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Hanukkah Candles

30/12/2016

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While Christians have been celebrating Christmas this week, the Jewish community has been celebrating Hanukkah. It’s a festival of lights and central to it is the lighting of the Hanukkah Menorah or candlestick. Over eight days a candle is lit each day, adding one candle to the number of candles lit the previous night and kept burning into the night. It commemorates a miracle in which one cruse of oil lit the Menorah in the Temple for eight days until new supplies of oil arrived. This happened two hundred years before the birth of Jesus, when the Maccabees defeated King Antiochus who had prohibited the practice of Judaism and desecrated the Temple by setting up an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs on it. It was at its rededication that the pure olive oil miraculously lasted for eight days.

Being a festival of religious freedom there’s a public aspect to it when Jews are encouraged to display the lights in windows, porches or whatever. It’s a festival which proudly displays not only the Jews’ right to practise their religion but the right of all of us to live by our beliefs and values.  The first night of Hanukkah was Christmas Eve this year so the festival has coincided with Christmas and I think if I were Jewish I’d feel it was a bit overshadowed by all the public hype about Christmas.  Perhaps it’s that fact that has led to public Menorah being set up in public squares and places throughout the world, something I’ve not been aware of before, though I believe one has been lit in Berlin for the past twenty five years and probably in other parts of the world as well. Hanukkah lights have been lit in the Westminster Government and we have our own here in Scotland’s capital city which is  probably why I’m aware of it this year, as well as its coincidence with Christmas.  

One of the titles given to Jesus is the Prince of Peace, a Light to the World. We talk about Jesus bringing peace and yet the world still sits in darkness. What difference has the birth of Jesus made? We tend to think of Christmas as a feast for children and our nativity scenes focus on the baby Jesus. But the joy and happiness of Christmas is only one side of the equation. While celebrating the birth of a baby we do so knowing how his story will end, that he will be opposed by the religious establishment and put to death as a common criminal. This is a baby who will be a contradiction, bringing not just peace but also persecution by those in society who are judged and challenged by a message and way of life that contradicts the power, greed, narcissism, arrogance of much of society and of which we are all capable.  It’s one of the reasons why oppressive governments oppose religion or want to limit it as a means of unity or social control. Two days after Christmas the Catholic Church remembers the story of the Holy Innocents – a story told in Matthew’s gospel of how King Herod had all the male children under two years of age murdered because he had been told by wise men that a King had been born. The story of Christmas is not all about joy and hallelujahs. It has its dark side and it’s good to remember that if we are to understand it in a balanced way. Jesus, of course, is a light in that he shows us that darkness, sin, evil need not have the last world. Another way of life is possible, values that focus on self-sacrifice, love, compassion, generosity can transform each of us and in that small way contribute to the transformation of the world. We all can be lights in our world and the lights on our Christmas trees, the candles on our tables can be a reminder that that’s what we are called to.

Hanukkah candles have the same message. At a time of particular darkness for the Jewish people the Maccabees brought a light into society which gave them freedom to be themselves and live their faith openly and with integrity.  The Hanukkah candles are a  counter cultural act which declares people’s right to live religiously in the face of growing secularism, materialism, persecution and terrorism.  In some parts of the world to practice religion openly is to invite persecution and martyrdom.  Here religion is no easy option. At the beginning of Hanukkah the Chief Rabbi Mirvis wrote to Christians reminding us of our responsibility to stand together to oppose discrimination. Faith communities, he said, have a responsibility to stand together to oppose discrimination and attacks on freedom of religious expression wherever they are to be found.  With religious freedom under attack, this solidarity is important. 

The 2016 report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom concluded that "the serious and sustained assault on religious freedom is a major factor behind the rolling series of worldwide humanitarian crises."  Jonathan Sacks reminds us that people will fight for religious freedom, and the attempt to deprive them of it will always end in failure. He suggests “We need, in the twenty-first century, a global Hanukkah: a festival of freedom for all the world's faiths. For though my faith is not yours and your faith is not mine, if we are each free to light our own flame, together we can banish some of the darkness of the world”. Surely a message pertinent for both Jews and Christians and one that can unite us as  we celebrate these festivals of light at this, the darkest time of the year

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Christmas Stories

21/12/2016

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Christmas Week and the final  preparations for Christmas – cards to be completed and sent, last minute presents and shopping, expectations of family get-togethers – all very jolly and full of festive fun.  It’s hard though to enter fully into it all or to speak too enthusiastically about it with the news we have on our televisions and in our newspapers. With a terrorist attack in a major European city, wars in Syria and Yemen, conflict in the Middle East as well as growing poverty in our cities, homelessness, food banks,  it’s easy to get depressed about the state of the world.  Where’s the hope, where’s the peace that Christians claim to bring?  Then there are the families for whom Christmas will be sad because of family illness, bereavement, separation. All of this is true and not to be forgotten but recognised and accepted as part of our world. But it’s not the only part. There’s also goodness and peace initiatives, people working for justice and social cohesion, sacrificing themselves and their time for the good of others and our worlds. Recently I was at an event attended by a number of people involved in international and integral human development and looking round the room I was aware of the good energy there and the desire of all these people to work for peace and justice. A sense of the Kingdom of God was tangible. And this too is part of our world and not to be forgotten at Christmas.  Perhaps it’s this that gives us hope and faith to enjoy our own Christmas celebrations.

This week many of the Christmas celebrations, at least in this country, will have no reference to the story of the birth of Jesus. For many the holiday is cultural and seasonal rather than religious though there will be some knowledge I suppose of the Christmas story from carols and nativity scenes in city centres.  How accurate these are to the accounts of the birth of Jesus in the Christian Scriptures is doubtful but they do incorporate aspects of the stories in the scriptures as well as other traditions, such as three wise men who turn out to be kings.  But there is another story of the birth of Jesus that most of us don’t know and that’s the one in the Qur’an.  Many people don’t realise that Jesus is revered as a major prophet within Islam and is even described as Messiah, sent to the Jewish people with a new revelation for them. Like Christians Muslims believe that Mary, Maryam, Jesus’ mother was a virgin who withdrew to a secluded place where the angel Gabriel announced the birth of a son.  Mary said

 ‘I am only a messenger from your Lord, (to announce) to you the gift of a righteous son.’  She said: ‘How can I have a son, when no man hath touched me, nor am I unchaste?’  He said: ‘So (it will be), your Lord said That is easy for Me (God): And (We wish) to appoint him as a sign to mankind and a mercy from Us (God), and it is a matter (already) decreed (by God).’” (Quran 19:16-21).

Mary gives birth to Jesus, at the foot of a palm tree in the desert, not in a stable in Bethlehem as in the Christian scriptures. She is terrified that this illegitimate birth will bring disgrace to her and her family and even wishes for death.  However the baby, Jesus, miraculously speaks to her, comforting her and assuring her of God’s concern for her by providing dates from the palm tree and a spring of water to refresh her. He tells her to say nothing about his birth, telling people that she had taken a vow to abstain from talking and when she returned to her people it was Jesus who spoke.

The Qur’an describes this:
They said, ‘O Mary, indeed you have done a great evil.’  ‘O sister of Aaron, your father was not an evil man, and your mother was not a fornicator.’  So she pointed to him.  They said, ‘How can we speak to a child in the cradle?’  (Jesus) said, ‘Indeed, I am a slave of God.  He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet.[4]  And He has made me blessed wherever I may be, and He has enjoined on me prayer and charity as long as I remain alive.  And (has made) me kind to my mother, and did not make me arrogant or miserable.  And peace be upon me the day I was born, and the day I will die, and the day I will be raised alive.’” (Quran 19:22-33).

What do we do with these contradictory stories? At one time we might have tried to prove one correct and the other wrong. Some Muslims would see the Christian accounts as a distortion of the true revelation; some Christians would see the Quranic account as reflecting some Christian traditions that have not made their way into the canonical scriptures or the silence of Mary reflecting the silence of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. Now we can live more happily with these contradictions – at least those involved in interreligious dialogue can, I hope. What these stories (and similar miraculous birth stories in other faiths) do for me is remind me of the nature of religious scriptures. They point to something greater than themselves and use the language of exaltation, stressing more the significance of Jesus than the actual details of his birth. The details don’t matter. What’s important is the meaning that the stories convey. Both the Christian account and the Qur’anic account tell us that Jesus is no ordinary child, a person who can and does make a difference to our world.  He is one who shows us that the way of peace is possible, that we too can live as He did in service of others, someone who gives us hope and faith that the evils that confront us in the media need not have the final say. This is the real story of Christmas - and one shared by both Christians and Muslims.

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Music for the Soul

14/12/2016

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​I was at an amazing workshop yesterday. I went rather reluctantly as I was very busy in the run up to Christmas and felt a bit under pressure. It was being organised by FiOP, Faith in Older People, an organisation that I work with and I wanted to support that so I went. And I’m glad I did. The workshop was about singing groups for people with dementia – not choirs  it was stressed,  because choirs need to rehearse to get things right, their aim is usually directed to a performance, all of which can add a certain amount of anxiety to the experience, something people with dementia have enough of. Rather what was being encouraged was what, in this part of the world, we call A Big Sing – people coming together just to sing with the emphasis on enjoyment and certainly not on getting it right. 

The leader of the event yesterday, Diana Kerr, was passionate about the importance of music and song in all our lives, not just people with dementia. Music is integral to what it means to be human and it’s possible that ‘homo sapiens’ actually sang before he learned to communicate through speech.  Babies develop in the womb listening to the heartbeat of their mothers; new mothers naturally hum or sing to their babies when they’re in need of comfort and babies’ first attempts to vocalise often seem like attempts to sing.  Music is in our very souls. It reflects our moods and contains our memories as programmes such as Desert Island Discs show. It involves our bodies in what is often involuntary movement, whether it be simply tapping our feet or moving to the beat in more conscious movement and dance. Nietzsche suggests that we listen to music with our muscles and Schopenhauer asserted “the inexplicable depth of music …….is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being”.

 All of this is true of listening to music but more so if we can make music through singing and playing an instrument and even more true when it’s done with other people - thus singing groups for people with dementia and their carers. Dianna had many heart- warming stories of people whose memory might have gone but whose souls were touched through singing. One such story was of a woman with dementia who had not spoken for five months, who no longer showed any facial expressions and seemed to be living in a world of her own. She was brought to the singing group by her husband and at first appeared agitated, just sitting and staring. However as the singing got underway she started to tap her thigh, then moved her body and began to make some humming noises. By the end of the session she was singing and smiling. But not only that the day after the session she woke up and told her husband they should bake a cake – which they did!

Music is at the heart of religion. What is religion after all but listening to the heartbeat of the universe, the heartbeat of God? What is religion but an inadequate way of expressing that heartbeat, that silent music that is the very music of the spheres? What is religion but discerning how to live in tune with this heartbeat and offering practices to make this a reality in people’s lives? There isn’t a culture or religion that doesn’t express itself in music even though those expressions are different, reflecting the culture in which the religion grew up. Even Islam that seems to forbid singing and dancing as frivolities has its chanting of the Qur’an and Sufi chanting is very evocative as is the dancing of the whirling dervishes. St Augustine, who is reputed (probably wrongly) to have said that to sing is to pray twice, also reputedly said the song of the lips must first have been a song in the soul. And a song in the soul can surely only come from a relationship with what some of us might call God and others Ultimate Reality. It comes from a discerning heart.  It is to hear the primal sound of the universe which Hindus claim to be OM, the chanting of which unites us with the very heartbeat of life that flows through all of creation and all sentient beings. For Jews and Christians singing is an essential part of worship as too is the singing of bajans or devotional songs within Hinduism and Sikhism – all ways of expressing joy, hope, love, worship but also awakening these attitudes within us as we sing.  But singing or music can also express longing, grief, despair, hope, all the human emotions that people have to struggle with in their journey to make sense of the small part of the universe they inhabit. It can give expression to realities that cannot otherwise be put into words.

This can be true, of course, for those who are not religious. A few years ago Michael Graziano, a neuroscientist and atheist spoke of his relationship with music being similar to religious experience. Speaking about his love for Mozart he said he could sense a presence. “The piece has a persona. It has a palpable spirit and I feel as though I can have a personal relationship to that spirit. My brain is treating the music like a universe of complexity and investing that universe with its own deity, for whom I feel some measure of awe and reverence. My relationship to the music is, in the most fundamental sense, the same as a religious relationship to the real world”.  I have no difficulty in believing this – that we all hear the presence that is life, that some would call God, in different ways and through different media. But surely it is the same Reality?  And surely music gives us another language for dialogue?    

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A Magical City

5/12/2016

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I’m often amazed how things I would like to do somehow come to pass. This happened to me last week when I visited Venice, a city I had wanted to see for a long time – not quite on my bucket list but lingering somewhere in the depths of my psyche. Like all cities today it was familiar to me through art, television, photographs, literature. However no matter how familiar a place seems from a distance it’s quite something else to experience the reality of it. I was with some friends and we approached the city across the lagoon. It was truly magical to step from the vaporetto water bus on to the main boulevard in front of the Doges Palace. It felt like a floating world, a floating city which gave it an air of unreality.  It was busy but not too crowded with gave plenty of opportunity to stroll over bridges, beside canals and through narrow streets. We did this as we walked from one side of the city to the other as we sought out the Jewish Ghetto.
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Once we entered into the Ghetto from a fairly busy thoroughfare it was like being in another world. There were kosher restaurants and shops and few people, most of whom were obviously Jewish. The whole atmosphere was quite different from the pomp and splendour of St Mark’s Cathedral which spoke of wealth, power and prestige though the synagogues were also impressive and reflected the wealth and splendour of the Jewish community in past times.  It was a place in which the past seemed to be present not just in the Jewish museum but in the very atmosphere of the place. This was the first ghetto, a word which originally meant a foundry, but whose meaning changed over time as a place to isolate minorities but which is associated with the isolation of the Jewish community. Within the confines of this place had lived a community which had suffered as other Jewish communities did in the Middle Ages. Banned from occupations and professions they focussed on commerce and money lending, forbidden to live in the city they were confined to a particular area, allowed to leave during the day they were locked in at night, seen as outsiders they were subject to additional taxes, marked out as different they had to wear distinguishing clothing, continually under suspicion they were often threatened with expulsion.

But within the walls of the ghetto Jewish life thrived. Jews fleeing persecution from Italy, Spain and Portugal and Eastern Europe moved into the ghetto bringing with them their own traditions. Principally these were Sephardic, a tradition from the Iberian Peninsula and Ashkenazic, a tradition  associated with Eastern Europe. Both traditions lived side by side but kept to their own customs, building their own synagogues and speaking their own language. We were able to visit three of the five synagogues in the area, all from the 15th and 16th cys. The Sephardic one was bigger and  wealthier, reflecting the wealth of that particular community while the others were simpler and smaller. A fellow tourist commented that the same kind of thing happens in present day Israel. Within a small area of a small town there are several synagogues, each one associated with a particular culture so that there is an Iranian Synagogue, and Egyptian Synagogue, an American synagogue etc . It reminded me of the joke, often told by Jews of the man marooned on a desert island who builds two synagogues and when rescued explains there is the one that he goes to and the one that he doesn’t go to. It’s only natural of course that immigrants want to preserve their own culture and retain their own language. In a strange land worshipping and associating with those from one’s country of birth is comforting and stabilising but in danger of stopping integration, always a concern for social cohesion. However in the Israel example the different cultures do come together  in that sometimes the only way to get a minyan i.e the ten men necessary for synagogue prayer is to get together in one of the synagogues – united in their orthodoxy. Today in Venice the different synagogues are used on different occasions. With a small Venetian Jewish community the large Sephardic one is used for Yom Kippur and during the summer months when there are lots of visitors, one of the smaller ones for smaller congregations and another during the winter because it has heating. But again all these synagogues are orthodox. I’m not so sure that such coming together would be possible between orthodox and reform Jews.

Judaism, of course, is not the only religion that expresses itself in different cultures or has different divisions. Christianity has many different denominations and before the ecumenical movement one denomination would not be worshipping or even associating with another. Buddhism has its own schools and while I’m not aware of animosity between them I’ve heard one Buddhist school say that it’s way is best and most Buddhists in my experience know very little of any other school. And the tension and violence even between different denominations of Islam is lived out on the global stage never mind the local. It makes me realise that while interreligious dialogue and interfaith relationships are important so too is intra –religious dialogue. Charity begins at home and this is as true for religion as it is for any other aspect of life. interreligious dialogue mustn't close us to this reality or obscure its necessity. 
   

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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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