Letters - 07 April 2017
From looking inwards to restorative justice
Look Inwards
The ‘terrorist attack’ on Westminster is still so new it doesn’t have a label but already we are trying to make sense of it – to fit it into our world view. The consensus seems to be:
‘We’ll never understand why he did it.’
Yes we will.
If we look in the right direction, we do understand. ‘When was he radicalised?’ is barking up the wrong tree.
I understand if I look inside myself. I might not drive over pedestrians or stab people, but I am building an image, as he was, as we all are.
He only wanted to be someone.
To build my image, I see other people as ‘not me’. Then I can ignore their feelings. And then I can commit any outrage. Once I have seen someone else as not me, I can dump all the unattractive parts of myself on that person and deny them in myself. Then all I have to do is rid the world of that person. Then I can like myself.
This is such a basic ego-creating move that we don’t always catch ourselves doing it.
It starts with switching off the fellow-feeling.
We all do it.
Hilary Peters
Kindness
The ‘Thought for the Week’ on 31 March was about kindness.
Strange to say, my mother sent me a poem called ‘Kindness’ many many years ago! It had been passed on from her father, who was a member of the Adult School. The gift must always move, she said.
Have you had a kindness shown?
Pass it on.
‘Twas not meant for you alone
Pass it on.
Let it travel down the years
Let it dry another’s tears
Till in heaven the deed appears
Pass it on.
Has anyone any idea who the poet was?
Eileen Kemp
Religion, evil and children
Bob Rogers (24 March) suggests that the conservative view of evil should be condemned as abusive, especially that towards children and vulnerable people. Ironically, he seems to suggest that this view of evil is one of the greatest evils there is.
Like it or not, evil exists. Children and vulnerable people are, if anything, more conscious than most that not everything that humankind does is good: people are starving while others live in luxury, climate change is putting the planet at risk, and there are millions suffering from conflict and injustice.
Children and vulnerable people may also recognise that within all of us there is a mixture of light and dark, good and bad, and it is not always easy to distinguish which is which. It is easy to become too self-satisfied and self-centred, we make mistakes and we do not always resist temptation when it presents itself – not speaking up when we should and taking more than our fair share, for example. This can create guilt and shame, independent of any religious disapproval.
If Bob Rogers is condemning the idea of evil in the form of a figure with horns and a pitchfork, then I agree entirely. Perhaps what would be most productive would be a series of dialogues on the evil that we see, both out in the world and within us, and how we can best deal with this in a productive and fruitful way.
Chris Bemrose
I, too, have had unvoiced concerns since 1996, when I reassured a mother that her very young children would not be exposed to the harrowing story of the crucifixion but that of new life (I had been traumatised some sixty years earlier by this teaching which, I realised, still weighed heavily).
Another year, during an impromptu Easter Day Children and Young People’s Meeting, a twelve-year-old imparted that the school had taught the Easter message and that ‘some of the girls had cried’.
Advices & queries 4 and 5 speaks of the Society being rooted in Christianity and the importance of the Bible, which still has relevance today.
Consider the Good Friday Agreement, which without repentance, forgiveness and redemption at its heart would not have come into being.
Could this be the example that the world needs in an endeavour to bring an end to their own ongoing conflicts? Does it hold hope for global peace?
Hazel Kelly
Sale of Headley Brothers Limited
It is sad to hear that Headley Brothers has been sold (17 March). I grew up 200 yards away from it, one of my sisters was born in a staff flat on the site and I knew many of the family. I hope it thrives, as Stones Ashford Limited, under its new management.
Max Evens
Prayer
Many years ago an esteemed member of my Meeting gave this ministry: when we pray, our prayers may or may not bring about the desired result. Of more importance is the effect ‘the prayer’ has on the prayer. In like manner we write letters not knowing if they are taken note of or even read. The result in both cases is the discharging of guilt. One feels one has done one’s bit.
Peter Boyce
Climate change
What’s the difference between human beings and yeast?
Yeast is a carbon-based life form. Give it carbon energy (sugar) and it gobbles it up as fast as it can, reproduces out of control and dies in its own waste products.
Humans are a carbon-based life form. Give us carbon energy (coal, oil, gas) and we gobble it up as fast as we can, reproduce out of control and… ah.
The difference is we are intelligent enough to work this out.
