The Silence of the Girls

Last autumn my wife and I went to Greece to visit some of the great classical sites. I'm ashamed to say that this was my first trip to the mainland. I blogged about it here and here (and also wrote about the importance of introducing young people to the classics here).

One of the sites we visited was Mycenae. Here, on this great citadel, Agamemnon reigned as king. Here he mustered his fighting men and led them down the valley to Nauplius from where they set sail for the Trojan War. Just below the ancient city is the mighty Bronze Age tomb built in around 1250 BCE. In the excitement of its discovery in the nineteenth century, it was at once claimed to be Agamemnon's tomb. Whether he was buried there or not, the name Agamemnon's Tomb stuck. The marvellous "Funeral Mask of Agamemnon" which was unearthed during that excavation and is now in the Archaeological Museum of Athens certainly dates from before his time.

It's one of the most impressive monuments in Greece, a place to make you think. It takes you straight back to the Iliad, Homer's story of the Trojan War. Or, we should say, selected episodes from that nine-year conflict that was seared on the Greeks' memory and played such a vital part in framing their sense of identity and destiny. I'd taken the Iliad to Greece on my tablet, and for a few minutes I sat in front of the tomb's colossal entrance reading selected paragraphs. It was like reading the gospels in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and Galilee, or Bede's story of Saxon England in his churches at Wearmouth and Jarrow here in North East England. Context is everything.

I'd grown up with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Retold for children (Tales of the Greek Heroes), they belonged to a precious little canon of books by my bedside, endlessly re-read, that included the Arthurian Legend and Robin Hood. And launching into the classics at a boys' prep school, I suppose I imbibed the notion that these stories set out notions of ideal manhood to be emulated, as far as possible, by prowess on the rugby pitch. Agamemnon, Achilles and Ajax, Hector and Paris - who wouldn't want to grow up to be like these fine warriors who brought lustre to the blooded plains of Troy?

So far, so gendered. At Christmas I was given Pat Barker's new novel, The Silence of the Girls. I'd read her Regeneration Trilogy about the Great War, and some of her other novels. In one way, The Silence of the Girls reminded me of Regeneration: I won't say that she is the only contemporary novelist who knows how to depict war, but I will say that there are none better. I'd forgotten how visceral her writing is, how concretely she describes human trauma, how she won't let the reader evade the sordid, repellent specifics of what it is like to fight and be fought. She makes you feel the pain, not by indulging needlessly in the horror of it all, but by troubling to articulate it, write accurately about it so that you catch every jot, every tittle.

An archetypal man's world, you would think. Well, no. That's the brilliance of this novel. For it sees the Trojan War from the female perspective, as if it were told by the Trojan woman whom Achilles is given as his trophy for success in battle. Part concubine part slave, Briseis has a complicated relationship with Achilles, but that is nothing to her predicament when Agamemnon decides that he wants her for himself, to replace the woman whom he has reluctantly had to release to appease the gods. The mighty sulk this induces in Achilles and his refusal to go out and fight is the central premise of the Iliad. But it had not struck me before how this places a woman right at the heart of the epic. (Other than Helen of Sparta, of course, who was the pretext of the Trojan War to begin with.)

Reading a text like the Iliad from the standpoint of someone who is (a) an enemy, (b) a slave who is always subject to the power, not to say abuse, of another, and above all (c) a woman transforms your entire view of it. When I taught the Hebrew Bible I urged students to discover how studying familiar texts from the standpoint of oppression and marginality sheds all kinds of new light on them whether they are feminist, queer, political or postcolonial readings. The insights of liberation theology into how we read the story of the Exodus have been with us for half a century or more. I'm simply saying that as a lay person when it comes to classical literature, Pat Barker's approach was a revelation.

The Silence of the Girls - it's such an eloquent title. Are the Iliad or the Exodus texts remotely interested in listening to the voices of the women who experience the traumas narrated in those stories? But if you peer into the interstices, women are there, waiting to be heard. In Exodus, Miriam, Aaron's sister, summons the Hebrew women to sing and dance their own story of deliverance in which feminists hear a distant echo of far-off times when women would one day take their place alongside men in leading others: sing to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.

And when you look again at the Iliad having read Pat Barker's novel, women are silent no longer. You realise how strong the Trojan women were, dignified, noble, intelligent, tender. Like the chorus in a Greek tragedy they notice what is happening, pay attention, interpret events, share insights about human nature. They compel you through suffering to imagine in new ways. At least, that's how I began to construe Pat Barker's Briseis. It's superbly done, with a purity of vision that you want to catch as a reader. And when you put the book down and return to the twenty-first century and the relentless conflicts of our own time, you long for the vision not to fade just yet as you try to make sense of it all.

