Tea and the Slippery Slope

I happen to like tea. I prefer black tea - a blend of orange pekoe and broken orange pekoe that most Americans would call "English Breakfast Tea." I like it piping hot. In fact, the hotter the better otherwise the tea will not infuse properly and the leaves will rise in the cup. Yes, I brew it in the cup, mainly because that's how I like it. I just have to remember not to drain the cup! In my humble opinion tea should have milk in it, and it should not be flavored. Blackcurrant, mango, and mint may be wonderful flavors for soft drinks, but they should not be allowed to contaminate tea. It goes without saying that the words "iced" and "tea" should not be used in the same sentence, sweetened or unsweetened.

Does that make me a tea-snob, or (as someone once called me) a tea-afficianado? No, it just means that I prefer my tea the way I have been drinking it since I was a small boy. I'm not going to judge your preferences, but neither am I going to apologize for mine. I just happen to like my tea good and strong and very hot!

Other people take their tea differently. In China, Gaiwan Tea has full green leaves floating in the cup. In Japan, Sencha is green tea that remains unfermented. Other traditions predominate in other areas. Millions of people enjoy their favorite drink in many different ways. And that's fine. To accept this, we have to have a basic understanding of cultural relativism. Different cultures have different ways of doing things. It's good to know that we are not all the same. Who knows, I might try iced pomegranate tea one day and like it. It's not very probable, but it might happen.

The problem comes when cultural relativism becomes ethical relativism. Let's imagine that, in order to produce their favorite type of tea, the citizens of Pomerania require that all of their left-handed children be taken from their parents, trained to climb to the tops of the trees to gather the youngest, most succulent leaves. Ethical relativism says that, since different cultures have different moral beliefs, we should not judge the Pomeranians. They have their method of producing tea and we have ours. That's just the way it is.

Ethical relativism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical scepticism, which proposes that there are no absolute moral rules. If the citizens of Pomerania decide to kidnap children from our country and to force them into slavery, we still can't judge them, because absolute moral rules are impossible to prove. All that we can do it to prevent their capture, or rescue them. We will do this, not because we judge the Pomeranian tea-manufacturing process to be immoral, but because we value our children. With regard to ethical norms, we remain sceptical.

Ethical scepticism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical nihilism, in which there are thought to be no moral rules at all. The Pomeranians may not only steal our children, they may also sacrifice them to the tea-gods after the harvest, adding their blood to the brew! As nihilists we will be unable to do anything, other than exert a superior military force. Morally, we could not challenge the Pomeranians. We could not describe them as "evil," since evil does not exist. We could not judge them, since there would be no standard we could bring to bear. No universal principle would guide us. No holy book would determine right from wrong.

* * * * * * * *

Of course this is all a bad dream. Cultural relativism does not need to become ethical relativism, which does not need to become ethical scepticism, which does not need to become ethical nihilism. And this conversation is not about tea.

Encompassing Prayer

I can't resist adding one, brief stanza to show how much I appreciate George Herbert. It's taken from a collection of poems known as The Temple, which was entrusted to his old friend Nicholas Ferrar (the founder of the Little Gidding community) as Herbert was on his deathbed. It was subsequently published and became a firm favorite, influencing later poets such as Vaughan and Coleridge. Here's the stanza in question.

Enrich, Lord, heart,
hands, mouth in me
with faith, with hope
and charity,

that I may run, rise,

rest in Thee.

I picked up my copy of The Temple in Cambridge, when I was at college. In fact I believe I bought it in a second hand store on Trinity Street, which is rather appropriate given that Herbert was at Trinity College. He secured a fellowship there in 1614. He was well known for his classical scholarship and his musical abilities (he played the lute and the viol). A few years later he became the Public Orator of the university and would probably have ended up at the Court of King James, except for the monarch's untimely death.

Herbert ended up being ordained. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he took his work seriously. He published A Priest in the Temple in 1652, which gives a sober and balanced account of the responsibilities of a clergyman. It has been very influential.

St. Peter's Church, Fugglestone.

