Living Wittily

Zimbabwe, Mugabe, Politics and Prayer

Like most other folk who hope for a world where everybody gets a decent life chance, I've watched the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorate in a process of unravelling from corrupt oppression, through violent intimidation, to what is now a tangled mess of human misery, fear and suffering, and the very real possibility that Mugabe is there to stay for the foreseeable future. My emotional responses move from visceral outrage, to impotent rage to headshaking disbelief at the lack of international machinery capable of removing such a brutal threat to the lives and wellbeing of an entire nation.

Discussions, arguments, negotiations, opinions, resolutions, - there is a very real danger in our world when there is no international forum capable of withstanding the defiance and violence of those who seize power and use it against their own people. The United Nations once again presents as an instituiton so administratively cumbersome, so politically timid, so addicted to rhetoric, so crippled by the impossible expectation that it can perform balancing acts capable of meeting the vested interests of the key actors, that it has been marginalised in a process that has gone on now for years. And the South African President who has favoured quiet background diplomacy is now identified with an election that wasn't only dishonest, a sham and a mockery of the people of Zimbabwe, but an election which has also become a dangerous focus of polarised enmities and intimdiation. Neighbouring states and African para-national organistations will have their own reasons for non-intervention - but whatever else those reasons are, it is hard to consider them humanitarian or motivated by any balancing concern for political and social justice.

I've never pretended that this blog is a place of political expertise, and on serious matters it is more important to be wise than clever, reticent than outspoken.The contemporary political complexities of Africa are so tied up with colonial history, imperial legacies, economic inequities, tribal hostilities and nationalist and political ideologies, that it is is hard to see past them to the human tragedy of a continent rich in resources, so vibrant with human life in its diversity and possibility. So I'm not looking for, becuase I'm not  sure if they are there to be found, quick, painless or even painful solutions.

But as a Christian theologian I am not prepared to back off as if the Gospel of Jesus Christ has no relevance, as if our calling as ministers of reconciliation has no practical purchase in such an unreconciled world, and as if our bearing witness to Jesus as the one in whom the Kingdom has, is and will come, was and is merely wishful thinking. So I am spending a while today thinking about Zimbabwe; wondering what crucifixion and resurrection, love and reconciliation, mercy and judgement, as revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, might lead me to conclude and to pray -

• for the people of Zimbabwe
• for Robert Mugabe
• for the United Nations
• for Africa and its future

I invite you to join your voice with all those praying for justice, peace and reconciliation.

Update

Just watched the Andrew Marr show and heard Desmond Tutu followed by John Sentamu. Two Anglican church leaders, with deep, deep roots in Africa, speaking truth to power and doing so as those with moral authority. Their right to speak on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe, and the influence their words have, give further strength to the international community. Off to church now, to pray and imagine a hopeful future for those who live in fear and despair.

The Road Home - immigration, identity and the gift of welcome

One of the less obvious ways of sensing what is going on around us is to ask what kinds of stories people are telling, and what kinds of novels people are writing. Cultural shifts can be gradual and unnoticed, like tectonic plates moving without collision; or they can be sudden and disruptive if the plates collide or suddenly shift. Rose Tremain's novel, The Road Home, won the the recent awards for the Orange Prize. It's a story about Lev, an Eastern European migrant worker who comes to Britain, his struggle to survive as a stranger and foreigner in a world now harshly defined by economic inequities, and the consequent draining of hope and energy from those who didn't start off with undeserved advantages.

One of the judges in the Orange panel made a comment that might indicate one of those tectonic cultural changes - and whether it is gradual and unnoticed, or latently destabilising remains uncertain, and may depend upon our capacity as a country to welcome the stranger. Referring to the 120 submissions for the prize he observed that the key themes were, "immigration and identity and, alongside that, loss and bereavement. And these themes are connected. In an age of globalisation and migration these are the questions that we grapple with." What Tremain has done is provide a compassionate and humane window into the experience of those who come from one country to another to work for a living, and to work for a better life for them and their families. It isn't so much homelessness as economically impelled exile; and that exile involves cultural displacement, emotional loneliness, relational deprivation from those friendships and family ties that sustain and replenish identity. Involuntary economic exile can drain away hopefulness, and leave no sense of life's purpose beyond the desperate search for survival and the small freedoms that some money might bring to those entrapped in a relentlessly uncompromising global market.

Tremain's book is an essential corrective, a gently prophetic invitation to readers to respond with human sympathy and understanding to those who have to leave home in order to earn what is needed to live - both for themeselves and for those they themselves love, and leave at home. Tabloid harangues about cheap labour, job stealing, Britishness and a whole lot of other strident resentful excuses for exclusion are at best annoyingly selfish, at worst uninformed rants about the virtues of hating. A novelist who writes imaginatively and tellingly into the experience of those who come as strangers to our country, is one whose role as instructor in social ethics and humane citizenship, gives us a cultural gift that deserves its own kind of prize. Voices like hers, and demonstrations of bridge-building through narrative shaped by imaginative empathy, give hope for those of us listening for signs of our own culture's capacity for hospitality, welcome, friendship, and some signs that we are coming to recognise it is in our own interests as human beings to 'look humanely forth in human life'.

The unholy trinity of 'Money, Football Dominance, and the Cosmic Scale Ego'.

Don't know how many regulars to this blog have any interest in football. But I think most probably have considerable interest in issues of justice, human flourishing, use and abuse of power, and the dangers of globalised capitalism and consumerism when they are made the absolute standard by which human activity is judged. So from a weekend of action and news - some reflections.

Queen of the South, a wee team from Dumfries, played in the Scottish Cup Final against one of the two the wealthiest clubs in Scotland. The final score of 3-2 to Rangers points to a close game, and the sheer romance of a rural town virtually emptied as 17,000+ went to support the local team. David and Goliath it wasn't - cos the big guy won this time. What was recognisable was the sport, the human experience of competing, trying, and knowing that though there can only be one winning team - played the right way for the right reasons, everyone comes away with more than they took.

Hull City played Bristol City for the final place in the Premier League. The winning team would find its finances boosted by around £60 million. So Dean Windass, 39 year old striker with the build of a slightly out of condition rugby player, hit one of the best timed volleys of his career, and netted the club £60 million. No pressure then. With that kind of money, how many of the current squad who worked to get the team into the Premiership, will be there after the start of next season, when that kind of money is around to buy some security and success. How far should money count in a sport, in the life of a sports player?

Which brings us to Chelsea, whose owner is one of the richest men in the world, who spends millions the way the rest of us spend 10p pieces, and who has injected hundreds of millions into the Club. That explains the quite astonishing arrogance of their Chairman Bruce Buck speaking after Chelsea sacked Avram Grant:


We have had a great season," said Buck. "In the four competitions we were in, we were runners up in three of them. But we have very high expectations at Chelsea and a couple of second place finishes is just not good enough for us."

He added: "Although we never would have thought in September when Jose Mourinho left that we would be able to make it into a Champions League Final - as we did, and that is fantastic - Chelsea is here to win trophies so, although it was an excellent season, we are still disappointed."

Now I'm not naive enough to think that a huge, lucrative, ego factory like top flight professional football should by some miracle show the slightest display of such human virtues as altruism, due deference to the excellence of others, fairness, or even at a push evidence of actually enjoying the game itself. But there are levels of irrational expectations behind that statement that border on religious fundamentalism rooted in worship of a God named ' Money, Dominance and the Corporate Cosmic Ego'. (Buck is pointing to said deity in this photograph - note the open mouthed worshipper on the left). The ruthless disposal of a failed manager, after 8 months having inherited a club in crisis, and on a definition that counts three runner's up places in four competitions (one of which was lost by the captain of the team slipping as he took a penalty that would otherwise have one the biggest of them all) as not good enough, is an act that betrays a truly scary worldview. Some of the most ruthless military leaders in human history would struggle to compete with such expectations after 8 months in charge. Alexander the Great took a bit longer......

