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A Season of New Life

18/2/2018

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I’ve never been a fan of watching sport on television. Events like the Olympic and Commonwealth Games have always passed me by apart from the spectacular opening and closing ceremonies. This week, however, I happened to pick up some of the Winter Olympics and was quite bowled over by what I saw.  While I couldn’t believe the power and the energy of the cross country skiers it was the ski jumps, the snowboarding and the figure skating that were spectacular. It was amazing to see what human beings can put their bodies through – the turns, the flips, the speed, the control, the grace, often at great speed. Enjoyable too was the delight with which the commentators gasped and laughed at the expertise of the athletes. This is only possible, of course, because of hard work, total commitment and a discipline that finely hones the body. 

The Christian season of lent has just started – a time with its own discipline of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, meant to hone the soul and develop a recognition of the deeper things in life.  It’s a time of fasting but the Christian fast always seems so pale in comparison to Ramadan when Muslims fast from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset.  This takes a lot of commitment particularly when it happens during the summer months in a country like Scotland where the hours of daylight are long and the hours of darkness short.  Of course the opposite happens in winter with its short days and long nights.  The Baha’is too have a similar fast but their’s always takes place at the same time each year. According to the Baha’i calendar this takes place in the month of ‘Ala. It lasts nineteen days and according to our calendar it begins on 2nd March ending with the New Year Feast on the 21st March, the evening of the equinox.  

Christians don’t fast in this way and many people are creative about how they observe the season. Often there will be extra prayer but also a fasting from aspects of life that have become obsessive and hinder our freedom, sometimes without us realising it. So in this day and age people might fast from using Facebook or social media, from watching television, from drinking alcohol, eating chocolate, going to the cinema, buying new clothes, as well as fasting from that critical attitude or biting remark. Attempts to do this can expose our cravings and disciplining self to forego them can lead to an inner freedom where we are in control of our activities and habits and not them in control of us.  It’s also possible to use lent to use our time for something constructive that we have always wanted to do – read more for example. Sometimes this needs quite a lot of discipline as I suppose most of us can get caught up in that ubiquitous ‘ round to it’ that we never get round to!  I like the idea of setting aside time to practice a new skill. In the past I’ve taught myself to juggle and touch type during lent and it was a great experience of resurrection when I had achieved a new skill by Easter.  The problem is that the skill soon disappears if you don’t keep practising it so this lent I’m going to try to brush up on my Tai Chi form which I once knew but have now forgotten – and I’m determined to keep practising it in the time after Easter.

The Christian fast of lent used to be much stricter – no butter or eggs which had to be used up before Lent began – hence Pancake Tuesday or Fat Tuesday , translated into French as Mardi Gras,  celebrated as a festival in different ways all over the world. There’s a certain craziness about Mardi Gras festivals – almost as though it’s important to really enjoy oneself and let one’s hair down before the sombreness of lent which traditionally began with people being shriven i.e. asking forgiveness of their sins (hence the name Shrove Tuesday)   and being reminded on Ash Wednesday itself that we are in fact all dust and into dust we shall all return – something that still happens in the Catholic traditions.

The idea of carnival before more sombre religious seasons and festivals is not limited to Christianity. At the end of this month the Jewish community will be celebrating the festival of Purim and recently I read an interesting article which compared Mardi Gras and Purim – both of them come a month before the solemn festivals of Easter and Passover; both of them are marked by excess, the wearing of costumes, the rejection of the usual social norms. They’re spring festivals, carnivals which give expression to new life and possibilities and while they mark a time of preparation for festivals which are much more serious they also remind us that religion is not all about solemnity but has a place for the craziness and exuberance which is so much part of human nature.  

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A Woman's Place

6/2/2018

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​ It’s a hundred years today since women in Britain got to vote in general elections. Even then it wasn’t all women, only those aged over 30 who owned property or had a university education.  It took ten years before all women over 21 got the right to vote. It was a freedom that came after much debate which wasn’t without its struggles and conflicts. Now it seems unthinkable that women should be deprived of the vote and we speak very easily about equality as a highly prized asset of modern society which of course it’s not as the current debate about equal pay and sexual harassment in certain industries and institutions shows. In fact sexual harassment and abuse of both women and children seems to be almost universal – in religious, political and civil institutions. 

We know it’s about power and for centuries, perhaps ever since we humans were hunter-gatherers, women have been confined to the home while men provided for the family and engaged in public life. This seems sensible when women were tending children but it has given birth to patriarchy and a belief that women are somehow inferior to men. What was it Aristotle said, “the relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled.”  And that great Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, also accepted that women should be subject to men and saw man’s superiority as coming from the fact that he had been created first and directly from God while woman had been created from man and therefore not quite made in the image of God in the way that man was. This of course didn’t come from nowhere. Aquinas was influenced by Aristotle and was reflecting on texts in the Christian scriptures such as that of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he says “man was not created for the sake of woman but woman created for the sake of man”. And for centuries Christianity identified woman with Eve and responsible for bringing sin into the world.

It’s not surprising that religions have been so negative about women. Even those that are more recent and boast of equality betray patriarchy at some point.  For example in the Bahai Faith women can be part of local and national Spiritual Assemblies but not of the central governing body, the Universal House of Justice.  There always seems to be a point beyond which religions will not go with regards to women. Today all religions would claim equality between men and women even if they maintain they’ve different roles in society.  But it’s impossible for religions not to be influenced by the patriarchal society into which they were born and grew up. There’s not one that I’ve come across that’s not influenced in some way by patriarchal assumptions and attitudes.

Sometimes believers will try to distinguish between religion and culture, suggesting that religion has an ideal that’s been negatively influenced by culture.  I’m not too sure how it’s possible to do this but it’s certainly true that often religious scriptures betray a view of women that has been overlooked and overtaken by more negative views. In the Qur’an there are many surahs that show women in a positive light. Both men and women are created equal from a single soul and are equal in the sight of God, have the same duty to search for knowledge and will receive the same reward. But the ambivalence is also there. The Qur’an states that men are in charge of women because Allah has made one of them to excel the other, the woman’s role is to serve her husband. It even states ‘I have not left any disorder more damaging to man than woman’. It’s a bit like the Buddha who is reported as saying that his Sangha would not last as long once women were admitted.  One of the difficulties within religion is that often these kinds of statements are taken at face value and given divine status.
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So what do women do about this? It’s important to recognise the cultural context in which scriptures were written and not take such negative attitudes at their face value.  It’s important to see how definitions of women and directives as to how they’ve to behave (like wearing hats in Church or serving their husbands no matter what) are likely to reflect the norms of a patriarchal society. What’s more likely to be true to the tradition are those aspects of the religion that challenge the prevailing norms of the time and give a new view of women and their place in society. These have survived in spite of the prevailing culture though over the years they’ve not been emphasised and even forgotten. It’s been the strong women in our faiths who have taught us to read between the lines, to recognise the liberating aspects of our faiths and to have the confidence to believe in ourselves and not allow anyone or any tradition to put us into a box, denying us the right to be responsible for our own development and faith journey.  

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    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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