City of Blinding Lights

Seven Occasional Meditations for Lent - #1. Light

Last Tuesday we returned from a cold and rather wet weekend in Brussels, and I was stunned once again by the light of Lisbon. Maybe it was arriving late in the evening by bus from Faro, first a faint orange glow on the northern horizon, then the bridge, a string of dazzling pearls above a dark sheet, and then overhead the Christo Rei, the great statue of Christ the King that stands on the southern bank of the Tejo, a mighty presence. Maybe it was waking up almost dazzled by the morning sun bursting through the window – a white ball of fire in a clear blue sky.

Judith’s new home is right down in the city centre of Brussels, hemmed in by tall buildings on either side, and so the apartment does not receive a lot of natural light. That along with the dull weather and the darker mornings made the contrast with Lisbon all the more remarkable. Set me thinking about the nature of Light and the Lent season we are in

At Christmas, we make the immediate connection with light. The candles, the street lights, the evening star. But Good Friday and Easter always seem more sombre festivals, full of melancholy, betrayal and agony. But the light that was even then coming into the world with the birth of a saviour, according to John, continues to shine through his earthly life and is not extinguished in his death. We, who are Christians, continue to bear that light in our lives, living in the here and now as “children of light”.

Light scatters .........................darkness gathers

Light rejoices .........................darkness broods

Light overcomes .....................darkness vanishes

Light clarifies ........................darkness deceives

Light expands ........................darkness shrinks

But appearances can be deceptive. What seems bright and colourful on the surface, can harbour darkness and despair. A day at a carnival may seem full of colour and merriment, but who knows of all the grief and pain, anger and betrayal going on in individual lives. Lisbon may seem a brighter place than Brussels, but who is going to measure the level of spiritual light in either place.

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light, find out what pleases the Lord.

Everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
Light makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
"Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5

"Shriving" Away our Sins

Last weekend we went to Brussels for a cold wet weekend to visit Judith. She had just moved house at the beginning of the year, and we went to help her set up her room.

While there we decided to spend a day visiting good friends Roland and Carolien Smith who are working in Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands. It just so happened that it was also the main Day of the Carnival celebrations in the run up to the season of Lent. The first indication we got that things were not quite normal in this town of 120,000 was when we arrived and needed to ask directions to the Smith's house. A white rabbit and little Bo Peep were waiting for a bus at 10:30 in the morning. Other bleary eyed inhabitants in strange costumes were wandering through the town centre. The city already had one day of fun and revelry, was waking up to a second, and would continue through to Shrove Tuesday night. The word "shrove" is a past tense of the Old English verb "shrive," meaning to obtain absolution for sins through confession and penance – wiping away all of the excesses of these last few days of Carnival!!

In the afternoon we wandered down into the city centre to see the main square filling up with an amazing array of roman soldiers, cowboys and indians, knights in armour, rabbits, lions and monkeys. There were brass bands, samba bands and even a very Scottish looking pipe band complete with kilts – where it came from, I do not know. It was totally amazing to see a whole city turned out like that on a cold and wet afternoon, and yet the open air revelries would go on long into the night.

Carnival is also celebrated at various locations here in Portugal, and right across mainly Catholic Europe The origin of the Portuguese word seems to come from “carne-vale” meaning to say goodbye to meat, and, of course, the celebrations are associated with the last days of feasting before the period of austerity and fasting of the forty days of lent.

As Lent begins it is comforting to think that we don’t need to “shrive” away our sins through acts of penitence or austerity, because Jesus has done it all for us.
It's good to remember that:

There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. And there is nothing you can do to make Him love you less.

That's exactly what "Grace" means

21st Century Cathedral

It was just a trip to a shopping centre on New Years Day.

Anna needed potatoes, and nowhere was open. January 1st is a holiday here. Big Time. Nothing is open. And I mean, nothing. But this shopping mall we passed seemed to be open. At least the car park was full of cars. But, inside, in fact all the shops were shut. Nothing was actually open, apart from the Cinema. Yet, incredibly, the place was full of people. Families with children playing in the kid’s area. Couples strolling up and down the aisles. Young people hanging out together. Older men sitting down and reading the paper or chatting.

