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Just returned from a week in London with our daughter Judith, and the joy of being with her was compounded by the incredible experience of being in London during Olympic fortnight. The feelgood factor was riding high and made London a genuinely enjoyable place to be. Even when the rain soaked us, standing to watch the women's marathon, the normal miserable mood was surprisingly absent.
To add to all the superlatives offered up by the British (and world) media about the overall experience, I would have to say that it was the role models that these young athletes with their golds and silvers represent for the upcoming generation. Whether it was two young brothers from Coleraine with their silver for rowing, or the girl from Sheffield who stole the hearts of the Saturday night crowd, or the young Somali immigrant who defied logic with his successes in the 10,000 and 5,000 metres, they all stood out from the conventional wisdom of what defines fame and celebrity status.
The difference can not be better exemplified than contrast between the two Katies. One, Katie Price, a manufactured pop idol/glamour model/media celebrity who, at the tender age of 34 has already managed to pen not less than four autobiographies about her life so far, and the other, a simple girl from Bray, Co Wicklow who happens to like boxing. When she, Katie Taylor, received her Olympics gold medal for Ireland, she is reported as having said “I’m here because of the grace of God in my life and because of Jesus in my life and without him I'd be nothing really. So praise God, thank you Jesus for such a great victory today."
Her faith comes so natural to her and it was so refreshing to listen to, but, quite apart from the spiritual angle, just like Jessica Ennis, Laura Trott or Nicola Adams, she comes across as a genuinely nice young woman who has shown that you don’t have to be all plastic and starry eyed in order to become someone in this world of ours. Hopefully more young people will find some inspiration from these and other young Olympians, and not be sucked in by all the drivel that’s offered up in the media day after day.
www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-like-ring-skills-katies-religion-comes-naturally-3195805.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-19094324
In 1905 Max Weber wrote about the Protestant work ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, arguing that it was the impact of Luther’s Reformation in dignifying work, and encouraging thrift and the accumulation of wealth, that gave rise to the development of capitalism in our day.
Whether or not his thesis, and in particular, its view of the essential differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in regard to economic realities, holds water, the early 21st century reality is that the faultlines in regard to countries that are managing to hold together, and countries that are plunging further and further into debt seems to run very roughly between north and south, between what is traditionally Catholic Europe and Protestant.
In an article on the BBC news website, Chris Bowlby remarks on the different values held in Northern and Southern European countries and their overall approaches to saving and going into debt. The German word for debt, he says, is “schuld”, which is the same as the word for “guilt” or “sin” . Quoting another commentator, Stephan Richter, he wonders back to the Reformation as to what difference it would have made, had Luther been alive today, and a political force in the Eurozone crisis. After all, the papal indulgences themselves of the 16th Century, were a form of fiscal management to get out of a crisis, and a solution that was based, not so much on the concept of indebtedness, but of guilt and the need for forgiveness.
"Too much Catholicism" suggests Richter, "is detrimental to a nation's fiscal health, even today in the 21st Century". Worth thinking about...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18789154
My browsing of the news media today came up with this little story about something that has been nicknamed the “god particle”, properly named the Higg’s boson. I think “god particle” has more of a ring to it. It is a sub atomic particle that scientists in that rarefied world of particle physics have been spending the last several years and about 8 billion euros trying to prove it exists. Because, if it were to exist, then a lot of other sub atomic phenomena would fall into place like a jigsaw. It would appear from today’s news stories that they have pretty much arrived at that conclusion.
What interests me, though, and much of the other media I’ve been reading, as well, is the nickname that it has acquired along the way. Given originally by the American physicist in the title of his 1993 book “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?”, it has been rejected as a misnomer by other scientists as being misleading in regard to the particle’s ultimate importance.
For me, the name appears at first, a contradiction in terms. How can you reduce the term “god” to that of a sub-atomic particle. On the other hand it also appears to me as strangely faith affirming. For, if, for particle physicists the way things are and function in the universe, brings them to “believe” in the existence of a tiny object yet to be discovered, why not, by the same token, is it not reasonable for the average Joe, looking around at the design and purpose in this wonderful world of ours, to believe in the existence of an intelligent God who put it all together in the first place. Even though he can’t see or measure that God by the normal rules of scientific discovery.
I’ll let Alistar McGrath tell it better than I’m doing (article below). Suffice to say that I’m glad my faith is in a personal, all loving and communicating God who created and desires a relationship with me, and has communicate His plan and purpose for time and eternity in the Bible, than in some infinitesimal particle.
www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8956938/Higgs-boson-the-particle-of-faith.html
In the aftermath of the Spain Portugal semi-final, I read in the newspaper reports somewhere how Cesc Fabregas, who scored the winning penalty considered it to be a miracle.
“I had a premonition, an intuition that things were going to come off and that life had reserved something for me as nice as this. When I stepped up to take the penalty I said to the ball that we had to make history and it shouldn't let me down. I talked to the ball four years ago [when he scored the winning penalty against Italy] and it didn't let me down.”
