Friday 15 May 2015

On the Eve of Assembly

On the eve of this year's General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, I share an experience of the GA which will remain with me all the days of my life - when Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, addressed the Assembly.

I wasn't a member of the Assembly that year, but sat in the public gallery to listen to the words of one of my all-time heroes, words which are as relevant now as they were when they were spoken in 2009.

If you followed the actions of Tutu during the apartheid era, you will have seen the way he can walk into an environment of conflict, rouse the crowd up into a frenzy and then create a turning point when he channels the emotion of the crowd into something constructive rather than destructive.  "Rabble Rouser for Peace" is the appropriate title of his authorised biography.

On this day, he performed a similar theatrical effect, first rousing the Assembly with the tales of what the Kirk achieved in South Africa for the anti-apartheid movement.  As people were feeling good, their emotions stirred, the turning point came: Tutu closed his eyes and spoke like a prophet these words:

What invests people - all people, without exception - invests them with a worth that is infinite is not this or that biological irrelevance, but it is the staggering fact that all of us, without exception, is created in God's image.  Each one of us, staggeringly, is a God-carrier.  Each one of us is a God viceroy, a stand-in for God...
We are the servant of one who declared that Isaiah's words had found fulfilment in him: "The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to speak good news, not just to any and everybody, but especially to the poor."  Ours is a God who is notoriously biased towards the poor, the hungry, the downtrodden, those who smell to high heaven, those begging in our streets, who sleep rough, prostitutes, drug addicts - those who are at the edges of our society.  Those are our God's favourites.
"Would you want acceptance, even of your worship, then go and wash you hands clean for they are full of blood, and then go and do justice, not just to anyone... go and do justice to the widow, the orphan and the alien," representative of the most impotent of societies in those days.
The church of God is one that must proclaim, "Thus said the Lord..."  Thus said the Lord that, hey, we are family, we are family.  We have only one whom we call 'Father' and this one who is our Lord, speaking about his coming elevation on the cross, said, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw - not some - will draw all, all."   
An incredible, revolutionary, radical, radical, radical assertion!  Will draw all, all, all into an embrace which not let us go, for in this family, there are no outsiders - all, all are insiders, all are children of our heavenly Father: the rich, the poor, the lame, the blind, the clever, the not-so-clever, the white, the black, the red, the yellow - all, all, all!  The Palestinian, the Israeli, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, George Bush - all, all, I will draw all, all into this embrace which will not let you go.  All, all, all, all, all, all!  Lesbian, gay, so-called straight - all, all, all, I will draw all!
We are family, we are family, we are sisters and brothers!  How, in the name of everything that is good, can we justify going on spending obscene amounts on budgets of death and destruction when we know that just a minute fraction of those so-called defence budgets would ensure that God's children everywhere - our sisters and brothers - would have clean water to drink, would have enough food to eat, would have a decent home, would have affordable healthcare?  How can it be that we representing this God can look on can look on when there are those who go to bed hungry, who can spend only one dollar a day?  How can we, how can we, how can we?
 And our God says, "I have no one, I have no-one except you.  Help me, help me, help me to make this a more compassionate world.  Help me please, help me so we can make it more generous, caring.  Help me, I have no one except you.  Help me, help me, help me."

You can watch the speech here:  (If you only have time to watch one, go for part 3.)


 

Thursday 7 May 2015

I stood for election once...

...well, kind of. It was about a week before the 1997 election, Blair's Babes were on the march, John Major's underpants were the subject of much speculation and Alex Salmond was having his first crack as SNP leader. I was in primary 5 and the classes on the top floor decided to hold a mock election, with each of the four classes putting up one candidate. I was chosen as our candidate and with the three others, we drew lots to see which party we would represent.


This was 1997, the height of Blair mania, things can only get better, so naturally I hoped to be the Labour candidate. Besides, I'd met Donald Dewar that week in Greggs and he gave me a New Labour balloon, so what was not to like?


Alas, it was not to be - with the lots drawn, I was to represent Paddy Ashdown's Lib Dems. I set to work learning about their policies, which included such vote-winners as raising income tax by 1p.


A few days later, things got into full swing. Hustings were held across all the classes, ballot boxes were made from shoe boxes and Mrs Walker's classroom was turned into a polling station, with painting easels forming makeshift booths.


At the hustings, the Labour and Conservative candidates kept trying to out-do one another with more and more made up populist policies and when asked how they'd pay for them replied, "print more money". Meanwhile, I sat there as the sensible Lib Dem, offering well thought-through, fully costed but unspectacular policies. I got two votes, one of them cast by myself.


In the end, Labour and the Conservatives ended up neck and neck, the SNP put in quite a good showing while the Lib Dems were all but wiped out. I wonder why this springs to mind today?