Oh, and doing whatever it takes to make sure that women and girls are silenced no more in our own day. Pat Barker’s novel is a manifesto of empowerment, and her unforgettable Briseis an emblem for women of all times and places. But the battle for equality is not won yet!

After the Vote: a Church of England Statement?

After the Commons vote on Mrs May’s Brexit deal on Tuesday, the Church of Scotland was quick to issue a statement.

I’ve been tracking the Church of England’s media feed since the vote, thinking that at a time of national crisis, Britain’s other national church would be bound to say something that could help people of faith - maybe others - try to reflect on the position our nation is now in. I’ve been surprised, and I have to say disappointed, that so far, there has been no official comment.

So in the absence of any statement, and conscious that it’s hard to improve on the Church of Scotland’s wise words, here’s my own attempt. The Church of England is welcome to adopt it without attribution if it wishes. And while my personal view of Brexit is well-known to readers of this blog, I’ve genuinely tried to make this comment as inclusive as possible.

The Church of England is dismayed that following this week’s vote on the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal in the House of Commons, our nation now finds itself in an impasse. And this just ten short weeks before the date we are due to leave the European Union. We cannot exaggerate the dangers this poses to the United Kingdom. 

Our Church is privileged to serve one of its four nations, and this means that we care deeply about the welfare of England, its destiny, and its contribution to the flourishing of the United Kingdom, Europe and the world. Because of that, we would like to offer a comment on the position our nation is now in.

Our Church is probably no more united on Brexit than the population as a whole. This is one of many matters where the Church of England needs to live courteously with difference. But we believe, as we think most parliamentarians and most of the British public believe, that to leave the EU without any deal in place would be profoundly damaging to the UK. And we are afraid that it is the poorest and most dependent of our society who would be damaged the most. Our present paralysis is therefore a cause of great concern.

We say this out of concern not only for our future trading relationships with the EU, but also for the many other ways in which our collaboration with the European Union will continue to be of immense importance to this nation. We mean our shared concern for human rights, justice, employment practice, the alleviation of poverty, security, peacemaking and the conservation of the environment. We also mean our participation in scientific, medical, cultural and educational programmes that have benefitted all the EU nations and which we believe most people would want to see continue in some form. The UK has shown leadership in all these areas, and we would not want to see these opportunities vanish on 29 March. 

We are also deeply aware of the predicament Brexit poses to our friends from overseas EU nations who have made their home in the UK, and for British people living in those EU27 nations. A “no-deal” Brexit would have a severe impact on them and on their livelihoods. We owe it to them to make sure that they have security about their future, and this lends urgency to the task of negotiating an acceptable divorce settlement and future relationships as nations. 

We urge our Parliamentarians to put the nation’s welfare above party loyalties by finding every possible way of working together to find a way forward that can win consensus. This is not a time for taking up doctrinaire positions. It is not only vital that Parliament rediscovers a sense of common purpose. It is now very urgent indeed that we emerge from this current paralysis.

It has often been said that leaving the European Union does not mean leaving the continent of Europe. So we urge all the peoples of Britain to continue to be good friends, neighbours and allies to the nations of our continent, in whatever ways our future relationships are configured. This is unknown at present. But despite so much uncertainty, we urge our leaders at least to have regard for the many values the European family of nations has in common. 

What can the Church of England offer at this critical time? 

First, as our neighbours in the Church of Scotland have already said, we can try to model respect and courtesy in the way we ourselves as church members handle issues that deeply divide people. Archbishop Justin Welby has coined the phrase “good disagreement”. Our national conversation about Brexit has become violent and abusive at times. We must resist this, and instead embody what it means to treat one another as humans who are created in God’s image, whatever our political or religious convictions. We make our plea to all politicians and those in public leadership roles to take great care in the ways they express themselves. And this of course extends to all of us, not least in our use of social media. 

Secondly, we can promise to say our prayers. This isn’t about finding answers to our political dilemmas so much as holding the nation in our hearts and offering our present cares and concerns to the God who, we believe, cares as much about continents and nations as he does about individuals. And even if prayer is not everyone’s instinctive response at such times as these, perhaps there are more people than we imagine who find comfort in the knowledge that prayer is being offered in the cathedrals and churches right across our land on behalf of us all.

