Les and I had a marvellous weekend a few days ago. We travelled south, with Jude, for some time with Les' extended family. On Friday night, an early 70th birthday meal for her elder sister, and the next evening a much bigger party for her cousin's 50th. We were particularly delighted that our own entire family made the journey to Hertfordshire to share in Saturday's festivities. They all love being with aunts, uncles and cousins. En route there or back, each of us in turn visited my mother, who is in a nursing home in Rugby, together with my sister and her husband who live nearby. So, a good all-round experience of family. During the day on Saturday, we wandered leisurely around St Albans, where I was brought up. It was market day, and the place was truly alive. I have never seen so much fresh fruit and veg on display. It was good to revisit the Abbey in particular, where I was confirmed just after we won the World Cup in 1966!
It was so good to reconnect with wider family and my own past.
On our return (leaving at 5.30a.m. to get back in time for church!), we found ourselves with a free Sunday evening. So we watched our latest rental DVD, 'Skyfall' - the most recent James Bond epic. Here I have to confess: I have never watched a James Bond film before! I gather this one was typical in terms of the spectacular effects, car chases, shootings and sexual encounters. Hugely entertaining stuff, but my overall feeling was that it was much ado about not very much. The plot, such as it was, made little sense to me. But I gather this was a more sensitive picture of Bond, by now an aging agent, rather past his sell-by date with more normal human feelings and a definite vulnerability. I guess I'd give it 3*s out of 5.
Presumably, if bizarrely, because of 'Skyfall', James Bond was the theme of the youth pilgrimage to the Anglican shrine at Walsingham, Norfolk last month. The ABC (Archbishop of Canterbury) addressed the pilgrims, saying that as Christians we are the opposite to James Bond: it is not our task to save the world single-handedly. Rather, we are part of a community, the Church, to whom God has indeed entrusted that task as the Body of Christ. This is a truth which bears on me more and more the longer I serve in ministry. I don't think many of us Christians realise just how important we are, as a body, in God's purposes for creation. For this reason, it is so important that we think in terms of 'we' in the Church rather than 'them and us' - for which you can read those of different theological persuasions, Christian denomination, or leaders and led.
I have had cause to address this recently in a particular situation, where them/us language has crept in. For Church, it is always 'we'. Could not the same be true of society, if we seek the common good? I have just started to read 'The New Few' by Ferdinand Mount. His thesis is that slowly, inexorably over more than 50 years Britain has slipped into oligarchy, or the exercise of government by the few i.e. the wealthy and powerful. Despite Osborne's 'all in this together', nothing could be further from the truth. It is very much 'us and them' - the wealthy, powerful few and the general public. Mount quotes Adam Smith from 1776:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but that the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Ring any bells? The worrying thing is that history shows oligarchy e.g. in Rome to be a sign of a crumbling society.
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