Travelogue
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
Dr Raymond Pelly: 11 December 2011
TRAVELOGUE of a faith traveller
Abraham looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Hebrews 11:10
This sermon is a travelogue, but with a difference; the difference being how I see things. Basic is my vision of an ethic of care whereby the strong care for the weak. Its opposite is a care-less society (or world): not only one in which the rich & powerful abandon the weak and powerless, but one in which the life-style of the powerful is characterized by a care-less profligacy (or greed); a deep-seated corruption that doesn’t see that its freedom is exercised at the expense of others – not to speak of the environment.
I.
My travels began in Britain just days after the riots. Gangs of people, mostly youths, & co-ordinated by Blackberry mobiles, had grabbed metal scaffolding poles to smash their way into High Street stores & loot the contents. The Government interpreted this as a breach law & order (which it was), but ignored the deeper causes of the violence: an urban underclass with sub-standard education, living in sub-standard blocks of flats, with scarce employment offering no way out of these urban ghettoes; this in a society with disparities of wealth & income estimated to be of the order of 1/235, & where the Banking Industry, recently bailed out by the Taxpayer, still maintains a policy of awarding inflated bonuses to its employees. Via TV & Internet the ‘have-nots’ are immediately aware of ‘how the other half lives’ with all the rage & resentment this generates. Here we have the ‘care-less’ society and the social instability it generates.
In England Barbara & I attended niece’s wedding near Norwich (Norfolk), then caught up with family & friends in Aldeburgh (Suffolk), followed by a week’s Retreat with the Sisters of the Love of God in Oxford. Rural Norfolk was another world, the urban riots a distant rumour; in Aldeburgh, one of my oldest friends, now a leading tax-law judge, told me he had just imposed a fine of 8m pounds on a tax-evader; & his very intelligent wife regaled me over dinner with a barrage of Dawkins-type atheism. Oxford, as always a centre of excellence, made me ask: if the riots showed that we can’t have freedom without equality (or justice), does ‘equality’ mean sinking to the lowest common denominator; or, alternatively, maintaining centres of excellence, but opening them to people at present excluded from them? Equality and excellence and freedom – is this the holy grail of modern society?
II.
Then on to Germany for an eight-week intensive at the Goethe-Institut in Frankfurt. Germans call their nation a ‘Leistungsgesellschaft’, what we would call ‘a can-do’ society, a nation of educated, hard-working people, in this way similar to New Zealand. The airports of Frankfurt & Munich are marvels of modern functional design; & one only has drive along an autobahn or walk along the Rhine or the Main to feel the pulse of industry & production: processions of trucks at speed & huge barges each carrying 4000 tonnes of freight in a Europe-wide network. Not to speak of the rail network.
What stood out was the growing variety of German society. Traditionally Christian (Catholic & Protestant), now just over half – many from the old communist East Germany – have no religion or belong to some smaller religious group, Islam, or a handful of Jews brave enough to return. Already 4m Turkish people in Germany (out of a population of 82 m); &, as the Director of the Goethe-Institut, Frau Christina Boht-Billinger, proudly announced, people from 263 different countries had come to study there in 2011. Among my class-mates were a high-powered Chinese business man who shuttles between Stuttgart & Shanghai, a Dutch psychotherapist, a Greek IT specialist, a young woman lawyer from Kiev in the Ukraine, an injured ballerina from St. Petersburg now seeking to specialize in Salsa & other Latin American dances, & many others.
III.
This provoked two kinds of reflection. First, we all now live in an irreducibly & increasingly pluralist world. ‘Difference’ & ‘otherness’ are key words that kept recurring in the German media. Given this plurality, how can we learn to respect & live with people who are different to ourselves? How can we learn from the wisdom that resides in their ‘otherness’? Years ago an American theologian, John Donne, talked of ‘passing over’ by which he meant the empathetic ‘passing over’ into another culture, religion or worldview; but this followed by a return – deepened, extended & enriched – into our own religion, culture & way of doing things. I like that. I think it’s a way of life we should learn in years to come. To be both rooted in our own ‘place & space’ &, at the same time, open to others - & hopefully, they to us.
Second, one of the rewards of speaking German is being able to talk with people in trains or buses or other settings. Uppermost in their minds was the question: why should they, the German taxpayer, bale out countries like Greece, Italy or Spain, that haven’t got their economic act together & are seeking to maintain unsustainable life-styles based on borrowing? I asked myself: can my ethic of the strong coming to the aid of the weak survive this douche of reality?
The line advocated by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran Pastor, has several facets. It acknowledges that Germany (in its economic self-interest) needs the trading partners provided by other EU countries. It also insists – as basic to economic membership of the EU – that member states maintain a disciplined & functioning economy (in their & everybody’s interest). Germany, furthermore, & given its history, is seeking to model what it means to be a responsible nation in a pluralistic world. A test-case for this, both economic & cultural, is not only the EU itself – with some nations like Greece on the point of economic collapse - but also Turkey. Should Turkey (part Muslim, part secular) join the EU (part secular, part Christian)? One can sense a strong nation, Germany, trying to work out what constitutes cultural & economic integrity in a community of nations. Economically they are saying that those seeking economic assistance must also learn to help themselves. With Turkey, the problem is human rights. EU membership precludes the death penalty & the violent suppression of minorities – like the Kurdish people.
My final two weeks in Germany were with the Carmelite Sisters in Dachau. The old concentration camp there is visited by over a million people every year. The Sisters & their Chaplain, Fr. Klaus, a Benedictine, are trying to work out a theology of such memorial sites. Is their function simply to remember the horrors of the past? Or is there an additional task of learning the lessons of the past for the new pluralistic society that is emerging?
IV.
Then on to Italy to rejoin Barbara who was participating in an international IT conference at the Monash University study-centre in Prato near Florence. One of many memorable conversations was with an Italian sociologist who identified as a Christian. I asked him: did the fall of Berlusconi mean the end of corruption in Italy – people were dancing in the streets to celebrate his exit. ‘No’, he answered, ‘corruption is too deeply rooted in Italian society for any sudden change’. As an example, he told me of how at exam time in the University where he teaches he comes under pressure from powerful families (or other interests) to inflate the marks of certain students. We reflected: can you have a functioning society without certain shared values of truth & truthfulness? If I go to a dentist, for example, can I trust the Certificate on the wall?
One further thing: the astounding level of popular piety. The day I visited Cologne Cathedral, there were easily a thousand people circulating in that awesome building. Similarly, Barbara & I spent our last days in Assisi. Again - & this was in the off-season – thousands of pilgrims from all over the world coming to re-connect with St. Francis & St. Clare. A busload of people from Brazil in our hotel astounded everyone by standing up & singing a loud & tuneful grace at dinner. What were they all looking for, I wondered? Could it be holiness? Were they looking forward for ‘the city that has foundations, whose maker & builder is God’ (Hebrews 11:10), for a depth & fullness of life that only God can give?
My concluding reflection also comes from a Franciscan. He spoke of the need to recover ‘the true joy of living’; but this in the knowledge that our lives are now bound up with those who are different from ourselves. That’s step one. Step two is a heightened awareness that the environment is our greatest & shared gift, but a gift that has to be reciprocated with care, not exploitation. With these two things in mind – the joy & the care - we could have a society with a truly life-giving culture, one that is also just & free, & one set in a world that is physically sustainable.
At Christmas, then, we can focus on the joy of God reflected in the eyes of the Christ-child – his vision that can become ours; and, equally, on the care of God lived out in the One who gave himself that we all might care for each other & for our world & in that way have a future.