Herbert spent all of his ministry in the same place. In 1630 he was persuaded, by Archbishop Laud, to accept the living of Fugglestone with Bemerton, near Salisbury, in the South of England. He spent the remainder of his short life devoted to his flock and to prayer.

It's commonplace nowadays to sneer at the Parish model of Church governance. Under this system the country is divided up into parishes and the clergy have responsibility for everyone who lives within a given geographic area. The plan assumes, of course, that just about everyone is Christian. There are obvious problems. It can degenerate into Erastianism, in which the church becomes the lackey of the state. Even if this doesn't happen, it can lead to too close an association between church and state. The prophetic function of the church can suffer. Resentments against secular leaders can be translated into anti-clericalism. But there is also something attractive about the parish model. It speaks of the all-encompassing nature of God, and the need for the church to reach out to all. At its best it is a genuine attempt to influence the whole of society with the Gospel. And perhaps it would work: if we were all gifted with the gentle spirit of George Herbert.

Making Drudgery Divine

George Herbert (1593-1633), whose sweet spirit still shines through his verse, once wrote:

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.

Herbert's point was that even the most menial, repetitive of tasks can be a source of personal satisfaction if we regard our work as being done "as for the Lord." The first stanza of the poem expresses the same thought:

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.

Someone once called this attitude "the sanctification of the commonplace"; it is the perfect antidote to boredom.


Don't you get tired of hearing how bored people are? My sainted Grandmother Taylor used to say,"Those who are bored have usually done nothing to deserve it!" Then she would grin and go back to cleaning her tiny home. Her attitude was decidedly Victorian (which is what she was, since she was born in 1900 when Victoria still reigned). Grandma had a very high view of the value of work. I don't think she was ever bored. At twelve years of age she went to work in the weaving shed at her local cotton mill in Blackburn, Lancashire. She was a 'piecer,' crawling beneath the flying shuttles, perilously close to the unguarded machinery, reaching through the moving threads to 'piece' together those that had broken. It must have been terrifying for a child. Maybe it was the elements of risk that kept it from being tedious.
On the other hand, perhaps Grandma realized that she had a job to do, and that she might as well do it to the best of her ability. She would say, "You can't be busy and bored." I think she was right. No job needs to be boring if it is well done.
Our society is in danger of regarding work as a necessary evil that must be endured. Increasingly, we are defining ourselves by our leisure, not by our emloyment, nor by our relationship to God. We no longer live to work; neither do we work to live; we live to play. As Neil Postman put it, we are "amusing ourselves to death."
To be fair, changes in employment practice have probably contributed to this change in attitude. For example, in our community, in Texas, it used to be the case that a job in the chemical industry was a job for life. It was not unusual for those employed by a chemical company to stay there for forty years or more. Not so today. A changing world economy has led to some changes, but others have arisen as a result of a different management culture. The perception is that workers are more expendable nowadays. Older employees are sometimes sacrificed because they cost more, or because a provision in their pension plan is about to be triggered. Camaraderie and satisfaction in a shared enterprise seem to have disappeared. Work has become a struggle to survive. We are, as Falconer put it, captives "fettered to the oar of gain."
What can be done? Are we condemned to live in misery, equally fearful of both unemployment and work? There are two things that can help us, I believe. They are: a recovery of pride and purpose in our work; and, the imagination. It may sound terribly naive, but wouldn't it help if we were able to regard our work as our vocation? If we believe that we have been given certain talents and abilities, and if we are able to employ these, to some degree, at work, then should we not regard that work as God-given? This is what George Herbert was getting at. In the same way, Paul urged his readers to be "not slothful in business... serving the Lord," (Romans 12:11) which implies that the performance of every day duties is serving the Lord and earning His approval. My boss may not appreciate me; my supervisor may not remember my name; but God sees my labor, and smiles. If nothing else, this attitude shoul help me to recover a sense of personal dignity. Yes, I am worth something! I may not make much difference, but the difference I do make can be a powerful witness for good. There are enough cynics out there - the world does not need another one. I should work hard, do my best, and if I can help to make someone's day just a little better, then I should do it!



