We Are All Marxists Now

Don’t look now, but apparently there’s a credit crunch.  We’re not entirely sure what this is, but it’ll have to be super-tasty to lure us away from our usual diet of kibble, cat food, burgers and Galaxy chocolate.

The Vicar (whose diet is the same, minus the first three) doesn’t really know what a credit crunch is either, but then we never credited her with much sense in the first place.

At least in her ignorance she can finally claim something in common with one of that great trinity of heroes she calls The J.C. Three (Jarvis Cocker, Johnny Cash and Jesus Christ).

Last week, a couple of Guardian journalists amused themselves by asking various ‘opponents of capitalism’ what they made of the present global financial crisis.  With Jesus a bit busy, and Johnny sadly unavailable for comment, it fell to Jarvis to respond:

I think most people can understand capitalism when it’s about companies that make real products, but when it’s about organisations that just make money … that’s abstract capitalism, it’s beyond most ordinary people – and I include myself among them. I mean, you see the FTSE index, or whatever, running along the bottom of the TV screen and generally it just doesn’t impinge at all on the way you live your life, and then suddenly you’re told your life is going to take a nosedive. Who understands that?

Surprisingly – ok, not surprisingly – the paper’s selection of “high-profile leftwingers” didn’t include a single religious leader, not even the Red Rector.  But, as it happens, the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have had some things to say on money matters recently.

Archbishop John Sentamu, in a speech to some city bigwigs, asked how the US Government had managed to bail out the banks to the tune of 700 billion dollars, yet can’t seem to find the cash to take meaningful action on poverty:

It would cost $5bn (£2.7bn) to save six million children’s lives. World leaders could find 140 times that amount for the banking system in a week. How can they tell us that action for the poorest is too expensive?

Meanwhile, Archbishop Rowan (a.k.a. the “Hairy Leftie”) has written an article on the financial crisis, published in The Spectator with the natty title Face It: Marx was Partly Right about Capitalism. 

Of course, the press have zoomed in on the word “Marx” and remembered how they used to call +Rowan the Red Bishop (as if that were some sort of bad thing to be…).  Naturally, the Radio 4 interview on the article started with the question: “So, are we all supposed to be Marxists now?” 

But the clergy are used to that sort of thing.

Behind the hype, though, +Rowan was only saying what Jarvis said, and most of us are thinking too.  Markets and banks and city traders all seem to deal in things which aren’t actually real:

Almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders.

Millions of dollars whizz around the world without a single banknote to be seen.  Traders aren’t buying and selling goods or services, they’re swapping debts.  The whole thing is like a Saturday afternoon at the bookie’s, but when the bet goes wrong, it can bring millions of people to their knees.

+Rowan’s not one for knee-jerk reactions and soundbites, and neither is he an uncritical devotee of Karl Marx.  But it’s clear (as Andrew Brown recently argued in a comment piece for the Guardian) that the Archbishop regards globalised capitalism as dangerous, anti-Christian, perhaps even evil.  This is how he concluded his article:

Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. And ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry. What the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to ‘keep ourselves from idols’, in the biblical phrase.

 Jesus himself spoke starkly of the same problem:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and capital. 

(Matthew 6:24)

Global capitalism is a system as big, idolatrous and oppressive to ordinary folks in our day as the Roman Empire was in the time of Jesus.  Yes, there are people who have managed to do well for themselves under capitalism, just as there were those who prospered under Roman occupation.  But at what cost to everyone else?

If global capitalism really is going into crisis somewhere way above our heads, perhaps we will take a more critical look at its “mythologies, abstractions and pseudo-objects.”  The computerised movement of imaginary money and pseudo-things doesn’t ‘trickle down’ to ordinary folks like us, and it certainly doesn’t help the poorest people of the world.  Could the financial crisis finally be the wake-up call to the fact that the great idol of capitalism has feet of clay?

Perhaps we won’t end up saying “We are all Marxists now;” but we won’t be singing We are all bourgeois now for very much longer either.

The God of Small Things

We have a problem in the Vicarage, and for once it may not be the Vicar’s fault.  For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been feeling a bit itchy; and, judging by the amount of both scratching and moaning, so has the Vicar.

It turns out that despite the Vicar putting weird stuff on the back of our necks every month, we have some unwelcome guests in the house.  Of course, we are putting the blame squarely on the backs of the unwelcome guests we get in the garden.  It ought to be obvious that we’re not interested, but we still have a number of toms dropping in and trying to win our affections.

Martha’s stepped up her border patrols, Mary’s an expert at looking menacing and both of us are adept at chasing the boys off our turf, but still they try their luck when they think we’re not looking.  Now it seems they are giving us their fleas as a token of their esteem; and quite frankly, we’re not happy about it.

