My 12 most read posts of 2011

1. The Best Caramel Shortbread – Not my most interesting post but it keeps showing up at the top of search requests! I updated it in December 2011 to include a recipe.

2. Lucio and Kaka show their faith – Comment on the place of faith in football, written just before the 2010 world cup.

3. Henry Scott Holland: “Death is nothing at all” – Some thoughts on the popular poem by Henry Scott Holland which is often used at funerals.

4. You can’t help who you fall in love with – A response to a news article where a prison guard falls in love with an inmate.

5. The poor in the gospel of Luke (iv) – One of a number of posts examining what Jesus says about the poor and injustice in the gospel of Luke. For the whole series, click here.

6. Into the Wild – movie review – review of the 2007 film about the true story of Chris McCandless.

7. New Starbucks Logo – Comment on the new starbucks logo announced in Jan 2011.

8. Kieran Richardson and Kaka – More about faith and football following Kieran Richardson’s “I belong to Jesus” T-Shirt and goal celebration in November 2011.

9. Martin Luther on Religion and Politics – Quote from Martin Luther.

10. Why didn’t the rapture happen? Will it ever? – Response and critique of rapture theology following Harold Camping’s failed prediction of the end of the world in May 2011.

11. Donald Miller reviews Love Wins – Donald Miller’s take on Rob Bell’s controversial book.

12. I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead… – Quote in the aftermath of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. See also Has Bin Laden been brought to Justice.

So Much For That, Lionel Schriver

The most recent novel in our book club is from Lionel Schriver, the bestselling author of We Need to Talk about Kevin. I haven’t read that one, and after So Much for That! I don’t think I will.

Shep Knacker is the unlikely hero, who always dreamed of an early retirement with his wife Glynis to a cheaper part of the world. Taking the $800,000 he got from the sale of his Handyman business in New York, he planned to spend his last years in a hot climate where $800,000 is a fortune and he could live very comfortably for the rest of his days. This, he called the Afterlife.

After years of procrastinating, he finally books two one-way tickets to Pemba, Zanzibar, on an island off the coast of Tanzania. Only they can’t go. Shep’s wife Glynis has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

The back cover of the book shows a quote from the Literary Review which says ‘British readers will close this excellent novel feeling grateful for the NHS’. They are right. throughout the novel Shep and Glynis’ nest egg is gradually eaten up. Despite them having a comprehensive medical insurance policy from his job (Shep still works for the company he sold), there are fees for co-pays (insurance excesses) and out-of-coverage care. It turns out that to get an expert in Glynis’ rare cancer they have to turn to a doctor who is not one of the recommended care providers of the insurance company. I could rant on here about the absurdity of the American health insurance system, where doctors views of over-ruled by profit-making corporates and how, despite it’s deficiencies, the British NHS is far superior, but I won’t. I think that, as the author is an American living in London, she already knows this. As the main character laments:

For the sale of [my company] Knack alone I paid two hundred and eight thousand dollars in capital gains. Add up all I’ve shoveled those sons of bitches since high school, and it has to be somewhere between one and two million bucks. And that’s the same government who, when my wife has cancer, won’t buy her a single Tylenol.

The money is a backdrop to the story, but most of it deals with the gradual decline in the health of Glynis and of their nest egg. But there are also more medical issues. Shep’s father, Gabe, is slowly fading out. His best friend, Jackson, has a daughter with a rare genetic disease and another daughter on antidepressants (from years of being the ‘left out’ member of the family, as she has no such condition). Added to that, Jackson has taken an ill-advised course of cosmetic surgery which, when his wife finds out, adds strain to their marriage and finances.

It is good that  a bestselling novel has decided to deal in depth with cancer and dying. It is not something that people like to engage with and the  author has, I think, captured the reactions of friends and family. At first there is genuine compassion and offers to help, but after a while, as Glynis becomes more housebound and fades from public view, the visits become more infrequent. There is general awkwardness in some of the interactions as family members of the afflicted don’t know what to say. It is a more in-depth treatment than Jenny Downham’s Before I Die, but unsurprisingly, not as good as Tolstoy’s first person narrative in The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Like, Downham, but unlike Tolstoy, there is no thought given to what might happen after death (she makes her thoughts on religion clear in the loss of faith of Shep’s father (p429)) or even on the fear of the process itself – the focus of Schriver is on what the life is like before it and in particular, a description from a carer’s point of view.