The second antidote to terminal weariness is the imagination. When my imagination is crushed, when the child in me no longer wonders what lies around the next corner, then of course I am bored. In a sense, I am bored when I become too self-satisfied. The self-centered person often falls prey to self-pity. The windows of the imagination become shuttered and the soul shrivels up. When I cease to treat life as a great adventure, when there are no more mysteries to be explored, then my life becomes sordid and dull.
But if my imagination is allowed to flower and flourish then, even in the dullest of places, I can still find something new. I will not be an observer of the drama of life, I will be a participant, and I shall play my part with gusto, and my days will be richer as a result.


Robert Louis Stevenson (a man who lived every moment of life) concluded his morning prayer with these words:
"When the day returns, return to us as our sun and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and morning hearts, eager to labour, eager to be happy if happiness shall be our portion, and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure."
With a sense of pride and purpose, and a quickened imagination, even drudgery can be made divine.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.

Dragonflies and Death

If you are in need of a good laugh let me recommend the Agnes Browne Trilogy by Brendan O'Carroll. It's been described as Angela's Ashes without the misery. The books are set in working class Dublin, beginning in the 1960's. Raw and earthy, with the kind of humor I remember so well from my own upbringing in the North of England, O'Carroll's tales are both evocative and skilfully wrought. The author weaves together such disparate themes as abuse and alcoholism, adolescent angst and adult alienation. Hidden within the humor lies one of the tenderest love stories you will read anywhere. The Irish seem to have a knack for moving seamlessly between pain and laughter, tragedy and comedy. If you can get beyond some of the foul language, the books are well worth reading.

Many things in the books delighted me; some made me laugh out loud; but several things surprised me. First, there is very little sectarianism in the story. One of the incidental characters is a Jewish businessman who has fallen upon hard times. His generosity is in sharp contrast to the callous violence of his son. But, in the narrative of the Browne clan, that son is just a villain, not a Jewish villain. I have no idea whether or not this is an accurate representation of working-class Dublin in the late twentieth century. Given the other prejudices that are given expression in the books, particularly the small-minded hatemongering of the skinheads, this comes as a surprise. O'Carroll makes his characters generally sympathetic to a family member who turns out to be homosexual (Agnes wonders when he is going to come out of the wardrobe...) but it is still a member of the family who almost kills him when he goes 'queer bashing.' There's a certain tension here. Sectarian violence is largely controlled in the Browne Trilogy, presumably for the sake of the story. The streets are, by and large, safe. In a society in which alcohol abuse is such a way of life, I'm not sure how authentic this really is.

Secondly, in the same way, there are no anti-British themes explored. The young men go to England to find work. One of them dies there, the victim of both the avarice of others and his own appetite for heroin. A mere fifty years after the Easter Uprising I would have expected more antipathy toward the old enemy. The 'Troubles' are only mentioned once, in passing. Yet this was the period during which the green of the South and the orange of the six counties of the North were both stained with blood.

Finally, there is no anti-clericalism either. One very serious nun is mocked. Her false teeth are knocked out with a convenient cucumber, which is no less than she deserves for her harsh treatment of the brood of children entrusted to her care. But a priest, working with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, is praised. Most of the major events of Agnes' life, and those of her children, are marked by the church. And yet the story contains scarcely any mention of the Christian faith. Whatever Catholicism remains hardly influences the Brownes. They lie, steal, cheat and fornicate without reference to a distinctly Christian moral code. They are hard-working and generous, and they are loyal to one another (although they also fight incessantly), but their virtues are not specifically Christian. As the story unfolds, we watch them adopting the values of a godless world. At first, for example, Agnes is wounded when Simon decides to co-habit and not to marry; later, she has no problems taking her over-sexed French lover to her bed. Perhaps the all-pervasive public religion of Agnes' youth has lost so much influence that, by the end of her life, the Roman Catholic Church is simply irrelevant and is therefore ignored.

An illustration of this is the attitude to death displayed by members of the Browne family. An assumption is made that beyond death there is a place of pure happiness, call it heaven if you will, that has no relation to morality, or to God. When Agnes suffers an aneurism and slips into a coma she has a vivid dream of her old friend Marion, dead for 25 years. In her dream, hanging between life and death, Marion tells her that in this secular heaven the bingo halls are open all day and she can drink as much cider as she likes. The only rule is that one cannot see from one realm to the next. Marion thinks that it is a stupid rule, and says so. Apparently one can also swear in heaven.

