Cold noses at the pearly gates?

There's some nice, or at least interesting, points made about theology in the first part of this article. Much reliant on Aquinas, but then Aquinas seems to have some good points to make about the relationship between soul and body. There's an over cavalier dismissal of the scriptural stuff which may not be as contradictory as she thinks, just initially confusing because stretched across a number of genres and needing theological elucidation. Intriguingly too, the quote from Aquinas is potentially over-literally construed; it may not be correct to interpret Aquinas to be spejking literally and in any case if we did then we have to think in terms of Resurrection and not just 'souls' (though at least this is defined holistically but not, I think, consistently considered that way: I rather suspect that Aquinas' souls would include most living beings not just some as indicated below).

The article leaves us with a little nest of questions: Cold noses at the pearly gates? | Heather McDougall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "Finally, even if Christians believe animals have souls (and I think there are grounds for saying that at least some of them do) then there remains the scientific challenge. Boundaries between species have become increasingly blurred through genetic engineering, and we can imagine a higher primate being given extra human genes. Would this creature have a human soul or an animal soul? At what point would it get a human soul? Even if we don't believe in souls, maybe we shouldn't consider the treatment of animals, ourselves, and bio-science, as ethically neutral."
I think that those are important questions, though I'm concerned that the supposition behind it seems to have too easily seemingly slipped into talk of souls and eternal life without hanging onto the issue of how anything might be related to eternity and where is consideration of Resurrection in this? I think these are very good questions: the kind of thing I'd love to see students tackle because it'd winkle out critical thinking about the issues behind the question as well as the application to plausible future dilemmas.

I tnhink the real issue comes down to 'what is the nature of the relationship between God and animals? And related to this is the question of the status of the non-human creation and all of that in relation to Resurrection (and some of the issues around this could be put crudely: Whill bacteria be ressurrected? And if so, which ones? Virii?) I suspect that this is partly what the language of 'souls' as used in this article is meant to capture.

How she forgave her daughter's killer

Some readers may suspect that my interest in forgiveness in these extreme circumstances has roots in our life and a road traffic incident two years ago which deprived our daughter of one of her legs. Surprisingly, perhaps, (as a search through this blog for 'forgiveness' with attention to dates, will show). That's not to say that I don't find connections. A lot goes back to a sense that we talk a lot about forgiveness but we often don't think that clearly about what's involved. My interest comes more from trying to wrestle pastorally with the issues presented by grieving families and the rough-and-tumble of everyday miscomprehension, unthinking uncare and/or malice.

So it's good to see the topic aired here: How I forgave my daughter's killer | Life and style | The Guardian: I still find the writer focuses on isses which flit the surface; the presenting issues of anger and pain without examining the relationship between those things and love and feelings around justice, punishment, revenge and counter-transference of such things. It is also a bit short on just what is forgiveness and what excusing and then what the costs are.

Let me, however, pick out of the article the things that I think are really important for helping us to learn forgiveness.

'When Charlotte was murdered, �forgiveness did not enter my mind. For a long time, I wanted to know, who is this wicked girl that took my daughter? Who did this evil? My baby was gone. I was just coming to terms with the loss. I had to weigh things up, to really allow my emotions to take their course.' ... I kept ­staring over at her. I wanted her to look at me, to look at the pain she had caused me, for her to see that Charlotte had a mum who loved her. I wanted her to show me how sorry she was. ... I wanted her to feel a bit of my pain at losing my daughter. ... Mary came to understand more of Beatriz's background. "I learned about all the bullying and intimidation she had ­received, about all the things that had happened to her at home and at school.
"So I wrote back to her and said, 'I forgive you, I believe you didn't mean to do it, although there is a price to pay for the choice you made.' ... ­Certainly she wishes her "an ­emotionally stable life, a good life. I hope she turns out to be a ­wonderful mother. I don't wish her any evil. I don't wish her to lose a child. I would not wish that on anyone."

I think all the elements that I have come to recognise as necessary are there. The one issue that isn't clear in this account is the relationship between excusing (which is recognising where there are factors that relieve the perpetrator of culpability) and forgiving (which is foregoing vengeance or 'counter-transference' whilst recognising the genuine culpability of the perpetrator). In this telling most of the weight falls to excusing -and that is right and proper and can make forgiving easier. The account as we have it here doesn't help us to understand how she did the harder work of letting go of the 'residual' culpable wrongdoing and its entails. That's a shame because that's where most of us need the most help and support: to forego just anger and its successor events and to re-open the possibility of a positive relationship with the perpetrator.

Where the Praan is Matt?

Hat tip to my colleague and friend David Runcorn who introduced me to this -me and the rest of the college- at his spirituality session on friendship last Wednesday.

