Hope in the Darkness

I had a terrible nightmare last night.

Approaching the desk of some calm, cool operative, I said
"Apparently, I'm supposed to be executed today, but nobody told me." Inwardly I was desperate to hear that there had been some mistake.
"Yes," he said "that's right, you need to go upstairs to the desk there."
The dream-me left the desk and began to make my way to the other desk where my fate was sealed. I experienced, in that moment, utter hopelessness.

Waking up, I remembered that emotion, and found myself thinking - so that's what it's like to lose all hope. Somehow, through that horrible dream moment, I think I learned something about hope.

I have become pessimistic, I'm not sure when it happened, but I have felt like I can't muster a sense of optimism about some things and I was beginning to think that that equated to a lack of hope. Experiencing that moment of hopelessness, showed me that hope is something deeper, and convinced me that there is a kernel of it in my heart that can't be shaken.

What I feel is pessimism, momentary fear, but not despair.

1 Peter 3:15 says: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,

There is always hope in me, that my life is worth something, that this existence doesn't end with today and that death will not destroy my soul because God is creator, his creation is glorious even in the presence of sin and tragedy, he made me to know him, and even my sin and inobedience is forgiven in the person of Christ the son of God. I believe in the ultimate sacrifice, laid down for man while we were still sinners, and in the continuing work of Christ on earth in and through his Church.

I have a reason to hope, and I will have hope. Whether I could walk calmly to the executioner if the day came to be martyred, who knows, but my wish is that even then, hope would not leave me.

Lowliness

'blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled' Luke 1:45

My next post was going to be about sparrows, more specifically the question 'am I really worth more than lots of sparrows?' And maybe I will still write that post, but today's readings for the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary began to answer my question for me, and as always, it wasn't a straight forward yes or no!

What I started to ponder was the lowliness of Mary several aspects came to bear. She is a woman, she needs to be looked after by a man, tradition suggests she was very young at the time of her calling, and she doesn't have the power to make her own way in the world. As far as the world is concerned she is not particularly interesting or important. Now, that begins to ring true with me. With a stressful job hunt, and not much in the way of response from potential employers, the prospect of unemployment looming ever closer, and knowing that I will have to rely on others for my shelter and food, I feel lowly. 

Somehow though, Mary can embrace this state where perhaps, I haven't been able to. She has a strong and deep faith that assures her of the faithfulness of God to his children, especially the lowly. In her great song of praise she quotes from Job, saying that God has exalted the lowly. This tells us that her faith is rooted in the promise of scripture.

Mary, embraces her lowliness, and consents to sacrifice even more to her Lord. By becoming pregnant while still unmarried, she consents to both bodily and social vulnerability, this obedience founded on her belief in the immeasurable power of God. This is an honour, true, but also danger and deep responsibility, and her answer to the Lord gives all power over her fate to him. 

It is the marriage between the power of God, and the obedience of Mary which allows this lowly maiden to be lifted high. She rightly says that 'all generations will call me blessed.' We do, and we do especially today.

So perhaps I can learn from Mary about being lowly. My childhood prayer was to be like her, and now God is giving me that chance, to see what it is to be lowly, to depend on his strength and to obey his command.

As it says in the quote above, she has faith in the promise God has made to her. God makes promises, and sometimes, we just have to believe that it will come to pass.

On bended knee

I love to kneel in church. Often, before I get there or just after I have left I can feel a tingling in my knees. My body knows that it is approaching the Lord on bended knee.

But why should kneeling make prayer any different? Can't I communicate with my Father in any other bodily position? Surely it can't matter that much!

Well, I think that the body does matter in prayer, that kneeling communicates both humility and veneration, and that when we consciously choose one position over another, we pray better.

As Christians we know that a person is made of body and soul. We are not sacred souls trapped in defiled or evil bodies; but both body and soul intertwined are God's divine creation and therefore are called to be holy.

So God has a plan for each one of us as a complete person, body and soul. We are at our best when body and soul are of one accord and are directed towards God. God wants all of me. So that means that prayer is not just the soul addressing God, but the body too, we can understand that when we are praying out loud, or singing, we are using our lips to pour forth the intention of the soul; but we can do that in other ways too.

We see in the bible that the body is active in praise - David danced naked before the Lord (I'm not advocating that we do that - at least not in public), the Lord tells us in Isaiah that every knee shall bow to him,  in a dramatic and powerful way the Virgin Mary offers her body at the call of the Lord, and Jesus himself kneels to pray.

As incarnational and sacramental people, we believe that these actions of the body are not in vain, that God can channel grace through material things and earthly actions. This is why sacrifices were ordained to take away sin, and why God redeems his people in a material sense, leading them out of Egypt. What we believe in our minds and hearts is completely woven in to the lives that we lead every day, God touches our lives, so our lives and our actions can reach out to God. We have a concept of sanctity in and through stuff.

So when my soul prays, so should my body, when my lips are uttering reverent words, so does my knee bend.

But why kneel?

When we kneel we image humility. We make ourselves smaller - think for a minute how huge God is, and yet when we come before him we still need to make ourselves smaller. It is because we need this humility. Most of the time, I'll admit, I do forget that I'm not the centre of the universe, so I need that time, to make myself present before him who is. And to kneel is to surrender, you stop moving, you prevent yourself from advancing and you focus on something external.

