Temporary Identity

It’s been 5 months since I last blogged here. I feel bad about not having blogged about alot of stuff I’ve thought over that time, but one of the things I’m learning is that most things are temporary, especially when you have a baby!

It was around 5 months ago that I had a bit of an identity crisis. The root of this clearly stem from losing my daughter Amy over 2 years ago, and coincided with my son Toby being born. His birth threw up a few things for me including who I am. I’m now Toby’s Dad, and I’m Amy’s grieving Dad. The joy and delight I have in Toby has left little emotional time to dwell on my grief and the tension between a grieving and joyful Dad has left me a bit confused.

It was around this time that I realised that I didn’t feel I belonged to the group of Christians I’ve known for the last 8 years. This was because after losing Amy, the dawning realisation that I had new and unique needs met a dawning realisation that these needs were not being met by this community of Christians I was part of. This group is fairly homogeneous since we all met at University and are of similar ages. Since we are all still young, and nobody had lost a child, we didn’t have any experience to know how to care for Mary-Lou and myself so we were were not able to be carried by the group. This wasn’t helped by not knowing myself how I could be helped. The pain and confusion of not having been carried by our Christian community left me feeling I didn’t belong. 

So I began getting busy, not knowing at the time that I was searching for an identity, something I could point to and say “This is what Ben is about, this is what he does”. I started Guerrilla Gardening in Moss Side. I started helping a project collecting fruit from Manchester gardens to distribute to the poor and hungry. I got funding for a High Definition Camcorder to record Asylum Seekers telling their stories. I started a podcast exploring the implications of Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution”. I became co-ordinator of my street’s Home Watch. I started planning the Parliament Protest. I got pretty busy all of a sudden and had less and less time for Mary-Lou and Toby.

In the end I gave some of that up, cut back on others, and finished the rest. I’m not as busy as I was (outside of work) and I’m looking forward to discovering routines and patterns (temporary of course) of time and activity with Mary-Lou and Toby.

I’ve not discovered my identity, I’m sure I’ll be figuring it out the rest of my life. But for now it feels good and proper that I rest and invest in the place I have as Mary-Lou’s husband and Amy and Toby’s Dad.

Conflicting Opportunities

Last night I had the pleasure of being taught about Conflict from a Christian perspective from my friend Laura Gilchrist. Click play below to listen to the talk yourself – I highly recommend you do, it was very insightful.

[audio:http://www.christianstruggle.com/podcast/LauraGilchrist_Conflict.mp3%5D

I recently saw a fight in London which I just watched. I didn’t go and try to stop it like other people did, I just stood there hoping that they would stop because people were looking.

After it finished I felt terrible and ashamed for not having done more to be a Peacemaker in that situation. I started thinking about my fear and cowardice in that and other situations.

It was refreshing to realise, during Laura’s session, that conflict mostly presents all sorts of positive opportunites. Opportunities for change, empathy, healing, intimacy, 3rd way thingking and more! I now feel much more hopeful about conflicts I may enter in the future and less fearful about engaging with it.

Towards the end of the session, as you will here in the MP3 above,Laura suggested 3 ways forward for us. We can get training on dealing with conflict, we can use or be facilitators or mediators, and we should oppose the myth of Redemptive Violence with stories of Redemptive Peace – an idea I think is really exciting.

We also talked about Non-Violent Direct Action, something I have been thinking about and subscribing to more and more, but that’s for a whole other post!

I Am Power Hungry

I could never had said that before 2 weeks ago, but last week it all changed.

In my work among skateboarders in Manchester I have learned alot about how Manchester is ruled and who the “power players” are. Manchester is pretty much run by The 5 Fathers Of Manchester, 5 men who lead and run the City Council. The undue influence these men have and the thwarting of democracy around them makes me angry.

I was telling a friend of my frustrations in not being able to find any christians who know any of the information I know, let alone any who cared enough to want to change it or research it more. But my friend did know of some and pointed me to this conference I attended last week.

The way I see many things has changed considerably due to this conference and what was taught. One of the first things we learned was to desire power. Now this felt very uncomfortable to begin with. Infact, I believed that theologically we were to avoid power at all costs and serve selflessly instead. This was probably because I have seen those in power abuse it. But then I discovered what power really is.

The primary meaning of the word POWER is “the ability to act or make a difference”.

Now if that is what power is, than I want as much as I can get because there are so many things that need to be made different (better) in this world and I want to help make these changes. I’m talking about making things better for the poor, isolated, oppressed, hurt and dying.

There is huge inequality both economically and socially in Manchester alone, and far greater inequality globally. I see no other Christian response than to do all I can to change this.

And to make a difference, I need power, and lot’s of it!

Religion, Politics and Hope

When I read God’s Politics by Jim Wallis I became hopeful that there were American Christians who thought and spoke sense. It was great to read this challenge to the Church and to have it explained so intelligently and passionately. So I enjoyed this video of him on the fabulous Daily Show:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml

Christianity and Politics obviously conflict alot in America, but much less so in Britain. I have long rued the lack of voice the Church has in both Politics and the Media in Britain. By “Church” I don’t mean the institutional leaders, but the people themselves. The Church has not been speaking out loudly enough over the last 50 – 60 years about social and political issues for many reasons. One might be the rise of the individualistic gospel making faith more of a personal gain and private matter. Another might be the rise of the less needy middle class in the Church which does not have an understanding or proximity to the poor.

Whatever the reason, the Church has become more and more irrelevant to the general public and the number of Christians has declined drastically over the last few decades. Meanwhile, Politics has become more and more capitalist, keeping the poor poor and the rich richer.

But I have seen a rise in young Christians become more socially and politically engaged in this country and this makes me hopeful – both that this nation’s social ills can be corrected and that the Church could become more like who she was created to be.

Please Church, stop naval gazing!