All of which means what? Football is a major global industry, increasingly used as a shop window for the world's most powerful global capitalist interests, and now the sport itself has become the means and not the end. Left me wondering if my deep moral repulsion at such power seeking and financial muscle flexing in sport is only one of scale. The two Scottish teams in the final need money, and money and status are at the centre of professional sporting motivation, so they play the same game. But equally I'm quite sure players on £200,000 a week!!! is a moral issue of another order. And the sacking of a manager in such cirucmstances as Avram Grant, explained with the liturgical solemnity of a High Priest spokesman of ' Money, Dominance and the Corporate Cosmic Ego', demonstrates with brutal clarity, that when money speaks, some people hear it as the word of god (small captials intentional). They also live under the quite irrational belief in the divine right to win.

Much to ponder as a once football player, a lifelong football fan, and a follower of a different God, who speaks a different discourse, whose goals are very different, whose criteria for excellence are not centred on universal domination, and whose view of human beings is, apparently, not as ruthlessly exacting as those held by Bruce Buck. But then the God I refer to never finishes in penultimate place - indeed hear the Word of God, (capitals intentional this time): - the last shall be first and the first shall be last - no place then for the penultimate or the ultimate then. Winning isn't everything, thank goodness.

10p Tax taxes PM and MP's credibility

Margaret was asking about whether my MP, Jim Sheridan, got back to me about the abolition of the 10p tax band. The answer is yes - three times! First response was an honest admission that he was and is strongly resistant to removing the 10p tax band unless it was demonstrably clear that lower income people would not only, not lose out, but be overall better off. While understandably supportive of other measures his Party have taken while in Government, he acknowledged that the abolition of the lowest tax rate, which so obviously benefits lower income people, would undermine much of that good work - at least in the public perception.

While acknowledging both his candour and the validity of some of his points, I wrote back following the inept and vague musings of the Chancellor on Andrew Marr AM, to express astonishment that he claimed a budget can't be changed once the financial year has started. So either the problems for low income people were not anticipated (not very competent or socially aware), or they were, but the hit was worth taking (so what about social justice), or the system was now so complex that valid adjustments can't be made (back to competence and that well worn Reid phrase 'fit for purpose') - to a fiscal system of which the now PM was the architect. A second reply enclosed an even vaguer set of proposed responses from the Treasury to compensate those who lose out - with Jim Sheridan clearly aligned with those making the strongest possible representations.

Then earlier this week a further letter from my MP, with a further enclosure showing why the 10P tax rate isn't effective - not least because its benefit is universal whereas relief for lower income folk should be targeted and more generous. As our Austrian waiter used to say in Mayerhofffen - 'All OK Fine, but.....' For me the but is, the child tax credit, pension credit payments are dogged by non-take-up, and require post graduate qualifications in filling up complex forms and negotiating the labyrinth of bureaucratic admin and means testing - a process not unrelated to non take-up. My further question relates to the claim now made by the PM, the Chancellor and the enclosed literature sent to me - that the 10p tax band was never intended as other than a stop gap till other measures were in place, and that it isn't all that efficient a way of helping the poor. You see my problem is that the Government wants to be seen to reduce income tax for everyone - there is now no pretence that extra money for lower income people should be financed by taxing more those of us who can afford it. Which raises the question of how a Government needing increased revenue can raise the money while giving it back to all earners. Answer has to be indirect taxation - but that too is a universally applied tax method and hits the poor hardest.

Tax is a complex process. Economic fluctuations and pressures are now harder to predict, control, or avoid. But I am still deeply suspicious of a Government that abolished a measure which DID help all lower income people, and only after a year its MP's woke up to its consequences. And it was done as a publicity stunt by a Chancellor whose eye was off the ball, cos he was looking towards the goal of being PM. And much of the explanation since has been to devalue the continuing usefulness of the 10p tax band - while putting in its place measures so vaguely defined the threat of a Labour revolt still exists.

Sorry for the long post - but it started as an expressed concern about social justice, conviction politics in relation to the poor, and a Government own goal. I can't say my own concerns are now allayed. Trust is always something others give - it can't be bought, and it shouldn't be sold cheap. My local MP, Jim Sheridan is one of many good local MP's whose embarrassment by all this is tangible, and whose loyalty must be strained to limits beyond which Party leaders are entitled to go on expecting support. What I can say is that my local MP has responded to and taken seriously my representations - and with a balance of personal candour and defensiveness of his Party, for which I am grateful for the first, and understanding of the second. 