It made me think how that’s how most of us live our lives. In the hope of minor miracles that will help make the difference in our lives between failure and success. The spin of the lottery balls in the tumbler, a sudden attack of temporary blindness on the policeman holding the speed camera, or the way an inanimate object might wing its way from my foot and bend and twist into the back of the net. We find ourselves, whether we have faith or not, offering up instant and urgent prayers to some superior being to intervene “please don’t let it happen!” or “please let it be so, this time!”
And the tragedy of all of this, is that in all of this quest for minor miracles to happen at a time of need, we ignore the Major Miracle that makes everything happen in the first place. For in Him we live and move and have our being. He is before all things, by Him all things were created, and in Him all things hold together. ** Men will scoff at the idea of divine intervention on the grand scale through the saving power of Christ on the cross giving us life for all of eternity, while at the same clutch at the straws of a talking ball that will somehow help me towards the winners podium on a football field.
Now, I have no idea about Cesc Fabregas’s religious affiliation or spiritual outlook, but that kind of vague superstitious belief that something somewhere is out there looking out for me, and will intervene on my behalf, if I’m lucky, or am kind to animals or something, is so so common. So if you’re ready to believe in talking balls, why not consider something miraculous that is a lot more rational, and with hugely more significant benefits.
** Acts 17:28, Colossians 1:17
Yesterday, it was all flag waving, horns and cheering, across the capital, in the build-up to the Euro 2012 semi-final against Spain last night. Spain - our nearest neighbours, closest cousins and biggest rivals. The form guides and the bookies predict a Spanish victory, a repeat of the last time the two met in the World Cup two years ago. And so it has turned out, though not quite as expected. Portuguese resilience kept the scoreline to 0-0, and the verdict had to be settled with that infamously random contest of the penalty shootout.
So the drive back from where we had been watching the game with friends in Cascais, was eerily subdued and quiet. But a comment today from someone posting on Facebook this morning caught my eye as being quite perceptive.
"We are portuguese, and this is our "fado", we will be sad for a bit, but we still have our sun, our ocean, our fish! Tomorrow we'll be fine again...”
Fado, roughly translated, means fate, and of course, it’s also the name for that musical genre of melancholy that is so essentially Portuguese. But, not only in regard to football, also down through history and even in the current stoic response to the massively serious financial crisis that’s hitting us, it marks out the character of the Portuguese. A readiness to accept whatever comes our way, and get on with life nonetheless. This is a great strength. But this same “fado” can also be the downfall of a people who seldom seem to really rise to the occasion and seize the opportunity to believe in themselves and become really great.
With the news of the passing of Ray Bradbury this week at the age of 91 yesterday, I had to pull my copy of “The Illustrated Man” off the book shelf and have a read. Ray Bradbury is mostly known as a science fiction writer, famous as everyone would remind you for “Fahrenheit 451” and the “Martian Chronicles”. Even Bugs Bunny (”) refers to his novel “Something Wicked this Way Comes” in the classic “Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court! Buts its a shame, if this writer is consigned to the SciFi shelves of the local library, (In between Western and Popular Romance) because there’s a lot more lyricism and beauty in Bradbury’s prose than first meets the eye.
I will always remember him as the author who opened my mind up, as an impressionable teenager to a sense of wonder in the things of the everyday world, and also to finding the potential for horror and mystery in the most ordinary of subjects. The dark spaces between the lamplights on the way home from school, through Bradbury’s imagination, became peopled with ghouls and monsters. His “Dandelion Wine” in particular evokes a world, on the surface normal, even humdrum, and at the same time, full of mystery and wonder. Probably why, quite often, his short stories are set in a funfair or a circus, where the weird, the ghoulish and the over-the-top theatrical are plonked right down in the middle of a mundane suburban neighbourhood. Hope people will still be reading your books a generation from now, Ray.
The financial crisis continues to wreak havoc across Southern Europe, and the church in Lisbon is not immune. Over the past couple of weeks, we have heard one friend talking of plans to move to Mozambique, another of a job possibility in Switzerland, and another who actually moved to London temporarily last week because an opening for work suddenly came his way.
Young professionals are leaving Portugal in significant numbers as career prospects and job security become a rare commodity. In a small fellowship like ours that can have a major impact. At the very least, it’s unsettling. What about all the time and effort invested through relationship building and discipleship courses. Is it all lost. Well, “lost” is not the right word to use here, because we’re working for the kingdom, and not just for a single church. But you do feel a certain sense of loss, if the person you felt was going to play significant role in the future of the church finds he needs to move on.
But God, is also sovereign, and according to Paul in Romans 8:28, does everything well. So, where He guides one person in a different direction, He will always bring in others. That’s the way he works. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at “Soul Psalms” in our Sunday evenings, focussing on the intensely personal struggles David and others went through and expressed through the inspired poetry of the Book of Psalms.
Psalm 62 expresses it well. “God alone is my rock... where I will never be shaken. To others, I may seem just like a broken-down wall, or a tottering fence.... but I will quietly before God and hope in him...” Talking about jobs, I’m so thankful that Colin in Southampton at last has a firm job offer. He still has some more interviews ahead of him, but if he accepts this one, he will be starting in Bristol in September. God, you’ve been good, helping him through this time of uncertainty.