Thirdly, if there are concrete ways in which the Church of England can act as bridge-builders or reconcilers at this time of uncertainty, or beyond, we stand ready to contribute in any way we can. In this, we believe we speak for Christian leaders of every tradition and in every part of the kingdom. And for all people of goodwill, whatever their faith, politics, culture or origin. Together, we can find find possibility and hope even in the most troubled of times. We pray so.

UPDATE. As I was publishing this, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York released a short statement supporting the call to prayer issued by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI).

Brexit: a Book, a Film and a Shocking Event

It's back to Brexit for long-suffering parliamentarians. So back to Brexit for happy bloggers too.

Let me start with three quotations. Maybe you recognise them.

Their campaign began 20 years ago. The slow drip of hate, hate, hate. This is who we are now.

It’s about the soul of our country. I’m worried that we won’t be able to heal.... You can’t close the box once it’s been opened.

We all know there's a lot of anger in this country at the moment and to get what you want you've got to keep that anger burning. But people show their anger in different ways. Some of them grumble into their tea and huff and puff over the Daily Telegraph and vote for Brexit and that's fine. But some of them go out into the street one morning with a flak jacket full of knives and stab their local MP to death, and that's not so good is it? And the more the papers stoke up the anger by using words like "treason" and "mutiny" and "enemy of the people", the more likely it gets that something like that will happen again.

The first two are from James Graham's TV drama Brexit: The Uncivil War which was broadcast on Channel Four last night. The third is from Jonathan Coe's latest novel Middle England, published last autumn. It's been interesting to watch the one and read the other in these first few days of what promises to be a febrile year.

In one way, the novel and the drama are trying to do the same thing: lift the lid on Brexit-Britain and uncover the dynamics of a referendum decision that now seems, thirty months later, to be more baffling than ever, more complex than most of us thought at the time. The TV play did this by focusing on the leadership of the Vote Leave campaign, Dominic Cummings (aka Benedict Cumberbatch) in particular. The novel, by contrast, explores the lead-up to the referendum and its aftermath through the perspective of characters ("ordinary people"?) who are linked by kindred or affinity (some of whom you will recognise from Coe's earlier novels). So far, so synchronous.

Synchronous too, and appallingly (because this was real life, not the imagined world of fiction), Anna Soubry MP was verbally assaulted yesterday in front of the Houses of Parliament. Staunch Remainer as she is, she had given a TV interview about Brexit on College Green. Some protesters - not many, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in foul-mouthed ferocity - yelled abuse at her. Words quoted in the reports were Fascist! Nazi! There may have been more. Still on air, she asked, her voice audibly shaking, "What has happened to our country?" The book and the film go some way to answering that, as the quotes above suggest.

In her review of the film in today's Guardian Lucy Mangan colourfully pans the drama, not so much because it was simplistically black-and-white (angels versus demons), but because it didn't explore any of the main issues in depth. (And it was, to be honest, somewhat pedestrian, but maybe this was to avoid providing watching litigators with extra work.) The effect of this was to add to the chaos at precisely the time in our national life when we should look to the arts to shine a light on our confusion. But whatever its shortcomings, I have to say that the script earned two cheers for accurately spotlighting the bitter divisions that have been let loose in our country. It couldn't have wished for a better commentary than those grim events in Parliament Square on the very same day. It's completely right to fear for the soul of our country and to wonder if these wounds can be healed, in our lifetimes at any rate.

Jonathan Coe's book is a lot more satisfying. He too uncovers the "sound and fury" (alas, unlike Shakespeare's, not "signifying nothing"). But he does it through the slow burn of the long read that allows you time to reflect on the picture he's painting. This is not a campaigning novel but a serious exercise in plot, character and motive. Take Helena, She belongs to my own silver-haired generation who, if the demographic analyses are right, tipped the referendum into voting Leave. She is elegant, thoughtful, caring - but as you get to know her you discover a low-level hostility towards those who are different from her, an "othering" of people from different cultures and traditions. No spoilers - I won't reveal how this comes to a climax near the end, but it's shocking when it does. And you realise that she is your neighbour in the street where you live, the acquaintance who invites you in for coffee, the woman you kneel next to in church, a friend or relative, even, who takes you by surprise because you never thought that racism formed even the tiniest part of their character.