The cry of every parent, 'How can I give you up.....?

The disappearance of this little girl, the unending anguish of her parents, the investigations and accusations, our own sense of helplessness in this highly publicised tragedy, and one year on, no answers. No shortage of uninformed or mischievous speculation; as the world watches, the parents live through the occasional raised hopes but the much more frequent desolating disappointment of yet another closed door; and the criticism of Madeleine's parents, which at best is unkind, at times is irresponsible, but in any case lacks the foundational human and humanising response of compassion as they try to live their lives around the heartbreaking reality of their daughter's absence.

In Hosea, the soliloquy of God has the Eternal One saying, 'How can I give you up, O Ephraim...? It is the cry of every parent facing the loss of their child, for whatever reason.

Zechariah's vision of a city filled with the noise of children playing safely, is one of the longed for visions of a world where too many children are not safe.

Jesus' warning about how God views the violation of a child's trust, about millstones hung round necks and the long deep plunge into an ocean of judgement, brings an essential note of divine outrage to our far too this worldly view of the moral and eternal consequences of child exploitation. Child protection is not simply a modern legislative reaction - it is an essential human concern rooted in biblical principles and in the very nature of the God whose love is imaged, however faintly, in the creative consummate love of parents for their child. 

Kirie eleison
Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison.
Amen

24/7 news and a plea for compassionate reserve

The immediacy and constancy of 24 hour news carries an inevitable and negative consequence that at times triggers within me, a deep uneasiness about contemporary obsession with 'as it happens' news. The past few days the story of the disappearance of a mother, and her son with severe learning and other complex difficulties, has been told in a series of slow release revelations. Now we know that both are dead, at least one suspected murdered, and two men are being questioned, one the partner of the dead woman. Speculation is inevitable when such a story is ongoing and the facts still only selectively known; but along with that natural speculative searching around in our minds for explanations, hoping that tragic as any such explanation must now inevitably be, we hope against hope that when the story is told it will not confirm and realise our worst fears.

It is that agonising tension between our need to know and our not wanting to know the worst, that exposes both our human compassion and our human curiosity - and how a voracious curiosity can displace that essential human response to other people's tragedy - compassionate reserve. I mean by that phrase, enough imagination to guage that the scale of suffering and loss is incalculable and calls forth a communal human sorrow for others, but with a built in limiter that recognises a person's murder, and the surrounding fear and loss to others, are not mere stories for public consumption or private rumination. In one of her characteristic touches of genuine psychological insight P D James has Inspector Adam Dalgleish reflect that a person's death is an act of such final intimate privacy there is something dehumanising even in investigating to discover the perpetrator. But such investigation serves the process of justice, not the appetite for violating the privacy of the corpse, which retains the right to that respect and dignity afforded that which we with determined moral wilfulness, call human.

The inescapability of stories told through the all pervasive, ever present news, delivered with metronomic regularity hour by hour, exposes I think both the profound ethical and disquieting human questions raised by our belief in the sovereign priority of the news story. However this story turns out, a mother and son are dead, people close to them are being questioned by police, and we are all the poorer for such things happening in communities not much different from our own.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

To those who have, more will be given, to those who have not, even what they have will be taken away - a new Government Policy?

I've just written to my local MP and I await a response. Does anyone else who frequents this wee blethering blog agree that the new tax changes display a breathtaking unconcern for the poor? Or am I just over-reacting, poorly informed, politically naive? Anyway, here's the gist of what I wrote.

No doubt you are aware that tax changes as announced in the 2007 Budget come into force on Monday. And no doubt you have been part of the debate that led up to, and has followed from this change in basic rate Tax Regulations.

My questions are straightforward.

What possible justification does the Labour Party offer, for removing a tax band of 10% and doubling it to 20%, when it is both inevitable and self-evident that the consequences would be borne by the poorest income families in this country? Pensioners who work part time to supplement already meagre pensions, people on the minimum wage, young people starting work on the lower income scales, are so obviously the people who will be worst affected, that I am utterly astonished a Labour Government would do this to them.

What possible justification does the Labour Party offer for decreasing the tax band from 22% to 20%, when again it is clear those who will benefit most from this are people who are not on pensions or minimum wage? Important matters of political, social and moral principle have been leached from the conscience of the Labour party when a policy actually fulfils the saying, originally stated with steel edged irony "to those who have, more will be given, and those who have not, even what they have will be taken away".

My third question concerns the fact that these changes of Tax bands will be the focus of a discussion in one of the classes I teach at the Scottish Baptist College, based at University of the West of Scotland. What do you think will be the views of a widely representative group of people training to be ministers in Scotland, on the Labour Party's policies from the perspectives of social justice, and ethically informed fiscal policy? Given the Labour Party's origins in non-conformist Christian social conscience, I should have thought such a discussion might be of interest at least as one of the historic reference points of the Labour party - and also given the well publicised Christian values of a number of current Labour ministers.

I ask these questions courteously, from a genuine sense of social concern and moral outrage. I would be grateful for a response more than that my comments have been noted. because my final question is how I, as one who will now pay LESS tax, can in conscience vote for a party and for a Member of Parliament that penalises the poor? And does so by making the well off better off.

I look forward to your clarifications,

Yours with considerable disappointment

I'll keep you informed of any responses - by the way my Labour MP's website has the link to 'Make Poverty History', which heartens me considerably - providing it applies also to the poor in this country.

Honey from the Lion's Belly - Lecture

I've done a report and review of Doug Gay's lecture on Honey from the Lion's Belly: Theological Perspectives on Scottish Nationalism over at the Scottish Baptist College Blog. Didn't say much about my own responses as I wanted to give a full and fair report to help others join the discussion. Have a look and if you're inclined, perhaps enter the discussion through the comments.

The Good Friday post on this blog will be posted later.

Dixie Chicks, freedom of speech, and an ethic of defiance

Mary Chapin Carpenter's most recent CD, The Calling, is one of the CD's I'm listening to while doing the exercise bike thing. Sorry - but I'm a fair weather runner. Never been the slightest bit interested in padding through puddles, exhibiting pink legs turning blotchy red in the cold, and pretending that at my age I'm a serious contender for anything athletically ambitious. Just want to keep fit, burn stress, and enjoy the occasional guilt free chunk of chocolate!

Anyway, this CD is one of the better reflective collections to come out of the more progressive strains of country music I've listened to. Her tribute to the Dixie Chicks, 'On with the song', is a scathing comment on power hungry administrations, ridicule of those dehumanising dismissals of people who are 'other', and dripping scorn on those who use power to silence dissent and pretend that has something to do with the very democracy they go to war to defend.

This song throbs with the kind of anger that simply refuses to grant the power brokers the last word. There's high moral value in some forms of defiance, especially when they are a refusal to risk collaboration by silence, by resignation or by fear.

This isn't for the ones who blindly follow
Jingoistic bumper stickers telling you
To love it or leave it, and you'd better love Jesus
And get out of the way of the red, white and blue

This isn't for the ones who buy their six packs
At the 7-Eleven where the clerk makes change
Whose accent makes clear he sure ain't from here
They call him a camel jockey instead of his name

Chorus:
No this is for the ones who stand their ground
When the lines in the sand get deeper
When the whole world seems to be upside down
And the shots being taken get cheaper

This isn't for the ones who would gladly swallow
Everything their leader would have them know
Bowing and kissing, while the truth goes missing
Bring it on he crows, putting on his big show

This isn't for the man who can't count the bodies
Can't comfort the families, can't say when he's wrong
Claiming I'm the decider, like some sort of messiah
While another day passes and a hundred souls gone

Chorus

This is for the ones that I see above me
Three little stars in a great big sky
Light for the world and hope for the weary
They try

This isn't for the ones with their radio signal
Calling for bonfires and boycotts they rave
Exhorting their listeners to spit on the sinners
While counting the bucks of advertising they'll save

This isn't for you and you know who you are
So do what you want 'cuz I know that you can
But I've got to be true to myself and to you
So on with the song, I don't give a damn

There's now a book, When Art and Celebrity Collide. Telling the Dixie Chicks to Shut up and Sing, which examines the dominant male patriot mentality which seeks to silence artistic conscience and coerce them into compliance by seeking to ruin them economically. Chapin Carpenter's song of support for  the 'three little stars in a great big sky', who dared to publicly disagree with Presidential policy, is itself an important negation of political bullying in the name of freedom.