It was surreal.

But that’s part of life in 21st century Portugal and an indication of where the heart of our society lies. People are searching for community, perhaps a way of dispelling the sense of loneliness or claustrophobia that comes from living in small apartments. Or maybe just a need to keep warm! Apartments in Lisbon are generally not built for cold weather and can be quite chilly in winter. And it's this world of commerce, the retail world, that often provides that sense of communit that the Church might have provided in an earlier age.

Compare these 2 photos - Colombo Shopping Centre, Lisbon and Salisbury Cathedral in England. The same high vaulted ceiling. The same structure that draws you in, that gives you a sense of space, a sense of upward aspiration, a sense of security and all encompassing strength.

So what's become of the church that was once at the heart of the community? Well, its not in the buildings and architectural forms. Those have passed on to newer forms and ideals, or else lie derelict and little used. But the real church, the people, Christ's body, still exists as a community that invites, that draws you inward and upward to God, and a community that supports and provides security and strength. We might lose our central place in terms of urban landscape, and civic architecture, but that sense of godward community should never be lost.

A Rumour Of God

The mobile phone company, TMN, has an advert currently on the television which uses the song “He’s got the whole world in his hands” playing in the background, while a globe is handed randomly around from one person to the next. It begs the question, well, who is it that has the world in his hands. TMN certainly don’t. They have to share it with Vodafone and TMobile at the very least.

As the shopping malls fill up this month, whether in Lisbon, London or Brussels, God seems to be strangely absent “Strangely” because it is his world, after all, and this holiday is supposed to be a celebration of his son’s arrival into this world of his. Sunday last, we were listening to a programme on Radio Ulster (yes, the Internet can be very useful at times) and the speaker used the phrase “a rumour of God”. And that’s what it sometimes seems like to us. The Vasco da Gama Shopping Centre is gloriously lit up. The canned Christmas carols in the loudspeakers all sound suitably tinselly. And there’s a rumour that God is here also, that all the festivities have something vaguely to do with him. But it seems to be no more than just a passing rumour. A rumour that, well, maybe he hasn’t quite disappeared yet. That God is in here somewhere. Behind the glitter and the tinsel and the piles and piles of TV’s and DVD’s and PSP’s and whatever else are the latest gadget. For most people, both here, and elsewhere in Europe, as they rush around to try and buy the latest things, life seems more like the Pogue's "Fairytale of New York" than "Joy to the World, the Lord has come"

But, He is here. He is here, and He is not silent, if you have ears to hear. I want to make him more than just a rumour. I want this place to resound to the reality, that God lives, that God is here, and that God loves. I want to be what Paul in Second Corinthians calls the “Aroma of Christ”. There’s something unmistakeable about the way that smell communicates – “Did somebody just blow out the candles?” “Oh, no! I forgot to switch the oven off!” “Who was THAT, who just walked by?” You can avert your eyes, be looking at something else at the time. You can try and shut your ears, but it’s very hard to avoid smelling something.

We can’t always be in a position to say a great deal that’s meaningful or clearly communicates what we believe, and we may not be all that visible at the moment. But we can do make sure that we’re “smelling good”, that the richness and freshness of the life of Jesus oozes out of our very pores!!

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ

and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.

For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved

and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death;

to the other, the fragrance of life"

Portuguese cartoon

Thought I'd insert the cartoon from Saturday's paper. Seemed quite funny to me.

"Robert Mugabe arrived in Lisbon yesterday."
"Yes, I know."
"And the European space module is ready for launching"
"Oh, My God! You don't think..."
"No, the Europeans wouldn't have the nerve."

I had to use my dictionary to figure out some of this. Reading cartoons is a good language exercise. It's even more challenging with "Calvin and Hobbes"!

We're on the News again!

This time for the African EU summit this weekend. Another round of motorcades with blaring police sirens down the street, of alterations to the route of the 708 bus which takes us down through the Park of the Nations, and of the busloads of world media shipped in to transmit the happenings around the globe.

