On Books, Waves and Not Getting Angry with Rascals

“I have taken so kindly to idleness that I can’t tear myself away from it. So either I amuse myself with books, of which I have a good stock here at Antium, or I count the waves - the weather is unsuitable for mackerel fishing... And my sole form of political activity is to hate the rascals, and even that I do without anger.”

This is Cicero in 59BCE. He had retired from his year as consul with more time to read, write and ponder. If only we had his Secret History, published posthumously because of its fierce denunciations of his enemies. This famous book is lost to us. It would have had much to say about the turbulent times he was living through as his cherished Roman Republic entered its death-throes. The waves he watched were not only those that lapped the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. There were political waves aplenty to watch, and despair at, and try not to get angry with the rascals who were making them.

Remind me of anyone?

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the Sunday my wife and I said goodbye to Durham Cathedral. I had been Dean there for nearly thirteen years. The historic Deanery was home to us for a lot longer than anywhere else we had lived as a couple and a family. It was a poignant day as I wrote at the time. But we soon settled into our new home in the Tyne Valley, and to the gentler rhythms of retirement in the countryside. I’ve blogged from the “front line” of retirement from time to time here, here, and recently (particularly significant for me, this one), here.

Cicero’s self-deprecating take on retirement (amid the demands of his legal practice and speech-making) rings bells for me. We have a good stock of books here at Haydon Bridge, and I’ve fulfilled a lifelong ambition to work in a bookshop (as a volunteer every Wednesday afternoon in the local Oxfam bookshop). I can’t tell you how marvellous it is to indulge a love of reading without feeling guilty.

I could write a whole blog - perhaps I shall one day - about some of the books I’ve enjoyed in the past four years - biography, railways, art, religion, poetry, politics, literature, classical history, music, the life and landscapes of North East England - and whatever else looks interesting. Retirement has demonstrated what I always thought was true of me, that I am a born dilettante. I take comfort from the Italian origin of that word, which means someone who “takes delight”, just as amateur literally means “a lover” (of activities).

“Counting the waves”: well, we don’t have many of those here in upstream Haydon Bridge, though the South Tyne creates an impressive standing wave as it sweeps over the weir below the eponymous old bridge. When the river is in spate, there are always plenty of us on the bridge contemplating this wave (and hoping that the Tyne knows its place and doesn’t invade our cellars, as Storm Desmond drove it to do just three months after we had retired here).

And contemplation comes into things in retirement. Cicero evidently enjoyed his mackerel fishing, perhaps because it made for enjoyable hours in the open air, and encouraged a reflective outlook on life, something that Izaak Walton was to write winsomely about in his classic book The Compleat Angler. For me, not an angler, there are the pleasures of walking in the Northumberland Hills, pottering round the Roman sites along Hadrian’s Wall, and other delights on offer in the beautiful environment of the Tyne Valley.

The ancient philosophers wrote about the dichotomy between the active and contemplative aspects of healthy human living. The spiritual tradition found emblems of these two sides of life in the gospel figures of Mary and Martha: Martha, busy caring for the home and managing its hospitality, frustrated at Mary whom she resented sitting and listening to Jesus when there were jobs to do. If we are lucky enough to have worked, the chances are that we have invested heavily in the active life. But retirement, with its invitation to lay activity aside at least to an extent, offers the opportunity to develop a more reflective outlook, nurture our contemplative side. I would go as far as to say that a healthy retirement requires us to do this, and learn how to quieten our spirits by being present and attentive to the moment. After all, what is contemplation but purposeful idleness? This seems to me to be the kind of spirituality we should cultivate in older age.

This is the clue to Cicero’s final point about observing politics, hating rascals but not getting angry. I hadn’t expected retirement to be so dominated by national politics and the antics of rascals. Within three months of retiring, the EU Referendum was called. I found myself writing, speaking and blogging about it, spending many waking hours reading news reports and commentary, immersing myself in it as a matter of very personal concern. (You’ll find all my blogs on this website - just trawl through the content dating from 2016 onwards.) Why was I lying awake worrying about it? Because as a child of Anglo-German parentage, Europeanism was instilled in me at a very early age. I could not bear the thought that the UK might leave the European Union, this project inaugurated by people of vision who wanted to secure peace in our continent for the sake of future generations. I still can’t.

I confess that all my life, I’ve never felt so angry about British politics as I have done in these years of retirement. “Rascals” is a benign word to describe the kind of deceit and chicanery we’ve witnessed from hard Brexiters since the campaign was launched. And yes, a propensity for hatred comes into things if you are a man or woman who believes in something passionately and wants to safeguard it against those who would wilfully dismantle it. I’m not defending myself by pointing to those Psalms where the author puts into words his visceral hatred towards those whom he talks about as his, and God’s, enemies. Yes, it can soon collapse into an ugly self-righteousness. I can be prone to that. But I simply want to notice that anger and hatred are present in the experience of the people of God. It’s not edited out of their prayer.

Dealing with anger is a spiritual issue. I really do not want to be angry in my spirit as I grow old. In Psalm 37, the Psalmist advises: “fret not thyself because of the ungodly”. The secret is, I think, the contemplative spirit Cicero exhibits. Stoic teaching (which he admired) and the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible are at one here. A quiet eye inculcates a quiet spirit - not without feelings and passions, but not ruled by them, especially the negative ones. “They who are run away with by their lust or anger have quoted the command over themselves” writes Cicero in a piece called “On Grief of Mind”. A contemplative take on politics, even the politics of madness - this is what I’m trying to cultivate. This means channelling anger towards rascals into positive action, discovering how hatred can be transcended, if not by love, then at least by what R. S. Thomas called in one of his poems, “willed gentleness”. And try to respect and to disagree well, even when we differ so profoundly.

How am I getting on? Fitfully, I think. Brexit is a big test of my Christianity. But wisdom, with its insights into who and what I am, and why human behaviour (including mine) is so wayward and liable to corruption, comes to the rescue. Contemplation brings a larger perspective. And this bigger picture is an essential spiritual aspect of ageing if our lives are not to be narrowed as we face our mortality. Today’s anniversary is an opportunity to pause and take stock.

So books, waves and not getting angry are all part of the same picture. Perhaps it’s time I took up fishing?

On All Saints' Eve: Six Best Books from the Reformation Era

Five centuries ago today, Martin Luther posted ninety five theses on the legendary door of the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg. I can't let the day pass without writing something. It's a crowded field with many people contributing insights about the Reformation, not least on Thought for the Day this morning and in a leading article in The Guardian.

How do we get the feel of the Reformation? Best of all is to let them speak to us in their own words. So I thought I would blog about some of my favourite writings from the Reformation era. Amid a plethora of books about the Reformers, I think it's vital to go back to the sources themselves. This was an approach the Reformers themselves constantly advocated. Ad fontes! they would say, don't just read the secondary literature. It's original texts that need to inform our thinking and correct the distortions that inevitably colour so much of the narrative and the commentary.

What you find when you go back to the Reformers' writings is how lively and fresh they are. There's a bracing quality about these books that makes them a joy to read - and often, they are far easier to read than we might have thought. They knew how to write as well as how to think. They understood that they needed to harness the potential of the new media of their day, the printed word. (How they exploited this new "information technology" is a rich study in itself. Parallels with the digital era in which we now live are pertinent and worth thinking about.)

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So here are six of my favourite books from the Reformation era. They are all easily accessible (in translation where necessary), whether in hard copy or on the web.  How the Reformers would have loved the idea of online accessibility!

Martin Luther, Commentary on the Letter to the Galatians
There are so many Luther texts to choose from. Why do I go for a biblical commentary? Because his Galatians goes right to the heart of the central issue of the Reformation, how humanity is redeemed by the grace of God. This epistle, along with Romans, is where St Paul sets out most explicitly the insight that we are justified not by any amount of good works we can do, but through faith in a God who accepts us on the basis of what Christ has done for the salvation of the world. Galatians is among Paul's most passionate letters, and Luther's commentary is among the most passionate of all his writings, full of wonderful rhetoric that help us understand not only Luther's thought but his temperament as well. I once listened to one of my theological teachers read aloud from his commentary on the third chapter of Galatians where Paul says that Christ became a curse for us. It was spellbinding.

Philip Melanchthon, Common Places
Melanchthon was Luther's collaborator in the German Reformation. Perhaps it was a case of opposites attracting, for their personalities were very different. Melanchthon was a methodical thinker who was the first of the Reformation theologians to organise the concepts of Lutheran Protestantism into a coherent body of thought. I have a special fondness for him, having as a student bought for a song three massive volumes of his writings in an edition of the 1560s (which I still have). Sixteenth century writers often compiled "common places" as a way of summing up their thought, and Melanchthon's Common Places or Loci Communes are his own succinct survey of his principal concepts. They have (I think) been in print ever since he wrote them. Deservedly, for here is the quintessence of Reformation theology distilled in a wonderfully accessible and humane way.

