Beyond the Road to Hell

The secretary-general of the UN has recently spoken bluntly about our progress to limit the effects of climate change to an increase of “just” 1.5C. We are not remotely on track for that; realistically the climate is likely to increase by twice that amount; as he put it, we are firmly on a road to hell. Many years ago, when global warming was just appearing on the agenda, an acquaintance of mine, a professional geologist, wrote about how this could turn into another “geological” event like the ice ages or the events that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs; the planet would survive, but it would become a different place which would just have to adjust to. A number of individuals and groups are now thinking about just what that could mean. Perhaps it will not happen; I certainly do not think the worse-case scenario is certain, but I would agree it is a scenario we now need to think about.

Religious faith helps us to think about the unthinkable; we are called to consider hard questions of life and death, hope and despair. Thus religious leaders should be able to contribute to this debate. The story of the Bible is, at least in part, about finding hope and life in the face of setbacks and disasters. It is not that God will magically remove all difficulties; in the current case that there will be a miraculous reset of global carbon dioxide levels. God gives us freedom to make our own choices, for good or ill. Instead, our faith is based on “God with us”, that whatever problems we may cause for ourselves, through accident of nature or our own stupidity, God will always be with us (yes, I know I said this last week as well, but some truths bear repeating…). If we do end up at the far end of the road to climate hell, in the worse-case scenario, God will still be with us. That is the ground for our hope.

Rev David Poyner

Remembrance Day

Hard on All Souls and All Saints, those most Christian of festivals, comes Remembrance Day. The timing is a coincidence, Remembrance Sunday is the Sunday nearest to the Armistice on the 11th of November that marked the end of the First World War; this turned into Remembrance Sunday after the Second World War. The events of this day, the poppies, the two minute silence, the words “they shall not grow old…” are all strictly secular; many war memorials are set apart from churches. We sometimes offer prayers as part of the act of remembrance, but in our benefice, two of these acts will be led by lay members of the churches; a development I fully support.

It seems to me that it is no bad thing that the church, at least the organised church, does not grab the limelight in remembrance services. We honour all the fallen; non-Christians, those of no faith and it is hardly respectful to them not to acknowledge this. Whilst I will be saying prayers in Highley, I do not expect those who do not share my faith to join me. A message from the Bible and of 2000 years of history after the death and resurrection of Jesus, is that God will not force himself on anyone. Instead, God does something far more important; God is with us, loving and reaching out to us, whatever we may think or do. God was alongside those who fought in the two world wars, he is alongside those who currently serve, he is alongside those who are involved in current conflicts. And he is alongside all those who remember, whether a vicar is present or not, whether they are at a war memorial or not.

Rev David Poyner

Goodbye and Hello

The coming week is when in the Christian Church we remember All Saints and All Souls; if you like the heroes of faith and the rest of us, although that is not a distinction I suspect the writers of the New or perhaps the Old Testament would have been entirely comfortable with. Regardless of this, in our benefice and in many other churches, we will recall those who have died, especially those in the last 12 months. Hard on this, in two weeks time we recall those who have fallen in war, especially members of our armed forces.

As many will know, my own father died in August, so I will have a particular interest in remembering the deceased this time round. It takes time to come to terms with loss; for some it can be a very long process. But, for many reasons it is something we have to go through. As I have entered into that process, I have been deeply struck by some words of my spiritual director, a person I regularly visit to help me look into my own soul. She commented that we need to eventually say goodbye to the dead so that we can then start to say hello again to them. By that she meant that by acknowledging that the deceased are no longer physically present, we can than enter into a new relationship with them based on our memories and acknowledging the ways in which they have moulded us. My All Souls’ project is to make a frame for a picture of Dad to put in the workshop where he used to work and where I now enjoy his tools and the skills he taught me. It is my way of acknowledging that new relationship we now have, and the union that we still enjoy as members of the body of Christ, living and departed.

Rev David Poyner

Remembering Black History Month

October and November seem to be months for remembering; we have Remembrance Sunday and Bonfire night; in the church’s calendar we have All Saints and All Souls, somehow transformed in modern culture into Halloween. Perhaps that is why, 35 years ago, October was designated “Black History Month”. This is not something that I have ever considered very carefully; in my own explorations of local history, black history really seems to have begun in the 2nd World War, with the arrival of a black refugee from Liverpool and a black service battalion of US troops at Kinlet. At the end of war, it seems to have quickly become just a memory; the Windrush generation did not make for the communities of the Severn Valley Benefice. Highley when I grew up was entirely white; I only encountered ethnic diversity in trips to Dudley. That was my background.

We are moulded by our background, often in ways we do not realise. It is only fairly recently in my life I have become properly aware of “subconscious bias”; the assumptions that we make that we never even think about. It comes from our own histories but is also how we evolved; we instinctively trust people “like us” on the grounds that they are more likely to be friendly. Indeed, 100,000 years ago this was probably a good survival strategy. Today it is much less helpful, however we might try rationalise it. Subconscious bias goes far beyond skin colour; it is everything from how another person speaks to how they dress. Jesus has something to say about not judging people by outward appearances. Perhaps just thinking about the term “Black History month” and how we react to it, is spiritual self-examination.

Rev David Poyner