Earlier in the final book, The Granny, Dermot Browne explains death to his son, Cormac, by means of a parable. He tells the child that death is like a grub, rising through the water of a pond to become a dragonfly. All the grubs in the pond wonder what lies beyond the surface. Eventually, one brave grub volunteers to climb a blade of grass to see what is there, and then to come back to tell the rest of them. He climbs until he feels the sun upon his back and then, a wondrous thing happens, he turns into a magnificent dragonfly, decked out in yellow, green and blue. He cannot go back to tell the others so, instead, he flaps his four wings and flies away into the sunshine with a big smile on his face. "So you see, Cormac," says Dermot, "that's what 'died' is. Your mammy has become a dragonfly." (The Granny p.140)

It's a pretty story to tell a six year old, but it is also nonsense. Without the assurance of faith and the knowledge of the resurrection we have absolutely no reason to tell our children that there is a happy land, far, far away. And what exactly does it mean to say, as O'Carroll does on at least two occasions, that at death we become dragonflies? Don't dragonflies die too? Aren't thousands of them snapped up as soon as they emerge from the water, long before they can fly, smiling, into a welcoming sky?

Hope, without Christ, is empty. It is not much more than wishful thinking. It cannot comfort the dying, it cannot relieve the pain of those who are left behind. Sentiment can never be a substitute for a living faith.

I'm not sure I want to be a dragonfly when I die, but I do want to be with Christ. Wherever He is will be heaven indeed.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Agnes Browne Trilogy consists of The Mammy; The Chisellers; and, The Granny. All are published by Plume, a member of the Penguin Putnam Group.

Mud and Glory

I've been reading Paul Reed's study of the struggle for control of the village of Combles, France, during the battle of the Somme. "Combles" makes for grim reading. By 1916, the village had been under German occupation for two years. The German Army, steamrollering across Picardy, had finally been halted by the French on the Somme. Stalemate ensued. The front lines were handed over to the British in the Fall of 1915 and the war of attrition began in earnest.

Many of the British soldiers who contested this tiny, bloody patch of rural France were from the London Regiment. When war was declared, in 1914, the British Army could muster only 250,000 men, compared to approximately five million in the German Army. Volunteer or Territorial units were swiftly formed in Britain. Some of them volunteered to serve overseas. Like many other geographically based regiments, the "London" had a distinctly local flavor. Men from the same street, factory, school, club, or church often joined up together. Many of them served together, and died together.

The London Regiment, though never at full strength, was supposed to have 28 battalions bearing such evocative names as: the London Rifle Brigade (5th), the Post Office Rifles (8th), the London Scottish (14th), and the Artist's Rifles (28th). Class distinctions differentiated the battalions at first, but these distinctions tended to disappear as units were decimated, merged, and re-formed.

Near Combles, two small areas of woodland were fought over inch by inch. Leuze Wood ("Lousy Wood") and Bouleaux Wood ("Bully Wood") soon could not boast a standing tree between them. The land was taken, lost, and retaken. Bodies were buried in the mud, only to be exhumed by subsequent bombardments. Young men in their prime were subjected to appalling conditions, then sent to their deaths. Hundreds of lives were lost seeking control of twenty yards of dirt. When the Kensingtons and the London Scottish moved up to take over from the Royal Irish Fusiliers, they saw that the whole battlefield was covered by the remains of the dead.

"The ground just over the ridge of Death Valley was scattered with the Irish dead, mainly young fellows who appeared to have been killed by concussion, tiny streaks of blood having from their ears and noses. Others had been killed by machine gun and shrapnel fire... One middle aged Irishman was sitting upright in a shell hole, one side of his head shining pink, where half his scalp had been torn off... at Wedge Wood... this trench was full of German dead, Prussian Guards. For some particular reason they were minus their tunics, wearing new white vests. The bodies were lying several deep, and we had to walk over them in order to proceed along the trench."

