Media (more than ever it seems to me) sells a very judgmental and discriminatory view of women: physical appearance, clothes and fashion accessories, wealth and style, education and opinion – all are used to mock, abuse and belittle women regularly in print, online, in the music industry, in advertising and marketing, on TV and in Film. Comparisons are often invidious (“before/after” shots, arrows pointing at cellulite and even Woman’s Own (OWN?) screaming on 11th May “Vanessa 2 STONE BIGGER Friends fear she’s drinking CUSTARD again.”)

Erotic Dancer, Supermum, Rescue Victim or Bestial Killer

The pressure can be horribly subtle: features by women aimed at women to “help” improve the quality of life tend to focus on how to look better, do better, be better – all geared up to produce hybrid Two Mary clones – the qualities of a saint but the attractiveness of a (classy?) sex worker. Sexualised dance routines in pop videos, capable Supermums in food advertising, movie characters that fall over and need rescuing. Why were Rudy Guede and Raffaele Sollecito allowed to “keep” their names in news coverage of the Meredith Kercher murder, but the female suspect had to be nicknamed “Foxy Knoxy”?

Where next for Feminism?

Being a feminist in the 1970s and 1980s was a badge of honour among young people but there seems to be an incomprehensible backlash against the word today. Luckily there are high-profile advocates reminding us of what is important. I thoroughly recommend clicking on this link to see Emma Watson’s full speech at the United Nations. As she says: “It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals.” There are not “Two Marys” – there are millions of Marys, just as there are millions of “Marks.”

This England: Love and Marriage

“Why, sir, you know this is your wedding-day” – from Taming of the Shrew

It was wonderful to attend two family weddings recently: (Laura’s here and Gemma’s here.) There can’t be many events in the human calendar that are more optimistic than a wedding – two people setting out on what they hope will be a lifetime commitment. Two people investing in a future together, choosing to be thought of as a couple rather than two individuals.

An unorthodox wedding in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew

Memorable weddings
Both recent family weddings were affirming and inspiring events. I haven’t been to so many weddings that they have become routine. All the ones I have been to as an adult have been distinctive and memorable. One for a work colleague at Victoria Hall in Saltaire included the couple rising through the stage on a Wurlitzer organ. One at a hotel on the Wirral had quirky balloon table decorations. Leeds Town Hall was the magnificent setting for a civil partnership ceremony for two men who sported stylish brooches for buttonholes. Personalised touches seem to be the way to get your wedding remembered.

Historically, church weddings are modern
Marriage has been a non-religious institution far longer than it has been a religious institution. Only in the 12th Century – 1184 – did priests begin to preside over weddings. Until the 16th Century the betrothal part of the ceremony was allowed only in the church porch. It makes sense, therefore, that weddings in hotels, in forest glades, on beaches, in castles and in town halls are not only legitimate but they are more traditional than church weddings which are – in historical terms – new-fangled.

Irish Common Sense
The recent vote by the Irish people to change the constitution to allow gay marriage is a triumph of progress and civilisation, in my opinion. It is truly wonderful (I’m full of wonder about it) that one of the most famously Catholic countries in the world has been the first to legalise gay marriage by popular vote. Objections to gay weddings are borne out of prejudice, not historical development. The argument that weddings are the property of the church and are purely for the procreation of children makes no historical sense.

Rainbow over Dublin as Ireland's people votes to allow gay marriage

A threat to family life?
Why on earth wouldn’t a country in the 21st Century allow two humans to commit for the foreseeable future to loving and supporting each other? If a creator God exists, hasn’t he created everyone in His/Her loving image? Doesn't He/She promote that Love is Everything? Two men or two women marrying will not threaten the march of time, destroy the ozone layer or awaken the sleeping horsemen of the apocalypse.

Christian scripture
Jesus had nothing to say about gay relationships but was very clear about not condemning others.

• he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her….And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee…. I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.  (John 8)

The Old Testament rules forbidding sex between the same gender (Leviticus 18) also ban: 
• sex during menstruation
• mixing meat and dairy (eg cheeseburger, lasagne)
• eating pork
• touching a dead pig
• being uncircumcised
• working on the Sabbath
• being a drunk
• planting more than one kind of seed in a field
• wearing mixed fabrics
• clipping the edges of your beard.

And that list is just the obvious selection. President Bartlett in The West Wing expressed it well (in the clip linked here; the relevant bit starts around the 2:15 mark.) If all those bullet points above are now allowed (and have been for a very long time), why pick on one item in the forbidden list that simply fits a prejudice?

"These couples shall eternally be knit" – from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Historically (and rationally, logically and philosophically), therefore, committing to another person in public in front of witnesses seems to have nothing to do with religion or sexuality and everything to do with love, friendship and loyalty. All good things. Non-church, non-religious weddings have a longer history than church or religious weddings. Any two people can join their hands in matrimony (it used to be called hand-fasting) and therefore gay marriage is a perfectly proper historical act.

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream - a dreamy ending!

Love Thy Neighbour
And, just in case anyone worries about what Jesus’s own rules are:

• ….thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.  And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.  (Mark 12)

Anything legislating against love, therefore, seems to be distinctly un-Christian.

If God is the Creator, He/She Created Everybody