At first, we thought it might be some new form of stealth warfare, but Arfer and the rest aren’t really the stealthy type.  We find it hard to believe that anyone would be so daft as to try and woo a girl with a flea, but the Vicar tells us that a 17th Century Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral called John Donne once used this technique to great effect.

Of course, we’ve always known that small is powerful – after all, the toms are at least twice our size, and we still manage to send them packing.  But if you consider the size of the average flea relative to the amount of fuss the Vicar is making about her fleabites, you’ll soon realise that sometimes the smaller things are, the more effective they can be.

There are plenty of examples of this in the Bible.  David the shepherd boy killed Goliath the huge warrior, and Gideon’s depleted army was victorious over the mighty Midianites.

Jesus often talked about the Kingdom as being something small, like yeast or a mustard seed.  Precisely because the Kingdom starts out tiny, it can infiltrate the world bit by bit, just as a speck of yeast can make the whole loaf rise, or a tiny seed can grow into a giant tree.

And it’s not just physical size that matters in the Gospel either.  Jesus often called his followers “little ones.”  Throughout the Bible, God is concerned for the little folk in society – widows and orphans, the poor, the sick and the marginalised, anyone whom the world regards as of little account.

It’s tempting to think that the little folk – small, powerless and voiceless – can have no effect on the great wheels of empire or big business.  But when little folk band together, they can become a much more powerful force – perhaps not by a great show of strength, but little by little, as this poem by Sylvia Plath illustrates:

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.

Mushrooms we like, fleas we don’t; but both are good examples of the way the Kingdom is built and justice is fought for and gained. 

Faced with the might of the Roman Empire, many of Christ’s contemporaries either submitted and were downtrodden or tried to fight violence with violence, and were crushed.  Jesus taught that we should struggle for the Kingdom in a different way: little by little, brick by brick, person by person.  Love and justice are infectious; as people start to catch the vision of a renewed earth, resistance against oppression and violence grows, until eventually even the greatest of worldly Empires will fall to the Kingdom of Christ.

So next time you’re bitten by a flea, stung by a nettle, or bothered by a paper cut, remember the parables of Christ; remember that even Rome, still the largest Empire the world has ever known, eventually fell.  Remember, above all, that it’s the little folks who will inherit the Kingdom of God.

A Pict Song by Rudyard Kipling

 

Rome never looks where she treads.   

Always her heavy hooves fall

On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;   

And Rome never heeds when we bawl.

Her sentries pass on-that is all,    

And we gather behind them in hordes,

 And plot to reconquer the Wall,    

With only our tongues for our swords.

 

We are the Little Folk-we!    

Too little to love or to hate.

Leave us alone and you’ll see    

How we can drag down the State!

We are the worm in the wood!    

We are the rot at the root!

We are the taint in the blood!    

We are the thorn in the foot!

 

Mistletoe killing an oak-    

Rats gnawing cables in two-

Moths making holes in a cloak-    

How they must love what they do!

Yes-and we Little Folk too,    

We are busy as they-

Working our works out of view-    

Watch, and you’ll see it some day!

 

No indeed! We are not strong,    

But we know Peoples that are.

Yes, and we’ll guide them along    

To smash and destroy you in War!

We shall be slaves just the same?    

Yes, we have always been slaves,

But you-you will die of the shame,    

And then we shall dance on your graves!

  

We are the Little Folk-we!    

Too little to love or to hate.

Leave us alone and you’ll see    

How we can drag down the State!

We are the worm in the wood!    

We are the rot at the root!

We are the taint in the blood!    

We are the thorn in the foot!

Elf Ire and Brimstone

There is a charming story told about Pope Saint Gregory the Great (whose Feast Day it was this week).  Apparently, he was once strolling through the slave market in Rome, or somewhere similarly Mediterranean, when he spotted some fair-haired boys for sale.  Fair hair not being the norm in Italy, Gregory enquired what manner of people these might be.  The reply came back that they were Angli – English; whereupon the Saint remarked: “Non Angli, sed Angeli” – not English, but Angels.

No doubt Gregory was indeed Great, but clearly he had never met the youth of Forton, who have decided to bring their summer holiday fun to a thrilling climax by trying to clamber up the side of the Church building.  Their activities were discovered by none other than our house-elf, who had himself just finished clambering up the front of the Church building in order to put up the sign for the forthcoming Summer Fayre.

We understand that the Vicar, having made one or two minor improvements to the aforementioned sign, sent our poor house-elf up a ladder in high winds, with utter disregard for his dislike of heights (she shall henceforth be known as Bartimeus Crouch).  Back on terra firma, he had hardly stopped shaking when a large crash from somewhere round the back of the building sent him scootling off into the cold night air.

He arrived at the extreme South-East end (liturgically speaking) just in time to witness a young man dangling off one of the parochial drainpipes.  Sorry, we should say apparently dangling.  Because, as the young man quickly informed the elf, he wasn’t climbing on the roof; it wasn’t him; he never done nuffink, Mush; are you calling the Old Bill?