Jamie Wrench
Climate change and population growth
Thank you for printing the letters on climate change and population growth (17 March) together as they are really one problem and they have one solution, with very many interwoven parts.
One of these will be ‘a change of heart’, related to us and our feelings about one another and the care of our children. Many people care deeply for their own families but some appear to have very little concern or interest in other people’s.
We need to consider seriously why social services have so many children referred who are ‘at risk’ that they cannot cope?
Why are over 100 children killed or die of neglect each year? If, say, for every one who dies, two to four are seriously injured or starved and recover, what happens to them?
Why do so many parents, desperate to have a baby, lose interest in them after a year or two?
Why do so many of us change partners every few months or years, have a new baby with each new relationship and fail to provide care or support for those left behind in previous relationships?
Until we look at ourselves we will never be able to heal or sustain our children and create a loving and stable society in which to bring them up.
Jane Courtis
Quakers and youth hostels (10 and 17 March)
If any Friends are interested in the histories of Dolgoch Youth Hostel near Tregaron and Ty’n Cornel Youth Hostel near Llanddewi Brefi, I have old black and white photographs and details from wills, parish registers and census records from the period between 1841 and 1891.
C R Price
HMP Gartree, Market Harborough, LE16 7RP
Restorative justice
I write to you concerning the recent report on Friends in Wales (24 March) that mentioned the ‘Peaceful Schools Project’ in primary schools throughout Wales.
I am very proud to be a governor of a primary school in Bradford, West Yorkshire, which is completely peaceful.
There is no bullying anywhere, no shouting by either staff or pupils, and no rough behaviour by pupils on the way to or from school.
Spirituality has also become fundamental in pupils becoming reflective and responsible for making positive choices about the way they are with other people in the school.
This has been achieved by the principles of restorative justice and peer group mediation for every pupil from the time when they enter school at the age of four until they leave the school at the age of eleven.
It is a Church of England School and ninety-seven per cent of pupils are from ethnic minorities, the majority of whom are South Asians.
Trefor Howorth
Comments
I’m Noel Staples and I have found this on the internet:
The author was one Rev Henry Burton 1840-1930 published in 1917 in the Songs of Help: for the Sunday School, evangelistic and church services #74
Burton, Henry, D.D., p. 1555, i., born at Swannington, Leicestershire, in 1840. His parents having emigrated to America, he became a student at Beloit College, and graduated in honours. After labouring as a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church for a time he returned to England, entered the Wesleyan Ministry in 1865, and has since laboured chiefly in Lancashire and London. His published works include Gleanings in the Gospels, Wayside Songs, 1886, St. Luke in the Expositor’s Bible, &c. His hymns in common use, in addition to those named on p. 1555, i., include:—
1. Break, day of God, 0 break. [Second Advent.] Written at Blundell Sauds, near Liverpool, on Christmas Eve, 1900, and included in The Methodist Hymn Book, 1904. “The opening stanza was composed on the Railway Bridge where I lingered on my way home” (Author’s MS!.).
2. In the secret of His presence. [Peace in Christ.] Written at Acton, London, published in his Wayside Songs, 1886, and included in the Epworth Hymnal, U.S.A.
3. 0 King of Kings, 0 Lord of hosts. [National Hymn.] Dr. Burton’s history of this hymn is: “In the late Queen’s Jubilee year, 1887, I composed an Ode which was set to music by Sir J. Stainer, and sung at a Jubilee Festival in the Royal Albert Hall, London. As the Ode could not be sung at any other time, Sir J. Stainer requested me to compose a hymn to which the same music should be set [and of a national character]. This led me to write the hymn” Author’s MS.). It is No. 975 in The Methodist Hymn Book, 1904.
4. Have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on. [Kind Deeds.] “This is based on a little incident in the life of my brother-in-law, the Rev. Mark Guy Pearse. When a boy returning home from a Moravian school in Holland, the steward of the boat on which he sailed from Bristol to Hayle showed him marked attention and kindness, because Mr. Pearse’s father, years before, had proved a great friend to his mother. And so he was simply ‘passing on’ the kindness.” (Author’s MS.). The hymn was written at Acton on April 8, 1885, and first printed in The Christian Advocate, N.Y., 1886, and again in Wayside Songs, 1886, p. 81. The first stanza has been adopted as a motto by the “International Sunshine Society,” of New York.
—John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
By NoelS on 6th April 2017 - 21:31
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