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Going slow
You
may remember last month I wrote about ‘In favour of slow’. I found in
today’s ‘Guardian’ the following article
‘Waking up to the joys of life in the slow lane’.
A
small market town plans to secure its future by embracing the Italian
concept of Cittaslow.
Patrick Barkham
Monday September 13, 2004
The Guardian
‘Business is brisk in GF White's family butchers, but the talk is slow.
Aylsham, a market town in Norfolk, will this week become the second small
community in the country to join Cittaslow, the international network of
"slow cities".
It will not be the last. Since Ludlow became the first town in the
English-speaking world to embrace the Italian philosophy and practice of
Cittaslow earlier this year, hundreds of other communities across the UK
have been waking up to the concept, and pleasures, of a slow town.’
I
just wonder whether this movement could move to Merton Park so that we could
pioneer how we can live in suburbia part of the huge metropolis of London
with some of the values of Cittaslow. Can we reduce the frantic pace of
modern living here in Merton Park? Can we have more time for each other,
more time for silence, more time for reflecting on our experience of life,
more time for God?
Mary
Mother of Jesus
I reprint below part of the sermon I preached on our Patronal festival. It
actually might be better read than listened to. I hope it makes more sense
the second time round.
The
Occasion
This is the specific occasion of her exultation, the moment of recognition,
by Elizabeth and her yet unborn son, of the life changing presence that was
taking shape in the womb of Mary. Even more specifically, the song is one
woman’s response to another’s greeting in which she remarks on Mary’s
acceptance of the promise of God So to Mary’s specific exultation in her
motherhood of Christ is added the more general exultation of all those who
trusted the promise, who acknowledge Mary’s song as their song and her as
the mother of the believing. More than that Mary’s song is also part of the
narrative of the coming to birth of the church as a community of God’s
promise to all nations drawing all peoples into the descendents of Sarah
and Abraham, the community in which barriers of kinship and blood had passed
into history.
The
Church’s Song
Those were the specific occasions for Mary’s song, the birth of Jesus and
the end of ethnic barriers in the emerging community of faith. Her song is
a mother’s song and a freedom song, and it is more than that. For the
community of faith also confessed that the Word Mary bore specific word for
that time though it was, also was the word for every time, for all time, for
our time. To its own judgement the church declared that because of its
allegiance to Mary’s child it had a commitment to the salvation of every
child, and because of its experience of the end of power of the particular
alienation of Jew from Gentile it ended a mandate for all alienation and a
solemn charge not to rest content just because a particular community at a
particular time had experienced the casting down of the might from their
thrones and the lifting up of those particular humble and meek people.
Worship and Song
Thus what might have been pure politics were lifted up into worship and this
freedom song has become the song of heaven. What might have been an occasion
for pride has become instead the end of all boasting that arises from our
ethnic imaginings. By this I mean that essential act of worship at the
altar where all are a new creation in Christ no matter what their ethnic
background, colour or gender. Whenever Mary’s Song continues to be sung, as
well as the other words and actions of Christian worship, there will exist
for humankind a call to move beyond any particular advance it may make and
away from its instinct to idolise and exclude.
Inclusion
and Exclusion
This ability to idealise on the one hand and to exclude on the other is of
course at the heart of all the disputes in the world. It is also the
perennial temptation of any Christian community to feel safe and comfortable
and then erect unseen but often powerful barriers of exclusion on the one
hand and inclusion on the other. We may often sing the Magnificat but we
don’t always have the humility to live it, with at its heart, the praise of
God and the freedom of all.
As
we reflect on the contacts we have made through ‘Talking Points’ can we work
together to make our community one of acceptance and a place where people
feel they want to belong.
Your priest and friend
Tom
Leary
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