Schriver is also very perceptive in the language that is used in the treatment of cancer and, whether this is helpful or not. In the book, as in the UK, we fight against cancer, battle it, struggle against it. Whist the doctors think this is important to keep up the patients resolve, this shows through in Glynis being unable to face up to her own death. While she is continually battling it, there is always a chance, however tiny, that she will recover. The doctors always want to try the next new drug (which, incidentally, is very costly) regardless of the side-effects or the probability of success. Near the end of the book (and at the end of his resources), Shep has a showdown with the doctor over what her struggles and his money has bought them. The response is that she has lived ‘a good two or three months longer than expected’. Shep questions whether, with so much medial intrusion, they have in fact been a good three months at all. They merely served to displace Glynis’ attention so she didn’t actually face up to the fact that she was dying.

Whilst it raised some interesting points, I would not recommend this book, primarily because it drags. At 530 pages it is a good 200 pages too long. I do not say this because I’m against long books – I’ve read War and Peace and Les Miserables among others, however Lionel Shriver could have got her point across in fewer words. She was over indulgent in her own writing.

Not a writer I immediately connect with, but I can see that the book has been written with thought, especially for those caring for others with illnesses. I’ll give it 6/10 but suggest you spend your time reading something else instead.

Oh dear I’ve done it again…

I’ve agreed to have a poem read at a funeral before really reading the poem through properly! Now I’ve read it I wish I hadn’t.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Why do we try and soften death like this?

How will God define her?

I heard the news that she was found dead this morning. I didn’t know her that well or for that long. She showed up at my church one sunday evening with a friend, sitting in the back row almost hiding in the hood from her hoodie. I said hello to her and her friend, chatted to her and she said that it was he first time in church for ages. She wanted to know more. I invited her along to the Christianity Explored course that was going to begin in a few weeks. She came.

That was no ordinary Christianity Explored course. She was full of questions and surprises, eager to know what God is about and what the Bible said. In the course of it we heard about her life. It was a mess. How she had been thrown out of her home at a young age and stopped going to school. She shacked up with a man much older than her who seemed to demonstrate an abusive type of control over this teenage girl. He had some issues and she was registered as his carer. When he took his own life, she wondered from shelter to shelter getting only inadequate care from social services. She started taking drugs, developed mental health problems, got many physical ailments including Epilepsy and regularly drank to much. She was often in trouble with the other women at her shelters and with the police. On more than one occasion she had tried to commit suicide and on another Sunday after church we had to take her to the emergency psychiatrist for fears she would try again.

Yet in that Christianity Explored course she surprised us. Not just with may questions, but with stories of how God had spoken to her in certain situations and with her knowledge of strange bits of the Bible that she had never read and that even I couldn’t quite place (yet we looked them up, her verses were there). Added to this were the challenges of a seizure during one session, and another when she turend up high.

At the end of the course she couldn’t quite get herself to commit to Jesus. There was something holding her back. This is where I bow out as I moved on to another town, but my co-leader continued to meet and pray with her and began to read the Bible. Just before Christmas, her life still a mess, she committed her life to Christ. From then she always had her Bible with her and read it with gusto, eager to hear what God was saying. Let’s get this straight, she was still on drugs, still epileptic and still in an unsuitable relationship, but something had changed.

On Easter Day she was due to get baptised. She didn’t turn up and no-one had heard from her. Yesterday she was found in her flat dead at the age of 20 – whether from her seizures, from an overdose or something else – I don’t know.

So how will God define her? Is this just the death of a druggie? Or of someone with serious health problems? The death of a mental health patient? The death of a messed up girl?

No.

This was the death of a child of God. A daughter of his own.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. (Rom 8:14)

And through her faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can be certain of her place within God’s people, transformed from her short, broken earthly existence to a glorious new perfect eternal and un damagable reality.

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved.  (Rom 8:18-24)

Notes on Death: The Death of Ivan Ilyich

This short story is usually published alongside other short stories of Tolstoy’s that deal with issues of marriage, happiness, life and death. At about 70 pages (roughly the same length as some contemporary novels such as Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach), it is minute compared to Tolstoy’s other epics, but is certainly long enough to develop character and to lure you into it.

