Jameswoodward’s Weblog

 Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, the Apostle of Northumbria (died 651), was the founder and first bishop of the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in England.

Holy Island is one of those places which many people have heard of but have yet to make a pilgrimage to. It is one of the most important sites in England with regards to the establishment of the Christian faith on these islands.

A Christian missionary, Aidan is credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. Aidan is the anglified form of the original Old Irish Áedán. In 2008, he was proposed as a possible patron saint of the United Kingdom.

Along with Cuthbert, Aidan is vastly important on Lindsifarne and any pilgrim visitor to Holy island cannot fail but to capture the unique atmosphere of this living pilgrimage island.

St. John tells how, at Cana’s wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That this world’s fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

Richard Wilbur

Even Bloggers need a rest and some inspiration…… see you in September after a well deserved break!

Here are some images that will give you some idea as to what I shall be looking forward to!!

don’t go back to sleep

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorstep
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

Rumi

This comes from the pen of Bruce Anderson and is published in the Independent on 3rd of August 2009. I think it deserves reflection and conversation.

Death is often messy. The same is now true of aspects of the law relating to death. To assist in a suicide – including one in which death would take place abroad – is a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Yet those who have had dealings with Dignitas in Switzerland have not been prosecuted. The authorities are as reluctant to charge them as juries would be to convict them. The law lords have now declared that this is unsatisfactory and that matters must be clarified; individuals are entitled to know where they stand.

 It is easier to state that principle than to put it into practice. The debate on assisted suicide did not create the uncertainty. It merely highlighted it. When it comes to individual rights and behaviour, the law is adrift, for two basic reasons. First, there has been a breakdown in the relationship between our legal code and Christian morality. Second, it is not clear when, or why, the state is entitled to regulate the private behaviour of adults.

England was never a theocracy. But over the centuries, the criminal law reinforced theology, imposing pains and penalties on those who broke the Church’s rules. Until the 1960s, the laws on abortion, divorce and homosexuality all reflected Christian doctrine. Then everything changed. Today, we have a largely post-Christian criminal code. Inasmuch as there are echoes of the Ten Commandments, as on murder and theft, these simply reflect the legal norms of any civilised society. Assisted suicide is one exception. Clearly, any Christian must regard suicide as a sin. It is a blasphemy for man to encroach on the prerogatives of his Creator. But how can a state prepared to tolerate almost 200,000 abortions a year possibly object to a handful of suicides, who were at least exercising their free choice?

As long as it was a free choice. Anyone but the most unleavened libertarian would agree that a civilised state has a duty to protect the vulnerable (though not, it seems, foetuses: the most vulnerable of all). Those who are considering suicide are likely to be vulnerable. If any change in the law is contemplated, there would need to be safeguards to ensure that those who wish to be helped to die are of sound mind and a settled disposition, which they have arrived at voluntarily and without being coerced in any way. So we might conclude that the state is entitled to protect the rights of the potential suicide, while ultimately conceding his right to decide his own departure date.

Set down in cold print – cold being the word – that proposition might arouse alarm. A lot of people, whose residual Christianity has declined to a trite superstition with no more intellectual content than the astrology column, will still feel unhappy. They might even reach for the word sacred. They are entitled to do so. If God did not create man, then man created God. Christian ethics – and Christian aesthetics – express mankind’s noblest impulses, including the belief that life is sacred (and life needs all the help it can get). So a refrigerated review of the bureaucratic arrangements necessary to ensure that a suicide’s papers were in order might strike many people as a sophisticated reversion to the ethics of the jungle.

Any such reaction is mere squeamishness, which would be more usefully deployed on the abortion figures. If you believe that the law of England should be based on Christian morality, you are entitled to argue that the current law should be enforced. But even if you had your way, you would find that squeamishness had changed sides, and that jurymen who found the general principle repugnant were still determined to act on it. Given the general temper of our laws and our society, there are no grounds for criminalising assisted suicide with safeguards – and even devout Christians should ask themselves a question. Whom would the Christ of the New Testament find it easier to forgive: Sir Edward and Lady Downes, or a doctor who kills foetuses in industrial quantities?