Music is Praan by Gary Shyman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfGk6S8-n9E&feature=channel). I was really taken by the tune and the composition. At first I thought it was an Enya number but then it became evident it was far richer than that. And I love the words: translated from Bangla (I gather they are those of Rabinath Tagore) ....
The same stream of life
that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world
and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life
that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life
that is rocked in the ocean-cradle
of birth and of death,
in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious
by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment.

In [the Word] is Life, and that life is the light of all ...

Bracing for Rising Seas

Forgive the article's long examination of USAmerican effects; at least they give the rest of us a picture of the kinds of things we need to be thinking about. For 'New York' or 'Miami', read 'London' or -I don't know- 'Chichester' (and see here)
... Anyway, here's why you should read the article: to make sense of just something of the magnitude of the problem; "Responding to long-term sea level rise will pose unprecedented challenges to the international community. Economic and humanitarian disasters can be avoided, but only through wise, forward-looking planning. Tough decisions will need to be made regarding the allocation of resources and response to natural disasters. Let us hope that our political leadership can provide the bold vision and strong leadership that will be required to implement a reasoned response."
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Bracing for a Century of Rising Seas.
As Christians we are global citizens; loving our neighbour with a God who cares for the refugees and marginalised means we need to be using our votes with this agenda in mind and speaking with our neighbours in such a way as to influence opinion towards a safer and less volatile world for our neighbours into the future: our grandchildren and their peers.

Interestingly, politically, I think that this makes an adjunct to the already huge case for political and economic decentralisation: we need to pull our nation's financial and governance out of a basket that looks to be submerged. Guess whose parliament is on the front line of inundation? Ditto one of the world's leading financial hubs.

Prayer and forgiveness, gender and guilt.

Intuitively and in experience, I guess, we know this already, but as often, it is reassuring to find research that bears it out: "results showed that those who had prayed for their partner harbored fewer vengeful thoughts and emotions: They were more ready to forgive and move on." Blessing those who persecute us and praying for our enemies does useful things to us let aside any interaction with God. The next piece of research, however, might indicate that women may need to do it more, not because they are more vengeful but because men are less likely to feel guilty, perhaps, and so more likely, I guess, to act irritatingly and with disregard for the feelings of others. The article is here, and here's a snippet of the report commenting on the interesting thing for me because I'd not really considered that there were several forms of guilt:

The most common forms of guilt are related to situations where we cause harm to others. Stemming from this, it is normal that this arouses feelings of empathy for the people we may have harmed, which tend to turn into feelings of guilt when we recognise that we are responsible for their suffering... The anxious-aggressive kind of guilt is more common in people who have been raised in a more blame-imposing environment, and who are governed by stricter rules about behaviour in general and aggression in particular. "It seems obvious that this component will be more intense among women, and especially in older women,"

Now we should note that this, therefore, has a great deal to do with socialisation and so is not making claims for innate gender differences.
Note the role of empathy, though, in both these studies.
Prayer increases forgiveness:

France banning niqab: big mistake

I think that we really do have to learn to distinguish hard and soft secularism. The former is probably a threat to civilisation, the latter is messy but probably the best we can do. Here's why hard secularism is self-defeating.

"The worst about all this fuss is that we are completely off target. Women donning the full veil are not against modernity but represent rather its sophisticated product, just like westernised Buddhists. The veil, surprising as this may seem, is good news for modern values. Some smart young women keep a niqab in their bag but only wear it in Paris's Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, in order to draw attention to the fact that they belong to the best Muslim set, that they really have got that Muslim chic, something like the equivalent behaviour in a gay district. This deep western social movement is no threat to modern values, but rather vindicates the latter under unexpected aesthetic guise: it is so individualistic and depoliticised that it is more of a real threat for Islamism and terrorist networks themselves."

-Raphael Liogier.
For the record: I'd rather they didn't wear niqab etc, -sI do find it disconcerting to lose a whole set of social signals (one reason I don't like phoning strangers about delicate matters). But then the reasons given don't really add up unless hoodies are banned and any costumes of a carnivalesque nature are also banned from public places...
France's attack on the veil is a huge blunder | Raphael Liogier | Comment is free | The Guardian:

Cancel the clawback for Haiti

"As Haitian families search for survivors and relief rolls in, Haiti is still staggering under $1 billion in old debts racked up by unscrupulous lenders and unelected governments of the past.But in recent days, a worldwide outcry has grown to cancel Haiti's debt -- and while some key lenders are rumoured to be holding out, the IMF and some key governemnts have indicated that debt relief could be within reach.
More pressure is needed. The petition ..."DROP HAITI'S DEBT: