Vicar's monthly letter
Each month the vicar writes a letter for our parish magazine SEEK. The latest letter is published below.
July and August
The Vicar’s Letter
Dear Friends,
During our splendid Garden Fête on June 12th, as the brass band was playing, and the sideshows and stalls buzzing, I remarked idly to one of the American members of our congregation, ‘It’s such a typically British event’. ‘Oh, we have similar things’, he replied.
This is a trivial example of the fact that sometimes we do like to define ourselves by imagining that the habits we hold dear to our hearts are unique to us. We suppose that we must be a special case because we behave in a particular way, and we don’t quite like to think that what we do is part of the run of the mill behaviour of humanity. I learnt a little lesson in that idle exchange, and though I have no doubt at all that an American fête would have a different flavour to it (more coffee, less tea, and hot-dogs, perhaps?), now I realise that fund-raising celebrations by churches, charities and community groups most probably have lots of things in common across the western world.
Sometimes the way in which we suppose that there is no one quite like us can have serious consequences. When I reflect on the intractable and tragic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, it seems to me that both sides in that conflict fail to see how like each other they are. And here I’m not referring to facts of kinship in language and Semitic inheritance; I’m thinking about the fact that each community knows proudly of itself that the more it meets opposition, the more defiant it will become. Yet each side seems to imagine that the opposing forces are different - that they will eventually cave-in if the pressure is kept up. And this mistake leads to fatal policy errors on both sides, and spiralling violence which never looks as though it will end. Might there be some kind of breakthrough to more constructive policies if the imaginative leap could be taken to the thought that ‘in our enemies, we’re dealing with people who feel and react very much as we do’?
Of course people and cultures are different; that’s part of the spice of life. Sometimes our mistake is not to allow for that difference. Living closely with others can throw into relief how things we take for granted aren’t at all the norm in other cultures, and we need to learn sensitivity. We have to pay attention to diversity, and not try to smooth it over. But we don’t do that by constructing imaginary pictures for ourselves of what makes us ‘us’, and what makes them ‘them’. We can only learn by being in real communication, without presuppositions; and this may lead to surprising discoveries, both of difference and of sameness.
These issues pertain between religions: sometimes we like to imagine aspects of our own faith as ‘unique’, and are uncomfortable if we learn that others hold very much the same thing. At other times, we take something to be so self-evidently true that it can be a shock to find that others don’t see that to be the case at all. It may be more comfortable for us not to learn too much about other faiths for this reason – so that we can remain secure in our presuppositions. But if we are to have real communication – which is the only possible basis both for working together for peace, and for fruitful and respectful sharing of the treasures we have received – then we have to come out of the castles of imagination about ourselves and others, into the market-place of real conversation.
In the end, I would say, it is only God who sees us clearly and in the round: he knows what makes people and nations unique. He also knows what there is fundamentally in common between us all, based on what Christians and Jews would call the fact of our being made ‘in his image and likeness’. Believing in God therefore challenges us to be forever stretching our imagination beyond mere presuppositions.
With best wishes for a happy summer,
Your local vicar,
Dear Friends,
During our splendid Garden Fête on June 12th, as the brass band was playing, and the sideshows and stalls buzzing, I remarked idly to one of the American members of our congregation, ‘It’s such a typically British event’. ‘Oh, we have similar things’, he replied.
This is a trivial example of the fact that sometimes we do like to define ourselves by imagining that the habits we hold dear to our hearts are unique to us. We suppose that we must be a special case because we behave in a particular way, and we don’t quite like to think that what we do is part of the run of the mill behaviour of humanity. I learnt a little lesson in that idle exchange, and though I have no doubt at all that an American fête would have a different flavour to it (more coffee, less tea, and hot-dogs, perhaps?), now I realise that fund-raising celebrations by churches, charities and community groups most probably have lots of things in common across the western world.
Sometimes the way in which we suppose that there is no one quite like us can have serious consequences. When I reflect on the intractable and tragic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, it seems to me that both sides in that conflict fail to see how like each other they are. And here I’m not referring to facts of kinship in language and Semitic inheritance; I’m thinking about the fact that each community knows proudly of itself that the more it meets opposition, the more defiant it will become. Yet each side seems to imagine that the opposing forces are different - that they will eventually cave-in if the pressure is kept up. And this mistake leads to fatal policy errors on both sides, and spiralling violence which never looks as though it will end. Might there be some kind of breakthrough to more constructive policies if the imaginative leap could be taken to the thought that ‘in our enemies, we’re dealing with people who feel and react very much as we do’?
Of course people and cultures are different; that’s part of the spice of life. Sometimes our mistake is not to allow for that difference. Living closely with others can throw into relief how things we take for granted aren’t at all the norm in other cultures, and we need to learn sensitivity. We have to pay attention to diversity, and not try to smooth it over. But we don’t do that by constructing imaginary pictures for ourselves of what makes us ‘us’, and what makes them ‘them’. We can only learn by being in real communication, without presuppositions; and this may lead to surprising discoveries, both of difference and of sameness.
These issues pertain between religions: sometimes we like to imagine aspects of our own faith as ‘unique’, and are uncomfortable if we learn that others hold very much the same thing. At other times, we take something to be so self-evidently true that it can be a shock to find that others don’t see that to be the case at all. It may be more comfortable for us not to learn too much about other faiths for this reason – so that we can remain secure in our presuppositions. But if we are to have real communication – which is the only possible basis both for working together for peace, and for fruitful and respectful sharing of the treasures we have received – then we have to come out of the castles of imagination about ourselves and others, into the market-place of real conversation.
In the end, I would say, it is only God who sees us clearly and in the round: he knows what makes people and nations unique. He also knows what there is fundamentally in common between us all, based on what Christians and Jews would call the fact of our being made ‘in his image and likeness’. Believing in God therefore challenges us to be forever stretching our imagination beyond mere presuppositions.
With best wishes for a happy summer,
Your local vicar,
Maggie Guite