I’m going to give the game away. In the book, Ivan Ilyich dies. I was rather surprised to find that he actually died in the second paragraph, because it is the nature and significance of death that Tolstoy wants to discuss. The book begins with effect that Ivan’s death has on others. To two of his work colleagues, the death is an opportunity and an irritation. Someone will need to fill Ivan’s role and Pyotr Ivanavich thinks he might be the one. So the opportunity for promotion is there. At the same time there is the irritation of visiting the family, consoling the widow, and staying for the wake which only delays Pyotr’s preferred way of spending the evening, at poker with friends.

Only then does Tolstoy turn to to dealing, in retrospect, with the life and death of Ivan Ilyich. We are treated to a fairly leisurely description of Ivan’s life – of how he floated through life enjoying his position, taking the opportunity for work advancement when it was there, marrying well and fathering two children. The marriage is not described in glowing terms. The initial attraction wore off quickly and the marriage was simply a given – not particularly good or bad, just there. However familiarity bred irritation followed by annoyance and hate. In this time Ivan wanted to climb the rungs of government advocacy and he succeeds, resulting in a move to St. Petersburg.

Shortly afterwards he develops an illness. Although at first it did not seem like an illness. An uncomfortableness developed into an irritation. Doctors were summoned and consulted and second opinions were had. Diets were followed and medicine was prescribed. The ache got worse. Tolstoy describes it as a loose kidney. With the deterioration of his condition came the decline in Ivan’s mood. Only the kindness of Gerasim, one of his servants, gives him any comfort. This kindness is shown in the hope that someone might do the same for Gerasim when his time comes, and it affects Ivan. Lesson one: We Will All Die.

Ivan doesn’t do illness well. The realisation sets in that he will not recover and be becomes prone to depression, analysing his life. Looking back, Ivan couldn’t think of anything noteworthy nor much that was particularly bad in his life. Yet he cannot shake the uneasiness that something has been missed and that he has not lived as he should. Again he cannot think that he could have lived any other way. He remained upright in society and, well, only treated others as well as other of his class did. The story climaxes not with a great confession or conversion, just an acknowledgment that he has been living for the wrong thing – that his life has in some sense been inauthentic as he lived it for himself. At the moment of his realisation he experienced an end to his loathing for his family and a cessation of his pain as he embraced the joyous white light that was enveloping him.

There is a quote from the South American Missionary and martyr Jim Elliot who was killed at the hands of the people he went to serve in 1956:

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

It seems that this is the lesson that Ivan finally grasped in his final moments. As soon as he realised he could not hang onto life, onto himself, he was embraced by a love and joy that he had never known.

Update 28/07/11: Following a recent newly published edition of this story along with another of Tolstoy’s short stories The Devil, The Guardian have also published a review here.

Henry Scott Holland: “Death is nothing at all”

A family have asked for the following poem, by Henry Scott Holland, to be read at a short ceremony for the internment of ashes. The lady in questions died some months ago (so the grief should not be fresh). Here’s the poem followed by what I was going to say about it. I’d welcome advice.

‘Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room.  I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other we are still. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. What is this  death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I  am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.’

[snip.... short description of the lady's life]

We also heard a poem by Henry Scott Holland which N wrote out in her notebook: ”Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room, nothing has happened”

These words aim at giving us hope and comfort. But the problem is that they are not true. And deep down we know they are not true. When loved ones die, we are acutely aware that they are gone. The very fact we are gathered here is testimony to that fact. Our loved ones are not with us any more, nor merely “in the next room.” We grieve and mourn because we miss them. Death has torn our loved ones away from us, and it hurts.

The message of Jesus Christ offers us a certain hope that death is not the final separation from God and from others. We can have confidence that this hope is certain because of Jesus’ Christ’s death and resurrection.

Let me read a verse from the new Testament – the passage we’ve just heard:

1 Cor 20-23 “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep…For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.”

Jesus was killed but God raised him to life again. Not so that he could be reunited with the friends he left behind, but so that all of us can have a certain hope of a life to come with God. As the passage says, Jesus’ resurrection was the first-fruits, the beginnings of what is to come.

So, through Jesus the tyranny and separation of death is beaten and there is the promise of eternal life with him. We know that because he rose from the dead.

How do we attain this life? Let me read a verse again

In Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the first-fruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.

We attain this life by belonging to Jesus. By following him and devoting our hearts and minds to him.

Make no mistake, Death is significant. Something serious has happened. But through Jesus’ resurrection death is overcome. And the promise of life with God is open to all who turn to Jesus.