It was a bit surreal to walk down to our local Vasco da Gama shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon and have to dodge around cameras on tripods and pass between two rival factions of protestors from Zimbabwe. On the one side, a noisy band of anti-Mugabe protestors singing and dancing, and holding up slogans denouncing torture, murder, oppression, and on the other side a handful of people (who, by the way, looked most un-Zimbabwean and unenthusiastic) holding aloft a banner that read “Hands off Zimbabwe – stop illegal sanctions!”

Besides the presence of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the local press was also rather awestruck by the arrival of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. The headline ran “Gaddafi sets up camp in Oeiras” (a prosperous suburb of Lisbon). There, the local population have been somewhat bemused by this North African leader who shunned the five star hotels, and requested the authorities provide him with an open space on the edge of the city to set up tents for himself and his entourage of more than 200 people and fully armed. Tapera our Zimbabwean colleague in the language school, only commented “these dictators of ours, you know, they need to watch their backs!”

(I kind of liked this photo - I scanned it from the magazine section of Saturday's newspaper - but it wasn't taken in Lisbon, its in the corridors of the European Commission in Brussels)

The Summit was heralded as a “Summit of Equals” with our Prime Minister Jose Socrates calling it a meeting of equals, not just in terms of human dignity but also of political responsibility. But it's hard to match this equality with the reality behind a protestor's discarded placard which I noticed as I returned home. It read “as you eat your caviar remember that we’re dying”.

Let the last word be from Oliver Mutukudzi, the great songman from Zimbabawe, and my favourite African singer.

"Life is how you make it. The quality of life is measured by the kinds of steps you take as you walk through it. If you happen to see a footprint in the road, it means someone has been there before you, and there's something to be learned from that person's life and that person's story. 'Tsimba Itsoka'. There is no footprint without the foot (Shona Proverb)."

What kind of footprint am I making, and what kind of footprint am I leaving for someone else to follow?

21st Century Cod

If you were to see a news item entitled “the Revolt of the CodFish” you could be forgiven for thinking it was about some new late night horror movie.
Instead it referred to a culinary competition which took place in Faro the other day and was reported on the evening news. It is an interesting little insight into the country’s obsession with the humble cod, the “fiel amigo” (faithful friend) of every Portuguese.

The competition which was in its third year was between chefs up and down the country who sought to produce a new look recipe for a traditional dish, presumably, to suit a post modern era.The winner was one Manuel Teixeira, from Northern Portugal, who produced a piece which he entitled "the cod revolts and comes to earth", and was an arrangement of fillet of cod, tongue of cod, among truffles and other delicacies. And, I thought that beyond poaching, grilling and frying in breadcrumbs, there was not much else you could do with a cod

Now, it’s true that the cod, and, in particular, the salted dried cod called “bacalhau” is by far the most popular foodstuff here. So much of the fish is eaten that, in spite of it being a seafaring nation, much of what you now see in supermarkets has to be shipped in from Norway. In every restaurant you will find “bacalhau” on the menu in all shapes and sizes. We can eat it every day at the University cafeteria. You immediately know where the fish counter is in any Portuguese supermarket by the scent of the dried bacalhau. And, Christmas dinner here, we understand, is not roast turkey and ham, but consists of a dish of cod, cabbage and potatoes and is generally eaten around midnight on Christmas eve.

While on the subject of cod, the liver of the humble cod is reputed to be full of all sorts of wonderful qualities to help a person stay healthy, among which is listed “to assist memory and help cognitive functions”. So it is that Anna has taken to consuming two codliver oil capsules per day to help her with her Portuguese prepositions

But back to the “revolt of the cod” competitition. The interesting thing about the competition, I thought to myself, was that here was a very novel way of taking something that’s traditional, tried, tested and true (and tasty) and reinterpreting it for a new generation, creating a cod dish for the 21^st Century. Much the same as we believe needs to be done for the tried, tested and true doctrines of the Christian faith. We constantly need to find ways, not of changing the basic diet, but of reinterpreting them, presenting them afresh so that they are palatable, enjoyable and meaningful for a new generation.