It is veneration too. We find from the earliest times that people knelt in order to show their loyalty to a ruler or god, and to honour that being. In fact we see in Esther that when Mordecai would not bend his knee to Haman, the king's exulted official, it was so radical that an attempted genocide ensued. Kneeling before someone is a powerful symbol. It is choosing to be subject to that power and it is a matter of veneration. You acknowledge and put your trust in that power.

And for all of this, for the humility and surrender, the veneration, the deep communication with the Lord in body and spirit, we pray better. On my knees I can focus on the Lord alone, I can see his true identity as Priest and King and I can put my trust in him as Father. This is prayer.

So when I go to a church where the kneelers are more comfortable than the pews, it says something!

Les Miserables - you should go see it!

I realised the other day that I have been waiting for the release of the film version of Les Miserables for over ten years. Since I was given the 10th Anniversary concert on DVD for Christmas when I was about 10 or 11. I remember wondering when they were going to make a proper film and asking my parents that question.

So you can imagine my excitement on Saturday evening when finally I was on my way to the cinema to see Les Miserables. To put it into context - it is a rare occasion that I would ever go to the cinema. I have never known the release date of a film before it is out (or, probably, after) and to see a film within the first 48 hours of it's release is nigh on a miracle for me. But for Les Miserables no amount of fuss is too much.

I'll tell you now, I loved it!

My boyfriend Andy, who hadn't seen Les Mis before said he hadn't expected it to be such a dark film. I get what he means, there's not much light relief - and what there is (I'm talking about the Thernadiers) retains a grimness which still makes you grit your teeth. But for me the story, and the film, is about light. It is a story of redemption - and I can't think of anything better than that.

The film was so good for me because it is so faithful to the book, it has understood the original intention. It is not a carbon copy of the stage musical, it is deeper and darker and more detailed than could ever be done on the stage and every bit of that detail is from the book. And it has turned out really well, it is touching, you experience the emotions of each of the characters with amazing clarity when they are portrayed in such close up as the film can afford. You understand much more deeply that each of the lives in this story is a complete person, the totality of human experience is there.

The real winner in this film is not any of the actors or the score or the location, but it is as it should be, the story wins. And as I said before it is a worthy story, one of redemption. 

The essence of the story is of individuals cut adrift, people suffering, who are redeemed by grace, sacrifice, human kindness and faith. It is a story of sinners who are saints. In each of the characters is the fullness of the human experience, not only joy but suffering, not only virtue but sin, not only reason but folly. The main character Jean Valjean is a convict made bitter and corrupted by years of unjust imprisonment and hard labour, it is his redemption at the hands of a kind Bishop, Monseigneur Bienvenue that brings light into this dark tale. 

When Valjean attempts to steal silver from the kind Bishop who has taken him in, when no one else would give him even the corner of a cowshed, and is caught by the gendarmerie, the Bishop gives him that which he tried to steal and more. He hands over his prized candlesticks (if you read the book, you know that the silver is the last luxury he affords himself, everything else is given to the poor) telling Valjean "I have bought your soul for God". This is redemption, the price upon Valjean's head is paid, he is bought out of the slavery of sin, and now he has a new master, one who is benevolent, one whose burden is light.

We see also the suffering mother who would lay down her life for her child, the man who would risk his livelihood for a debt of gratitude, the woman in love who sacrifices her own feelings to lead the object of her love to his intended and the child who would give his life for the cause of justice and for his brothers.

This film has a lot to live up to, and on the whole it does, the theme of redemption was never so clear in this story than when I saw it on the big screen - and this is from a slight obsessive - because the detail is so perfect, and the telling of the story is so faithful, the themes have been retained perfectly where other sacrifices have been made. And while some of Victor Hugo's views and beliefs, I know, were not what I believe, his story sheds light on the reality of what it is to be a christian, to be a redeemed soul, giving your life as a sacrifice for others. It's a challenge and an inspiration.

If I'm allowed one objection it is the casting of Javert. And I hope I am - being that Javert is the character that fascinates me most (and he has some of my favourite songs). He should be tall, dark, greasy and sharp, with an edge to his voice. Poor Russell Crowe, though he did the character and his inner turmoil as much justice as he could in the way he played the role just looks and sounds a little too much like a teddy bear. This is what Javert should be like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urxk4mveLCw . 

Javert is so fascinating because he strives all of his life for justice and yet his actions produce what seems to be the opposite of that, he is in error because he is over-scrupulous, can he ever be forgiven when he has wreaked so much ill, and refused to reconcile with his neighbor even when his life is given to him? And yet, all of this springs from an innocent and fervent desire to see the law upheld and justice done - it's a trap I could certainly fall into.

Reading at least the first half of the book recently (it's really long!) showed me not only how amazing the story itself is in it's complexity and in its portrayal of what it is to be a human and a christian but also how incredibly well it has been adapted into a musical and into a film. The music is perfect, the style is perfect, it makes so much sense.

Go watch the film, and take a box of tissues, and a friend to hold your hand!

Image from lesmiserables-movie.co.uk