I loved the book. And I valued moments of the drama like those I quoted when it seemed to rise above the generally worthy and recognise something significant. Both avoided making facile connections such as: if David Cameron had not launched the referendum, Jo Cox would still be alive today. What's likely to be true is that he was foolish enough to give in to the self-destructive Rule Britannia anti-EU myth that has been perpetrated among right-wing Tories for a generation and that aided and abetted by the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, has poisoned attitudes across much of the party not to say its voters. In other words, Uncivil War is right to recognise that this visceral hatred has been dripping for a couple of decades, as Margaret Thatcher and John Major knew well. The referendum was not the cause of it. But it was the occasion for it to find open expression where hatreds are now expressed not only at the smartphone keyboard but at knifepoint. Cameron cannot evade responsibility for not reading the signs of the times. For a politician that's a sin of the first order.

How do you close the box once it's been opened? In Hesiod's myth of Pandora, she foolishly opened her box (a big clay storage jar, actually) and released all the evils we know in the world - famine, disaster, poverty, sickness and death. She shut it just in time to hold in the last of its contents which was hope. Someone read my tweet about all this today and replied: All shall be well.... Even if it is not well, and it certainly doesn't feel well at present. Yes, I thought, that is theologically and spiritually accurate.

I don't know what shape hope can have for our nation at present. I can't any more sing that naively optimistic hymn God is working his purpose out in the light of events. God is not going to rescue us from our folly. We have already seen what glory, grace and truth look like in the face of the Child whose coming we have celebrated at Christmas. But precisely because of him and his love for our chaotic world, hoping against hope is what we must do, like faithful Abraham. And pray for the wisdom that will teach us how to think and act for the best in our time.

And we shall hope. If not for ourselves, then for our children's children who, we fervently pray, inherit a better world than the one we are bequeathing them.

Farewell Facebook. Sort Of.

There's something faintly narcissistic about discussing social media on social media. But I guess we all do it if only to try to understand why, if it has, social media has become such a pervasive part of our lives.

Six years ago when I was still finding my feet in this strange new world I wrote a blog about Twitter. A week is a long time in social media, let alone six years. But I don't think I'd change anything much, other than acknowledge that the character limit is now 280, not 140 as it used to be in the (good) old days. I tried out these Twelve Principles of Responsible Tweeting on a conference I once addressed on the subject of wisdom and pastoral care. They went down well.

At about the same time as a Durham University colleague told me I'd enjoy Twitter (how right she was), my children persuaded me to reactivate my Facebook (henceforth FB) account so that we could all keep in touch, resuscitate old friendships, share holiday snaps and discuss what we'd had for breakfast. Always compliant, I did as they asked. I enjoyed interacting with people I hadn't seen for years as well as making new friends (whatever we think online "friendship" means). I learned a lot from links people posted to broadcasting, newspapers and journals, enjoyed their photos and was often inspired by their blogs.

But I never cared for FB in quite the way I took to Twitter. Twitter was elegant, disciplined and smart. I loved its minimalism - not so minimalist now. FB sprawled without limit (and by heaven don't some people take advantage of that). Twitter was amazingly simple to use, FB labyrinthine in the complexity of its settings (some of which I don't get to this day). But what irritated me most, and still does, is the gossipy world view it often endorses. The endless fripperies, the studied triviality that was once mercifully confined to the privacy of personal relationships are now on view for all the world (well, all our friendship worlds) to see.

It's not that lightening up isn't a very good thing. We should cultivate humour, laughter, lightness of touch, a sense of the absurd. We all need to do it, myself included - ask my family! But somehow, FB seems to inflate it. And that's true at the opposite end of the spectrum as well, where serious commentary (of which there's a great deal on FB - don't misunderstand me) often descends into rudeness, vitriol and rage. The more words I have, the more I can indulge myself in front of the ever-willing audience with which I share my echo-chamber. In that respect, Twitter's tightness imposes some controls. Yes I know that 280 characters, precisely because of that limit, can curtail nuance, inhibit subtlety, make words sound sharper-edged than they are meant to be, offend where no offence was intended. And if you want to abuse someone, Twitter is ideal for it. It will get you noticed. No medium is perfect. But perhaps I've said enough to explain why I've not found FB comparable to Twitter which, most of the time, has been source of enlightenment, stimulus and pleasure.

Social media holds up a mirror to both our best and our worst selves, and to the shades of grey in between which I suppose account for ninety-five percent of ordinary life. The mirror, if it's telling the truth, won't make us look any better than we really are, or worse for that matter. But the question is, precisely what "truth" are we talking about when we gaze dispassionately at the image of ourselves that we portray on social media? I find that an intriguing question to which I don't really know the answer. Some of us want to promote the image of the clown or humourist, others the sage with profound wisdom to impart. Some aspire to be the angry prophet, some the witty flaneur. There's the friend who cultivates triviality in order to subvert (or just take their mind off) the serious stuff out there in the real world or in cyberspace. And there's always the one who wants to be the cleverest person in the room. God forbid any of us might crave that reputation.

To some extent, these caricatures tell both truth and lies. We're all of us tempted to construct false selves online, create the public or semi-public persona we want others to see, may even want to see ourselves. When we draft our social media profile and select images to go with it, what governs those decisions? Some devote a good deal of time to thinking about it, others take a devil-may-care attitude. I suppose personality type has a lot to do with it, as well as the roles we have in our work or public life, and how social media can enhance or detract from them. And all this assumes that we do lhave regard for truthfulness and integrity online so that what you see is, to a greater or lesser extent, what you you get. I assume that everyone who reads this blog believes that this ought to matter to us. But even if it does, it’s easy to deceive ourselves about what the gap between how others see us and what we truly are. That’s no different from everyday life of course. But on social media, as some have found to their cost, that gap can be fatally magnified.

I have to admit that FB is not altogether the life-enhancing medium I thought it might be. But I won't have it said that social media is intrinsically destructive or bad. It's morally neutral, like the invention of the printing-press or telephone, radio and television, all of which were said at the time successfully to corrupt minds and hearts, especially those of the young. Like any communications medium, the internet is only a tool - a hugely powerful one, but a tool for all that. What any tool does is simply to broaden the scope of our capacity for good or evil. As I've said, it's as good or as bad as we are. So the important question to ask always is, how can we make it better for others and ourselves, put wholesome, positive, wise messages out there to help combat so much that's negative and deleterious and bad?

All of which I've written as a way of telling FB friends that I've decided to change the way I use this platform. Hitherto I've posted a lot of stuff about theology, culture, social affairs and politics on my timeline as well as link to some of the best writing on those or other topics that I've come across in my reading. But I've come to think that maybe FB isn't the best medium for doing this, at least not for me. Someone told me, in the nicest possible way but quite firmly, to lighten up on other people's timelines (and there I was, thinking I'd made a helpful contribution to the discussion a friend had begun in a new year's post). Maybe they were trying to tell me that FB isn't the right tool for this sort of thing, or more likely, that I just wasn't using it properly. However, the effect was to make me feel as though I'd lobbed a hand-grenade into the kindergarten playground. Over-sensitive? Maybe. Even probably. But it had the intended effect of making me think about my use of social media.

So I've reached a decision about FaceBook. It's not to suspend my account - at least, not yet (as for closing it down permanently, how to do that has baffled some of the world's greatest minds). But I've decided to use FB purely for social interaction rather than the political, social and theological debates I've been engaging in for the past few years. I'm going to restrict that kind of content to Twitter, and keep FB for what I guess it was meant to do all along, enjoying the fun-stuff with family and friends and sharing more personal joys and sorrows as appropriate. And, I hope, continuing to enlarge the circle of human relationships, some deep, some more casual, that social media is good at promoting. So I've changed all my privacy settings from public to friends only and drastically reduced what anyone can see of my life online.

In some ways it's felt bleak to do this. But it's not the parting of friends, just a new year rearrangement of the digital homes we are inhabiting. I know many of us will go on meeting up on Twitter where lively debates about everything under the sun will continue. And let me emphasise that I'm speaking only for myself and my experience. We each have to come to our own conclusions. But there's no denying that I'll miss many of you in all sorts of ways when it comes to the often controversial discussions we've had and all that I've learned from you.

I'll give it a few weeks to see how it works out. With the public exposure about its policies and practices that it's had in recent weeks, FaceBook's own hour may be coming, though it's too soon to tell if we're on board a sinking ship. It's entirely possible that events conspire to make all of us question the wisdom of continuing to associate ourselves with FB and be manipulated, as we seem to be, by the vast amounts of information it holds about us, and by the inscrutable algorithms that govern what happens to it (and to us).

When Sherlock Holmes was heading for his last encounter with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, a meeting he believed could only end in the deaths of them both, he told Dr Watson that he did not think he had ever used his powers of detection other than for the welfare of humanity. I’ll make the more modest claim that on FB, I’m not aware that I’ve ever intended to harm or diminish anyone else, however much we may have disagreed or been passionate about the causes we believe in. That of course is no defence if I’ve hurt anyone or damaged their reputation. But as I say a sort of farewell, I can at least say that I’m sorry. That feels important just now.