It’s lucky our elf isn’t the violent type, because he did seem a bit annoyed by the whole escapade (though whether this was because of the crime itself, or being referred to as “Mush,” is a matter of debate).  Fortunately, we were on hand (or indeed paw) to calm him down with a little TLC.

That is, until he went into the loo.

You see, back in Italy, they seem to treat their churches with a little more respect.  Rather than just using them as climbing frames and free scrap metal stores, the Italians fill them with dead folks.  If you’re deemed to be at all holy, the Vatican digs up your body, whisks you off to the lab and varnishes you, then posts you back to your home town, where you get to lie in state forever more.

We thought our downstairs loo could do with a little holiness too, so we’ve started collecting postcards of pickled saints and putting them up for our visitors to enjoy.  Apparently the Vicar has quite a collection of such pictures, but they are (like everything else she owns) still languishing in the unpacked boxes upstairs.

Imagine our joy, therefore, when our dear pal the Red Rector announced that he was off to Umbria on his summer hols, and would make it his mission to bring us back some good pics.  He emailed today to say that he had been to Arezzo, where resides the preserved body of Blessed Pope Gregory X.  Sadly there were no postcards, but the resourceful Rector took a quick snap, which we present here for your edification:

We think you’ll agree, gentle Readers, that the pickled bodies of dead saints are a must-have addition to every home, shrine and worship space.  We have been trying hard to persuade the Vicar that she should get a couple for the Parish Church – we’ve even spotted a nice glass coffin in the Serpone’s catalogue - but she is strangely reluctant. 

She says Saint John’s is full of pickled folks already. 

Mind Your Hind

Today is the Feast of Saint Giles, who started life as a rich young man, became a hermit in the woods of France, was persuaded to become an abbot and ended up as one of the best-loved Saints in Mediaeval Europe.

The legend goes that S. Giles took up residence in a cave in the woods of France, and lived a life of simplicity and poverty as a hermit.  His holiness was recognised by the animals in the forest, who provided for his needs, and especially by a young hind (or deer) who became his special friend. 

One day, the local King and his entourage were out hunting, and began to chase the deer. She fled into the cave, and into the arms of the Saint; but the King (or possibly one of his knights) shot an arrow after her. 

The arrow flew into the cave and hit both the hind and the holy man.

The King, chastened, offered the Saint care and medicine, but Giles refused, and instead prayed for the healing of both himself and his gentle friend.

You can read the whole story in The Golden Legend, or beautifully told by Amy Steedman here.

The King soon began to visit Saint Giles in his little cave for teaching and counsel; and, as his story spread, so did others.  So, little by little, the hermit found himself surrounded by followers and companions until he became the de facto Abbot of a monastic community.

Later, this community became a Benedictine monastery; the Abbey of Saint Gilles du Gard still stands near the spot where the Saint’s cave is said to have been.

Because of the Saint’s wound, his ability to heal, and his gentle care of the defenceless hind, he became the Patron of the sick and the poor, and a number of miraculous cures were recorded at his shrine.  His insistence on living outside of the city walls also led to his patronage of others who were marginalised in Mediaeval society, particularly cripples and lepers.

As his cultus grew, churches and social care centres for cripples and lepers were built in his name.  Many English Mediaeval cities had two churches just outside the city wall: a Saint Giles for lepers and a Saint Mary Magdalen for prostitutes. 

Healing wells were also placed under his patronage; Camberwell, where we grew up, was one such (Camber is an old English word for cripple), and a church dedicated to Saint Giles has stood there since time immemorial – there’s even a record of a church on the site in the Domesday Book. 

Sadly, we never had a band of shepherds bringing their brightly-dyed rams to Mass on S. Giles’ day, as they used to do in Spain and the Basque country.

In Fourteenth Century Germany, the terrible effects of the Black Death caused the people to group together a number of Saints to intercede for them and their domestic animals.  This group became known as the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and Saint Giles was there among them.

You can see him here in this Sixteenth Century German altarpiece, with his doe just poking her head out between Saint Margaret and Saint Barbara.

Saint Giles is unique amongst the Fourteen, in being the only one not to die a martyr’s death.  But then martyrdom, as the Vicar so often reminds us, is not about death; it’s about witnessing.  We can’t think of a better advert for the love of Christ than someone who protects his animal companions, even at the risk of his own life.

So, all you human readers, if you are lucky enough to live with a cat or a dog or a deer, remember to follow the example of the holy hermit.  Love them, protect them from harm, keep them safe and warm. 

And on this Feast of Saint Giles, why not make a special fuss of them, or give them an extra treat or two?  (Hint, hint!)

Oh, never mind.  We’ll just have to raid the cupboards ourselves.