Apropos of questions, the suicide debate raises a basic one. If God does not own us, who does? There would appear to be two claimants: the state, and ourselves. Although the thought of being owned by the state might seem excessively Germanic, any effective modern state must have the right to regulate the behaviour of its citizens, and charge them a great deal for doing so. But where does this end? Are we the state’s livestock? If not, why are governments entitled to prohibit certain drugs?

It is possible to construct a case for prohibition that might claim to navigate a middle passage between livestockism and libertarianism. Few of us wish to live an a society in which decadence is unrestrained. So why take the risk of legalising drugs, when there are enough social ills to cope with already? Reinforced by the political hazards of advocating change, that is a fair summary of many politicians’ views on the matter. But even if it sounds realistic, it is not intellectually rigorous.

If we are worried about decadence, what about the cretinising effect of watching television for hours and hours, day after day? What about the many schools which, despite considerable receipts from the taxpayer, have given up the attempt to pass on values, culture or a knowledge of Britishness? Above all, what about the disintegration of the family? Could it be that the battle against drugs is only a displacement activity, especially as we seem to be losing it?

The arguments are finely balanced. But that brings us to another problem. There is no argument. The level of moral debate in modern Britain is pathetically, contemptibly low. That is another undeniable sign of decadence, and we should all be ashamed. This applies a fortiori to the churches, which should be taking the lead. Instead, they appear to be suffering from a collapse of intellectual and theological self-confidence. That is especially true of the Church of England, which has ceased to offer any coherent moral leadership.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is said to be clever. The main evidence for this is his ability to dress up accessible thoughts in incomprehensible prose. Not many years ago, if a question such as attempted suicide had arisen, everyone would have wanted to know what the Archbishop thought. Now, no one is interested, and he is probably too busy anyway, writing another speech about homosexual clergy. He must be the most ineffective Archbishop of all time. Under his lack of leadership, his Church is giggling its way to oblivion.

Other sources of moral guidance must be found. The Roman Catholics have a difficulty: their version of the homosexual imbroglio is still causing difficulties and undermining their self-confidence. Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, is an impressive figure, though less good at publicising himself than his predecessor, Lord Jakobovits. If it had not been for a couple of millennia of disputes, Margaret Thatcher would have loved to make him Archbishop of Canterbury.

But even if the Anglicans were in better shape, the churchmen cannot do everything, while too many philosophers are solely concerned with the meaning of meaning. If one wants to find contemporary intellectuals who are capable of addressing the big ethical questions, the best source is the judiciary. We need a Royal Commission, chaired by the retiring senior law lord, Tom Bingham.

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down a rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
`This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
The abbot said, `Unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed and the man climbed back
Out of the marvelous as he had known it.

Seamus Heaney

 O God, who on the holy mount didst reveal to chosen witnesses thy well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end.

Today the Church commemorates Oswald.

 The Baptsim of St Oswald

Oswald’s father Æthelfrith was a successful Bernician ruler who, after some years in power in Bernicia, also became king of Deira, and thus was the first to rule both of the kingdoms which would come to be considered the constituent kingdoms of Northumbria (Bernicia in the northern part and Deira in the southern part); it would, however, be anachronistic to refer to a “Northumbrian” people or identity at this early stage, when the Bernicians and the Deirans were still clearly distinct peoples. Oswald’s mother, Acha, was a member of the Deiran royal line who Æthelfrith apparently married as part of his acquisition of Deira or consolidation of power there.Oswald was apparently born in or around the year 604, since Bede says that he was killed at the age of 38 in 642; Æthelfrith’s acquisition of Deira is also believed to have occurred around 604.

Æthelfrith, who was for years a successful war-leader, especially against the native British, was eventually killed in battle around 616 by Raedwald of East Anglia at the River Idle. This defeat meant that an exiled member of the Deiran royal line, Edwin (Acha’s brother), became king of Northumbria; Oswald and his brothers fled to the north. Oswald thus spent the remainder of his youth in the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata in northern Britain, where he was converted to Christianity. He may also have fought in Ireland during this period of exile

After Cadwallon ap Cadfan, the king of Gwynedd, in alliance with the pagan Penda of Mercia, killed Edwin of Deira in battle at Hatfield Chase in 633 (or 632, depending on when the years used by Bede are considered to have begun), Northumbria was split between its constituent kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Oswald’s brother Eanfrith became king of Bernicia, but he was killed by Cadwallon in 634 (or 633) after attempting to negotiate peace. Subsequently, Oswald, at the head of a small army (possibly with the aid of allies from the north, the Scots and/or the Picts), met Cadwallon in battle at Heavenfield, near Hexham. Before the battle, Oswald had a wooden cross erected; he knelt down, holding the cross in position until enough earth had been thrown in the hole to make it stand firm. He then prayed and asked his army to join in.

