ROAD CLOSED

Light My Fire...

The first I knew of the fire on the Harrow Road was when I tried to drive to the crematorium last Friday afternoon; I met a "Road Closed" just after Chippenham Road and realised that other cars were turning round. I was able to zigzag through back streets and find my way to Kilburn Lane, which joins the Harrow Road at the eastern end of Kensal Green Cemetery. When I met the undertaker he told me what had happened; that there was a big fire, still going on. He, being a Co-op funeral director, located the fire as "opposite the Co-op food store", which turned out not to be quite true; it was further west than that, on the corner of Fermoy Road. Apparently it started in the Alawiya Restaurant, but reliable information is hard to come by. Certainly it was fortunate that it happened in mid-morning, as several flats seem to have been burnt out, as well as the restaurant and two or three shops.

I walked past yesterday (three days after the fire) and the smell of burning was still clear. The building is shored up with a scaffold that occupies half the road outside, and yesterday the remainder of the road was occupied by scaffolders' and other contractors' lorries. It doesn't look as though the road will reopen soon, which means we have to get used to the current traffic madness outside St.Peter's. The problem is all the extra buses and lorries trying to get past each other and execute unlikely turns, added to which drivers get anxious and try to do things hurriedly because they've been delayed. Mostly we are just being poisoned by vastly increased levels of diesel fumes, but it can get hairy. Today on my bicycle I had a narrow escape when a heavy lorry simply ignored me and turned right in front of me at the Prince of Wales; I was coming out of the closed road, and so clearly did not exist!


Double Yellow

The traffic chaos caused by closed roads is compounded by bad parking, and round here there is plenty of that. Single yellow lines are taken as advisory, and (as I have observed before) gradually ceasing to be valid as the afternoon wears on. I was delighted that a stretch of single yellow lines were recently converted to double on the bridge where the Harrow Road crosses the Canal, as that makes crossing or coming out on a bicycle from Westbourne Green much safer. However, many vehicles are still parked there. Drivers seem not to have noticed the change, and Westminster's traffic wardens (I know they're not called that, but they seem to be wearing jackets bearing the legend "Marshal" now) seem to take no interest in yellow lines. They only seem interested in policing residents' and paid parking bays, which is hugely frustrating, when the double yellow lines are about safety!


Return Visit

I was stopped on my bike today by a small woman who said, "Do you remember I asked you to write to Manchester Police for me several years ago?". I confess this was a challenge to my memory, but I nodded, expecting the accusation that I'd obviously been neglectful. But no, I was told that she knew I had written, and she was grateful, and told me some more of the lurid story, and assured me that there was terrible child abuse going on in Manchester back in the 1970s. Her faith enables her to cope with some ghastly stories from her past. I have no way of knowing whether what she tells me is true, but I'm pleased to have done something to help.  

JACOB AND SONS

A Biblical Understanding of Marriage

On Monday evening the Old Testament lesson at evening prayer was from Genesis, chapters 29 and 30, giving the story of Jacob and his children. Now we all know that Jacob has twelve sons, the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel (“Jacob, Jacob and sons” as Tim Rice had it), but the details just made me sit there open-mouthed as I read them. To remind you, this is how it was. Jacob’s first four sons are with Leah, the unattractive wife, whom he doesn’t love, but was forced to marry by his father-in-law. Then Rachel, the pretty wife, whom he does love, but who is apparently infertile, gets jealous and encourages Jacob to sleep with her maid Bilhah, who has the next two sons. At that, Leah gets in on the act and gives Jacob her maid Zilpah as well, with whom he has the next two sons. After that comes the strangest incident, when Reuben (the oldest son) picks some mandrake plants and brings them home to his mother, Leah, but Rachel wants some of them, and sells Leah a night with Jacob for some mandrakes, at which Leah conceives again, and again. After her sixth son, Leah also has a daughter, Dinah (who I’d forgotten completely). Then, finally, Rachel has her own son, which is Joseph. That was the end of Monday’s reading. Benjamin, who is Rachel’s second son, is eventually born five chapters later.

This is the story of one of the greatest of the patriarchs, one of the foundation myths of the people of Israel, and there is not the slightest suggestion that there is anything unethical or even problematic about what Jacob does. That, of course, is because polygamy is actually normative in the Old Testament, and concubinage is perfectly acceptable. This is a biblical understanding of marriage; fair enough, the eighth century prophets develop a high doctrine of marriage which emphasizes fidelity rather than fertility, but polygamy remains the norm, a fact that the rabbis recognized by giving a dispensation for monogamy in Judaism.  This makes me smile when other Christians announce to the world that they hold a biblical view of marriage, which turns out to be a conventional western view.

The fact of the matter is that marriage is a civil affair; that’s how scripture treats it, and how the Church treated it for the first thousand years. Christians routinely wanted their marriages to be blessed, and so that’s what happened, but the liturgical evidence is clear that other forms of partnership were blessed as well. The notion of marriage as a sacrament is, of course, very late to develop, and in the high middle ages the consecration of virgins was much more likely to be numbered as a sacrament; it is only with Thomas Aquinas that the classic list of seven sacraments is achieved, with marriage as one of them.

The Book of Common Prayer described marriage as “instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency”, but that is not what the Church of England teaches nowadays. The Common Worship marriage service (like its ASB predecessor) pointedly does not describe marriage as instituted by God; instead, it is described as “a gift of God in creation” (which means what, exactly?). This is important to see: the Church of England does not teach that God instituted marriage. Yes, we must recognise that the Prayer Book still has some standing, but the Prayer Book cannot be construed as meaning that literally or historically, because we have no belief in a literal or historical “time of man’s innocency”, rather the Prayer Book expresses a myth.  The seventeenth century view, in the Book of Common Prayer, is all of a piece with the reasoning of Sir Robert Filmer in his “Patriarcha” that since God had given men dominion over women, and fathers dominion over their families, then kings had the divine right to rule their people. Having said that, though, I am not entirely sure how literally all seventeenth century people took this. I am quite sure that Filmer and the Prayer Book’s authors are speaking mythologically, but they perhaps mean it literally as well. Filmer was an exact contemporary of Archbishop James Ussher, who famously used the Bible to work out the date of creation, which is today taken as the literal truth by Christian fundamentalists who disparage science, but Filmer and Ussher were trying to be scientific by their own lights; they were trying to bring a “modern” scientific approach to the best evidence that they had. Filmer was trying to give an anthropological basis for his political theory, and the authors of the Prayer Book likewise for their doctrine of marriage, while Ussher sought a rational universal history. That the Old Testament accounts were mythological, that is symbolic stories embodying important moral truths, would surely have been obvious to the seventeenth century authors, but I suspect they would have thought them true in a merely literal sense as well, and most likely would not have been clear about the distinction. Many of our problems today come from people who refuse to see a mythological dimension and read sacred texts only in a reductively literal way.

I don’t mean to expose to ridicule my fellow-Christians who regard their faith as “biblical”, but I would hope that they might read the Bible a little more intelligently, and perhaps not use it as a weapon to close down debate, particularly on a subject, like marriage, which is fundamentally societal rather than theological.

RIP Steve Hewlett

I was not surprised to hear on Monday’s PM programme that Steve Hewlett had died that morning, but it still made me cry. As I said last time, do listen to the interviews, and pray for him and his family.

DIGNITY AND POLITENESS (OR THE LACK OF IT)

Steve Hewlett

I said long ago that this wasn't going to be a cancer blog, but I have to draw your attention to Steve Hewlett, the BBC's chief media correspondent, who was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus a few months ago. Steve has been continuing to present The Media Show on Radio 4 as though nothing was happening, but has also been doing regular slots on the PM programme on Monday evenings (at about a quarter to six) talking to Eddie Mair about his cancer and its treatment. This Monday he explained that he had been told that his cancer was now untreatable. When I first heard one of these slots I didn't want to listen, but did, because I realised at once that he was approaching the experience much as Helen did, which was about living with cancer, not "fighting" it, or "battling" it and letting the struggle define you, but going on with life and trying to retain as much agency as you can. That doesn't mean giving in, but it is about trying to be realistic and practical, but not defined by an illness. Steve has informed himself, and, like Helen, got on a trial for some quite special new drug, but, like Helen, he has now had the message that there is no more that  can be done to defeat the cancer, and he has had to adapt to that. His response has been to marry his long-term partner, but also to keep broadcasting. Do go to the Radio 4 website and listen to his conversation with Eddie Mair (and any of the previous ones that are still available). They are a testament of dignity and good sense. Do pray for Steve and his family (if you pray).

I confess I have also kept the copy of the Sunday Times Magazine with A.A.Gill's last article, published the day after the cancer got him. Again, a refusal to be defined by this odious disease, and bursting with the zest for life which characterised his writing. I think people saw a similar zest for life in Helen, and it was still there in her eyes as her body failed; the trouble was that she was so full of life that people didn't see how ill she was, and I suspect it was the same with A.A.Gill. Do pray for him and his family too.


The Bishop's Farewell

Bishop Richard is retiring after 33 years of ministry in London, and his last major public function was to preside at Candlemass in the Cathedral last week. It was a vast affair, with aspects characteristic of Bishop Richard: the Mass setting was Merbecke (the sixteenth-century music for the Book of Common Prayer, which I am old enough to have grown up with) showing his love for the Prayer Book; the Nunc Dimittis was by Rachmaninov, and the Creed by Gretchaninov, and an anthem by John Tavener, all showing his love of the Orthodox tradition. He wore a chasuble of his own, behind which there is no doubt a touching story, but which was quite unsuitable, which is again entirely characteristic. Various exotic Eastern clerics were prominent, and the diversity of Anglicanism in London was demonstrated; all very much part of the story. It was all very well organised, and very well done. I might say in parenthesis that Helen and I attended a beatification Mass at the Duomo in Florence a few years ago and were left thinking how much better it would have been done at St.Paul's. So, a very splendid evening.

Not so splendid, though, for Pauline, who went along to represent St.Peter's. She's of Jamaican heritage, and was flabbergasted when the city gent who came and sat next to her used the "N" word. From her account, it's clear that he was meaning to be supportive ("But I'm on your side!" he protested) but he was also quite drunk, after apparently a livery company lunch. Poor Pauline was just too dumbfounded to make a fuss, but it utterly spoiled the occasion for her, and spectacularly undermined our rather self-congratulatory vision of what contemporary London (and especially the Church in London) is like. This was clearly someone well-educated, and well-brought-up, who firstly thought it was appropriate to go to church when visibly drunk, but also seemed not to have learnt that it is simply not acceptable to use the "N" word in conversation. Certainly not in public. Least of all to a black person. And actually, when was it ever polite to use that word to a black person? That was part of the shock, that Pauline naturally expected this person (well-dressed, well-spoken, in church) to have good manners. Not necessarily good sense, but at least good manners, but apparently he had neither. Most of the drunks we get in church round here tend to be the scruffy sort, but they are mostly polite and behave when told. I don't mean to be pious about this, but it is a  reminder that you can't take anything for granted. Politeness is a much underestimated virtue!