John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion
Calvin gets a bad press in much of the church, partly because his own thought tends to get conflated with the more rigorous "Calvinism" of his followers and successors. We might not have relished living in Calvin's Geneva. But I have no hesitation in saying that the Institutes are among the great books of western Christianity, and one of the most magisterial (and influential) systematic theologies not only of his age but of any. It's not a book you will want to read from cover to cover, but nowhere else will you find the leading ideas of the continental Reformation set out so clearly and with the flair that only a lawyer trained in classical rhetoric could bring to it. Where to begin? Not with predestination and election, I suggest, but with the opening chapters that explore how we come to know God.

Thomas Cranmer, The Book of Common Prayer
It would be hard to exaggerate the importance the Prayer Book has had for the English speaking world. Along with Shakespeare and the Authorised Version of the Bible, it did for the English language what Luther's Bible did for the German: gave it a literary sophistication and rhetorical directness that we are indebted to today. Cranmer's Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552 uniquely embody the liturgical and spiritual vision of all the churches that look back to the Reformation. Especially is this true of the Communion Service, to understand which is to have the key to a eucharistic theology that, far from being reductionist as was alleged, is in fact extraordinarily rich and subtle. I have blogged about Prayer Book Evensong before. And we should not forget the Psalms of the BCP whose much-loved translation by Miles Coverdale, another key figure in the English Reformation, has been sung the world over.

The Heidelberg Catechism
This little book was published in one of Germany's most beautiful cities in 1563. It was written for the instruction of the young in the Reformed faith. It is done with a charm and elegance that have never been surpassed, not even in the catechism of the Book of Common Prayer. It is divided into fifty-two "Lord's Days", i.e. one section for each Sunday of the year. Here's part of the first one to give a flavour. "What is your only comfort in life and death?" "That I, both body and soul, am not my own but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood has fully satisfied for my sins and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head...who, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready to live for him." I visited Heidelberg on the River Neckar earlier this year and thought of those cherished words.

Martin Bucer, On the True Care of Souls
To follow two books that focus on Christian formation in the church, my final choice is a classic of pastoral care that deserves to stand alongside the famous books of pastoral theology by Gregory the Great and Richard Baxter. Bucer, a former Dominican, was the leading reformer in Strasbourg (where again this year, I visited his tomb in the protestant Church of St Thomas not far from the Cathedral). His exile in England, where he died, led to his having considerable influence over Cranmer's second Prayer Book of 1552. A man of ecumenical and eirenic temperament, he wrote this endearing book out of concern for the welfare of ordinary church members, recognising the need to  develop a pastoral theology to express through lived experience the Reformation's beliefs about the character of the Christian community.

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"Of the making of many books there is no end", even of books about the Reformers. This is no more than a personal selection. But these volumes have in one way or another played a part in my own shaping as a Christian and as a priest. It's been good in this anniversary year to revisit some of them and recognise the debt I owe to these great Christian thinkers and writers of five centuries ago, and indeed to the movement we call the Reformation that has so profoundly influenced our continent, our country and our peoples.

Up in the Attic

I've been in London this week going through my late mother's things. Readers of this blog will know that she died in July at the great age of nearly 94. 

 

You might think it was dispiriting to spend several days in your parents' house where only their memories are left behind, especially when it's the home you were brought up in. Not at all dispiriting, though it was thought-provoking. My sister lives not far away and we had many hours together sorting their stuff out, going through a vast number of books, unearthing unsuspected papers in the attic and reminiscing about our childhood in North London in the 1950s and 60s.

 

The trapdoor to the attic was hardly ever opened. So I had never clambered inside it before this week (unless the memory has been wiped). How strange, this late in life, to find an undiscovered country in your own childhood home! Once, when my father was busy up there archiving his papers (or something), I dared to climb a few rungs of the ladder he had positioned against the skirting board. It was queasy perching there as the ladder flexed and swayed above the stairs that descended into the abyss below my feet. I did not want to go any further. I could not go any further. (Later in life I replayed that experience when I followed a false trail high up on the Langdale Pikes. The friend I had got separated from said he spent an uncomfortable hour rehearsing the speech he would need to make to my wife when he came back from that Lake District expedition alone.)