Adomnán in his Life of Saint Columba offers a longer account, which Abbot Ségéne had heard from Oswald himself. Oswald, he says, had a vision of Columba the night before the battle, in which he was told:

Be strong and act manfully. Behold, I will be with thee. This coming night go out from your camp into battle, for the Lord has granted me that at this time your foes shall be put to flight and Cadwallon your enemy shall be delivered into your hands and you shall return victorious after battle and reign happily.

Oswald described his vision to his council and all agreed that they would be baptised and accept Christianity after the battle. In the battle that followed, the British were routed despite their superior numbers; Cadwallon himself was killed.

Although Edwin had previously converted to Christianity in 627, it was Oswald who did the most to spread the religion in Northumbria. Shortly after becoming king, he asked the Irish of Dál Riata to send a bishop to facilitate the conversion of his people, and they sent Aidan for this purpose; initially, the Irish sent an “austere” bishop who was unsuccessful in his mission, and Aidan, who proposed a gentler approach, was subsequently sent instead. Oswald gave the island of Lindisfarne to Aidan as his episcopal see, and Aidan achieved great success in spreading Christianity; Bede mentions that Oswald acted as Aidan’s interpreter when the latter was preaching, since Aidan did not know English well and Oswald had learned Irish during his exile.

Bede puts a clear emphasis on Oswald being saintly as a king; although he could be interpreted as a martyr for his subsequent death in battle, Bede portrays Oswald as being saintly for his deeds in life and does not focus on his martyrdom as being primary to his sainthood—indeed, it has been noted that Bede never uses the word “martyr” in reference to Oswald. In this respect, as a king regarded as saintly for his life while ruling—in contrast to a king who gives up the kingship in favour of religious life, or who is venerated because of the manner of his death—Bede’s portrayal of Oswald stands out as unusual. Bede recounts Oswald’s generosity to the poor and to strangers, and tells a story highlighting this characteristic: on one occasion, at Easter, Oswald was sitting at dinner with Aidan, and had “a silver dish full of dainties before him”, when a servant, whom Oswald “had appointed to relieve the poor”, came in and told Oswald that a crowd of the poor were in the streets begging alms from the king. Oswald, according to Bede, then immediately had his food given to the poor and even had the dish broken up and distributed. Aidan was greatly impressed and seized Oswald’s right hand, stating: “May this hand never perish.” Accordingly, Bede reports that the hand and arm remained uncorrupted after Oswald’s death.

Have a look at this web page which is the fruit of collaborative work with Pauline Smith:

www.wellbeingindying.org.uk

www.wellbeingindying.org.uk

Sir Oliver Popplewell became, in his own words, officially “judicially senile” after a distinguished career at the Bar, as a High court judge specializing in defamation, arbitration and sports law–an appropriate niche for a Cambridge cricket Blue.  And in public life he achieved prominence as chairman of important public enquiries such as the Bradford Stadium disaster. Hallmark: A Judge’s Life at Oxford, the sequel to his acclaimed autobiography, Benchmark: Life, Laughter and the Law, tells how he went to Oxford University to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics as the oldest undergraduate ever to be admitted–with considerable press and media coverage and good-natured amusement among family and friends.

We read a  sharply observed, sympathetic yet critical picture of modern Oxford seen from the perspective of a leading judge and public figure who could contrast this experience with his Cambridge days from the late 1940s.  But this is much more than the story of an older student.  It is a hugely entertaining account of a life lived to the full.  Sir Oliver takes his readers into his confidence, shares his experience and presents a unique facet of a fascinating life which can serve as a warm but sharply observed social and cultural history of modern Britain.

 Here is Stephen Fry form the forward: