Lent for Extroverts 21: Woodbine Willy

It's not often I weep into my muesli. I was preparing to led Morning Prayer today and found a poem by 'Woodbine Willy', aka Rev. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, a First World War Chaplain whom the church remembers on 8th March (we also remember two Bishops, but given the choice between two Bishops and a poet...)

Studdert Kennedy got his famous nickname for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with spiritual help and solace to injured and frightened soldiers in the trenches. In 1917 he won the Military Cross for running into no man's land to help the wounded during an attack on the German front line. 

I do like the sound of Woodbine Willy, not least for his writing. In 1921 he wrote a book called Democracy and the Dog Collar which featured chapters entitled 'The Church is not a Movement but a Mob'; 'Capitalism is Nothing but Greed, Grab and Profit-Mongering' and 'So Called Religious Education Worse Than Useless'. You can see where he's coming from.

But it was one of his poems which reduced me to tears as I practised reading it out loud in a Yorkshire accent (you have to - it's written in dialect and sounds silly in received pronunciation). The poem is 'Well?' and in it the poet has a dream in which he appears before a figure we assume is Christ (described simply as 'Im'). He sees his life flash before him, particularly all the things he wished he hadn't said or done and the opportunities for good that were missed. In a poignant line, he recognises the face of his wife and children and of 'a London whore', and the figure before him says that whatever was done to each of these was done to 'Him'. The narrator feels terrible remorse and intimates that he should go to hell. Christ says, no: hell is for those who are not remorseful - instead he is told:

Follow me on by the paths o' pain
Seeking what you 'ave seen,
Until at last you can build the 'Is'
With the bricks o' the 'Might 'ave been.


The poet knows at last what he must do:

I's got to follow what I's seen,
Till this old carcase dies.
For I daren't face the land of grace,
The sorrow ov those eyes.

He concludes:

And boys I'd sooner frizzle up,
In the flames of a burning 'Ell,

Than stand and look into 'Is face,
And 'ear 'Is voice say - 'Well?

You'd be hard pressed to come up with a better picture of the loving judgement of Christ than that. Luckily, having made the muesli quite soggy, I managed to hold it together for my rendition an hour later at Morning Prayer.

Saving Paradise, Greenbelt-style

Maybe there are a lot of tulips in Paradise. Perhaps the relative size of things differs there, like the size of reputations. The first shall be last and the last first. And the Lord said 'Behold, tulips will  be bigger than people. Blessed are the tall red flowers, for they shall bring much joy, taking people's mind off the mud.'

The theme at this year's UK Greenbelt Festival was Saving Paradise. You can tell a lot from a strap line and Greenbelt does some good ones - recently we've had: Dreams of Home (2011); Heaven in Ordinary (2007); Standing in the Long Now  (2009) and perhaps my favourite, from 2010: The Art of Looking Sideways. Are they due merely to clever artistic types being a little bit alternative, in a nice middle class sort of way, or do they actually mean something?

The strap lines from Greenbelt increasingly reflect its vision that the whole earth is the arena for God's activity; that the gospel compels us to engage global inequality, human rights, climate change, culture and the poor. All the strap lines quoted above play with themes of 'the here and now' and 'the then', when God will renew the face of the earth and bring justice and peace. Paradise is clearly lost. Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden. But this is not the end of the story. How we live in the interim and what the death and resurrection of Christ have to do with it all, has been the stuff of debate amongst Christian people for centuries. 

But there's a bit more to this year's strap line, in that Saving Paradise is the title of a recent book (2008) by two American theologians, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebeccca Parker (right)  http://savingparadise.net/

who made an astonishing discovery when they set out on a five year pilgrimage to document early Christian art in the churches and catacombs of Mediterranean Europe. What surprised them was that until the end of the first Millennium Christ is depicted primarily as the risen One, involved in this life, as baby, infant, man, shepherd, teacher and healer. Paradise is close at home. Only at the turn of the Millennium does he begin to be depicted as the Crucified One, and themes of torture, death and martyrdom point people beyond this world to the next, and, for the Crusaders, appear to sanction bloodshed in his name. This world may be going to hell in a handcart, but no matter: God will welcome us into the next. We are heaven bound, no matter what happens here. Paradise is not here but in the next world. When you're mainly concerned about the next world, it doesn't take too much imagination to conclude that this world is not so important. What we create here (art, writing, dance, music) is of limited value. In addition, 'You will always have the poor amongst you', said Jesus; so tell them the gospel; at least they'll go to heaven when they die, despite having been starving in this world...

Complex themes. We walk a tightrope in faith. 'Set your minds on things which are above, not on things that are on earth', says Colossians. Yet all the great movements of the Spirit have raised up Christians to make a difference here and now on this earth. How can you make a difference if you eschew this world and think only of a Paradise that is to come?

And so Saving Paradise neatly sums up the ongoing sea change in British and American Evangelicalism. Dallas Willard; Brian McClaren; Rob Bell; Shane Claiborne; and in the UK, Steve Chalke and NT Wright, have all pointed to how we need to live in the here and now; bringing heaven to earth, alight with a vision of a Jesus who is teacher, example and ideal human, not just a crucified Saviour who guarantees us a ticket to Paradise when we die. 

And so the net widens. At Greenbelt you will come across Christians engaged at all levels in 'saving paradise': stewarding the earth; fighting injustice; rediscovering spiritualities for every taste in recognition of the diversity of a questioning 21st Century Christianity.

Where it will lead......? 

Who knows. 

What exactly is our part in 'saving paradise?' What is God's part?

For further thoughts and reflections on tulips in Paradise, over to you.