 

We found a lot of papers that my father had obsessively kept: decades of bank statements and cheque-book stubs, invoices, receipts, business letters and utility bills. But this was not all there was. We came across a large musty bag containing my grandmother's personal archive. (This was my mother's Jewish mother, "Omummy" who with my grandfather whom I never knew was hidden underground in occupied Holland following the German invasion.) Letters from her children, her parents and her friends were carefully bundled together - by year I think. There was correspondence from the German front during the Great War with postage stamps bearing the Kaiser's image. 

Most poignantly, and chillingly, I unearthed my grandmother's Verzeichnis über das Vermögen von Juden, the Third Reich's valuation of my grandmother's assets as a Jew, signed on 29 June 1938. She had pathetically little to declare: by then, not long before Kristallnacht, regular income for Jews who had been in business had dried up. It was a case of Things My Mother Never Told Me to quote the title of Blake Morrison's memoir. I was both moved and excited by this find that I hadn't expected. It will take time to assess how important it may be in contributing to our knowledge of family life during the Great War, the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era.

 

Taking breaks in the fresher air downstairs, I was happily poring over my parents' immense collection of books. I remember from childhood how some of the titles stood out on the choked bookcases: Bannister Fletcher's History of Architecture on the Comparative Method, G.M. Trevelyan's four volume English Social History, Plato's Republic (Benjamin Jowett's version, the famous nineteenth century Master of what would be my Oxford college, Balliol), Lancelot Hogben's Mathematics for the Million, Spinoza's Ethics, the Knox translation of the New Testament that a Catholic boyfriend of my mother had given her during the war in a vain attempt to convert her to Christianity.

 

But most of all I relished what was on the top-shelf. These books, far above my head, were strictly not for children to take down and look at. I know what you're thinking. But you're wrong. These were the leather-bound volumes of German poets: Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Rellstab, Hölderlin, Rilke and others. They were beautiful books, a joy to look at especially when the sun was setting in summer and lit up the fine bindings in a golden light. They had belonged to my grandmother (or her parents) and been passed on to my mother. They were never opened, and a day came when my parents decided that they should go into stack to make room for newer books that needed accommodation. So they were banished to the attic in a big mouldy suitcase where they remained for years until I rescued them from their long dusty exile and brought them back downstairs this week. 

 

Heinrich Heine was one of the greatest European Romantic poets. He was from Düsseldorf where my mother was born and grew up until 1937 when as a teenager she was sent to England. While browsing through her bedside books, I'd come across a paperback anthology of German poetry. On the flyleaf was written in my grandmother's careful script: "for Michael" - so it should have come to me when she died in 1987. She had also referenced her favourite poem. It is by Heine, so in my imagination it belongs to that nineteenth century leather-bound set on the top shelf. Here is a translation by Sibylle Luise Binder of that poem, Wo?

Where will the tired wanderer last resting place be?

Under palms in the South? Under lime trees by the Rhine?

Will I be hastily buried by strangers’ hands in a desert?

Or will I rest in the sand on a sea’s strand?

At least, here like there I’ll be surrounded by God’s heaven. 

And at night as lamps of death the stars will hover over me.

 

I didn't know the poem before this week, but I think it will come to symbolise these winter days spent in my parents' home. It's typical of the Romantics' love-affair with death, and with the metaphor of life as the journey of an exhausted wanderer yearning for home. (To get the idea, listen to that seasonal song cycle Winterreise by Schubert, a profound setting of poems by another Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller in which a rejected lover finds his whole life under review as he makes his winter's journey away from all that is familiar and homely. Or look at the pictures of the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich.)

 

As I thought about the Heine poem, and the death of my parents and grandparents, I recalled that it was Advent. It's the season when we reflect on the Last Things: death, judgment, hell and heaven in the light of Christian faith. In later life our thoughts inevitably turn towards mortality: the loss of those we have known and loved, the prospect of our own death, "one whole day nearer now" as Philip Larkin put it (on whom see my last blog). Heine's poem is about death as a homecoming. I found it comforting to read in this house of truth where death could not be evaded, this place that was once home and that is so full of childhood memories. And in this Advent time, it was good to be reminded that we live by the promise of the One who is to come, that in our Father's house are many mansions.