Let us now commit N’s remains to the mercy of God and the hope of resurrection through Christ.

Sir Bobby Robson’s Memorial Sermon

A paraphrase of the sermon given at Sir Bobby Robson’s memorial service, held at Durham Cathedral on 21st Sept 2009, given by the Dean of Durham Cathedral.

———-

Bobby’s working life began in darkness, as a young boy in 1948 working down the pit. He was born into a black and white world. He went down white carrying a haversack full of his tools of the trade. He came up back into the light, black covered in dirt. On the weekend he would go with all the pilgrims to St. James’ Park to see his beloved team in black and white.

Black and White. Darkness and Light.

Bobby always had time for people, it didn’t matter who they were. His humour, life, enthusiasm marked him out as a person and his love for the game of football came through. He described his role as manager as a psychiatrist, psychologist, priest, confessor and occasionally, dictator. It was his own generous heart that inspired the love that people felt for him. Five days before he died his last public appearance was at St. Jame’s park where he was given a great reception in a charity event.

Black and White. Darkness ad Light, Death and life, Grace and Truth. These are the themes of Bobby’s life and also the themes of Christian faith. St. Iraneaus said “The Glory of God is a human being fully alive”. One thing that can be said about Sir Bobby was that he was a human being fully alive.

As we come to terms with Bobbysdeath, it is right to express out grief and sorrow and tears, and we will go on missing him dearly. But today too is a day to celebrate and say thank you to God for the life of this remarkable man.

Finally, today is a day when we reaffirm our faith and beleif that death is not the dend of Bobby at all. God promises us all and end to tears. A God who makes everything new. A God who Bobby recognised as good. A God who has a safer pair of hands than any of Bobby’s goalkeepers. A God whose dwelling place is in goodness and light.

As always, we have to let Bobby have the final word:

“I was born into a black and white world. As my last great challenge draws to a close, I am more convinced than ever that we’re surrounded by light, and not by darkness”

Indeed we are, and today we commend him with our prayers into the love of Almighty God.

(At the end of the service the people left to a rendition of Local Hero, the thime by Dire Straits played on the organ. This is the theme that Newcastle United enter the pitch to on match days.)

Jade Goody and Easter

An article I wrote which is appearing in the Plymouth Herald Newspaper today:

IN RECENT weeks we have witnessed the gradual decline of Jade Goody, whose funeral takes place today in Essex.

She shot to fame through the TV show Big Brother and became known for her relentless (but ingenious) exploitation of her celebrity status, for her loud personality, and for an unpleasant episode with a Bollywood film-star.

However, in the face of death, Jade exhibited a dignity that can only be admired. Jade, right, ultimately lost her battle with cancer on Mothering Sunday.

This tragic story captured the public’s attention precisely because Jade seemed so full of life and vigour.

In her final weeks, it was reported that she took comfort in words from the Bible. As we look forward to Easter next Sunday, this is a fitting place to begin to make sense of what seems on the surface to be the waste of a young life.

Good Friday is a day when Christians remember the early death of another high profile figure: Jesus Christ. His crucifixion would have just become a footnote in history were it not for what happened that weekend. After being executed by Roman soldiers (experts in making sure a person was actually dead) and being buried in a tomb for two days, Jesus was seen alive. His tomb was empty. Over the next 40 days, over 500 people would testify to seeing, speaking to, and touching him.

What does this mean for us? When we look at the sad and tragic nature of a death such as Jade’s, we can have hope that there is, in fact, more to life than we can see.

The finality of death has been defeated and overcome by God through Jesus. He not only offers us hope in the face of death, but hope of a life lived with God.

This is what Christians celebrate on Easter Sunday. Perhaps, like Jade, we should all take comfort in the words of the Bible:

“Jesus, our Saviour, has broken the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the Good News.” (2 Tim 1:10)

Jade Goody RIP « Nick Baines’s Blog

Some excellent words from the Bishop of Croydon on the death of British reality TV celebrity, Jade Goody, who dies this morning. His final paragraph offers hope.

My final word on this is simply that the root of Christian faith is the confidence that death itself cannot separate us from the love of God as seen in Jesus Christ. The narrative of this world says that violence, death and destruction have the final word and ultimate power: the cross and an empty tomb say appearances can be deceptive. God who creates, sustains, redeems and loves has the final word and that word is ‘resurrection’.