After several weeks of fighting the British unleashed their secret weapon, the tanks of the Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps. This was the first time that the lumbering behemoths would be used in military history. Although, initially, they spread panic among the Germans, they were not an unqualified success. As with just about everything else, the tanks became stuck in the mud.

"The field of battle was a field of mud; the resting area of the division was a field of mud; the roads and tracks were rivers of mud; anyone can paint a picture of the Battle of the Somme provided that he can paint miles of mud. And the Army had simply blasted its way forward so that the shell holes cut one another in the mud."

On September 26, 1916 Combles fell to men of the 56th (London) Division. It would be more accurate to say that was was left of the village fell into British hands. Almost every building had been destroyed. The church had been flattened, the town hall had disappeared, the railway station ceased to exist. Only the catacombs, stretching beneath the buildings, providing refuge for its defenders, remained relatively unscathed.

One young private, Stuart Dolden of the London Scottish, was glad to get out of the place where so many of his comrades had died. His abiding memory was of the mud.

"We were all filled with unbounding joy when we realised that at last our backs had been turned on the Somme, and all its horrors and miseries. The one outstanding feature of the Somme was the mud. Living with it around one, day and night, seemed to tap one's vitality. We had already experienced severe shelling, trenches and all the incidences of warfare on other sectors of the line, and so it became more a question of degree, but after our trip to the Somme I realised what a truly demoralising affect mere mud could have."

The village was retaken, briefly, by the Germans in March of 1918, but returned to Allied hands later that same year.

* * * * * * *

There is an immediacy to the story of Combles that transcends the years. The absolute horror that is war is not shown on maps with colored arrows for the movement of troops. War must be studied through the experience of those who struggled through the mud. There are lessons to be learned, even from a Lousy Wood, somewhere in France.

Survivor or Servant?

I enjoy "Survivor." It's getting a little long in the tooth as far as TV programs go, but it's still entertaining. If you have been on a different planet for the last few years and haven't seen it - here's how it works: twenty or so people, of various ages and from varied backgrounds, are brought together in some obscure, exotic place. They are pitted against one another in a series of challenges, competing for the million dollar prize that is awarded to the sole survivor. Although they begin the game in "tribes," the contestants must learn to form their own alliances if they are to advance. As the game progresses, they must endure physical hardships, including hunger. They must use their physical and mental strength, and their relational skills, in order to outwit, outplay and outlast the other contestants. Frequently, in the pressure-cooker environment of reality TV, they display the worst of human nature. The show is notorious for secret alliances and double-crossing. Len Sweet comments that, ultimately, "the most self-directed, self-motivated, self-absorbed, self-important individual becomes the final Survivor."

In an article in "Youth Culture," Walt Mueller writes about some of the lessons of "Survivor":

"1. Survivors look out for themselves. When you cooperate, it's to advance your interests. Not because it is helpful to others, but because it helps you. Forget those who can't help you. Don't bother with them. They are not a good investment of your time.

2. Survivors sleep with one eye open. Since everyone is out for himself/herself, no one can be trusted. Surviving the harshness of the environment is the true challenge.

3. Survivors must get used to being lonely. If you can't trust others, you can't be real or true or share true intimacy with them. It's a world ruled by the Miranda rule: You have the right to remain silent, for what you say can and will be used against you.

4. A survivor world is win-lose. Only one can win, the others are cast-offs. There is no common good. No common ground other than self-interest."

Now, it's only a TV show, and most people are capable of suspending judgment in such cases, but what worries me is that at least some viewers may be adopting these principles to their own lives. Especially in a world experiencing the worst recession in decades, it must be tempting to adopt a survivalist attitude. This isn't all bad. There are good lessons to be learned in terms of rising to meet the challenge, not giving up, and working with others to achieve some common goal. But at the same time, clearly "Survivor" teaches that our primary responsibility must always be fundamentally self-focussed.

That's very different to the Gospel. As we gather as God's people, we are to learn and to employ the principles of servanthood. Living as a Christian means rejecting the dictatorship of the ego; it means following the example of the One who came, "not to be served but to serve, and to lay down His life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

"Survivor" is fun, but it does make me wonder what we are teaching our children and young people. Where are they getting their values and their worldview, from Jeff Probst, or Jesus?