I don't pretend to know the best ways to tackle some of the threats to global peace we all now face - but I am sure that security isn't secured by silencing conscience and rubbishing truth.

A couple of other tracks on this album are worth some further thought - I'll maybe get to them in some later post.

Sport, cheating and the problem of forgiveness

I've been bothered for some time about the return of Dwain Chambers to the arena of International Athletics following a two year ban for taking performance enhancing drugs. This wasn't a contested allegation, but a confirmed offence that has many consequences.

1. First it gave him an adavantage over other athletes in what is supposed to be a test of human ability, albeit natural ability trained, honed, tuned like an F1 car.
2. Second, by cheating others, the essential substructure of all fair competition was compromised, robbing others of prizes that they rightfully won, but which were awarded to the person who finished before them by knowingly enhancing his natural capacity.
3. Third, a sporting event that is supposed to celebrate the skill, endurance, strength, speed and instinctive response, and which in the 100 metres event counts speeds in digital fractions of a second, is tarnished to the point where every broken record or championship win is also tarnished till the winner is demonstrated as 'clean'.
4. Fourth, drug testing of athletes uses advanced technology to detect offences, which means the deterrent is the fear and consequence of being found out. But if a drug is developed that is not detectable, how can any performance ever be completely clear of that corrosive skepticism which suspects all incredible performances of being tjust that, not believable.

And so on. Yet Dwain Chambers has taken his punishment, a two year ban. He now wants to make a comeback and prove what he can do as a 'clean' athlete. The controversy is all about whether or not he should ever run again at a professional and international level. He is still excluded from the possibility of going to the Olympics because the British Olypmic Committee still upholds the lifetime ban on athletes convicted of doping. Now that does seem unfair, given that plenty of other athletes with doping offences on their record have served a similar penalty to Chambers, and will be allowed to go. Further, he is off the invitation list for the events that make up every top athletes circuit of competitions. He has stated his remorse and openly acknowledged the wrong of what he did several times in interview, and again last night following his silver medal at the World Championships.

So here's what makes me uneasy. I can argue for both sides in this debate. I do think that something is fundamentally ruined when an athlete cheats; a combination of personal integrity, trusted reputation, an ethic of fairness not far removed from justice, an ethos of assumed mutual admiration amongst peer competitors. To tear that nexus of values apart seems to me to do something to oneself in relation to others, that irrevocably ruins the possibility of recovering previous trust and transparency.

Yet I also think that as Chambers himself pleaded, nobody's whole life should be blighted by one mistake if they take their punishment, admit they were wrong, and undertake to reform. In fact what Chambers was asking for was forgiveness. I am a passionate believer in second chances, in the forgiveness that allows a person to start again, in the gift of a new beginning that gives a person back their self-respect. As a Christian I hear his plea for forgiveness as one I cannot possibly refuse.

But what has my attitude to Dwain Chambers to do with any of this. Who should do the forgiving? The Olympic Committee? The athletes he cheated? His international team members whose own achievements were irrevocably spoiled? And what would forgiveness mean in practice? Does a refusal to allow him to race again mean he isn't forgiven? Must forgiveness mean that a person is treated as if what they had previously done had never happened?

Or is forgiveness more about not allowing our view of Chambers to be defined by his offence, and of valuing the human being he is? Are there offences in certain areas of life, that no matter how much the person who committed them now regrets it, make it impossible to turn the clock back and trust them again in the same situation? What would be a redemptive response to the mess this young man made of his life? But who of all those affected by his actions has the right, the power, to act and respond redemptively?

I confess to being in a dilemma about this - what do others think?