FINDING MYSELF IN BRITAIN by Amy Boucher Pye

If you're an American and spend much time in the U.K., somebody will undoubtedly quote you something that apparently George Bernard Shaw never actually said:

"England and America are two countries
divided by a common language."

Once upon a time I was the American editor for a British publisher, and I heard that aphorism frequently--probably because part of my job involved translating children's books from British to American English (please don't mention schoolchildren taking their rubbers to school!), or explaining to my British employers, for example, that the American author who referred to patting someone on her fanny was not being impossibly vulgar.

Altogether, my children, grandchildren, and I have studied or lived in Britain, France, Austria, Germany, Colombia, Taiwan, and China--so books about cultural differences interest me greatly. I was delighted to learn that my friend Amy Boucher Pye was writing such a book, and thrilled when she sent me a copy of Finding Myself in Britain: Our Search for Faith, Home & True Identity.

Amy is a Minnesota-born writer, editor, and vicar's wife (translation: her husband is a pastor in the Church of England) who has lived in Britain for nearly two decades with her U.K.-born husband and two children. When she moved to Cambridge (U.K.) as a new bride, she had no idea how isolated she would feel with an ocean between herself and her family and friends. Frequent moves as her husband finished theological college (seminary) and then took on several short-term appointments made it hard to feel at home anywhere. As a vicar, he was always busy on Christmas and Easter, so no trips to Minnesota for those holidays.

And then there was the plumbing: showers that barely trickled, separate hot and cold taps (faucets) so that warm running water was impossible. And the perpetual cold: drafts blowing the curtains out from the leaky windows, the radiators that came on only twice a day. All exacerbated by the legendary British stiff upper lip that would rather cope with discomfort than try to eliminate it.

As you can tell from the title, however, Amy grew to love her life in Britain, which has become her home if not her native land. What's not to like about free medical care? Twenty days a year of paid vacation plus bank holidays? Frequent breaks for tea (which is properly made in the U.K.)? Deep friendships that transcend cultural differences?

God, prayer, scripture, and evangelical writers and speakers show up frequently in Amy's story of her transformation from lonely foreigner to contented dual citizen. Herself a writer of devotionals, she encourages her readers to foster spiritual growth by keeping journals and rereading them at the end of each year--perhaps an intense evangelical form of the Ignatian daily examen.

If her approach to spirituality feels a bit over the top to people who do not share it, there is still plenty to enjoy for Anglophiles, expats, and Brits who spend time with Americans. Amy has a great sense of self-deprecating humor (how British!). Her Minnesota recipes may intrigue Brits unused to chewy cookies and pumpkin pie. And her abundant observations about British/American differences could spare eager Americans from self-inflicted indignities (the wrinkled nose, the tight smile) such as may occur, for example, if they prematurely introduce themselves (as one of her English friends explained, "Higher up the social scale it is still considered terribly forward to volunteer your name before having been formally introduced").

Be that as it may, if you happen to run into Amy, never fear. Though she now carries a British passport, she will be happy to learn your name!

Let's talk about food: Practicing the Presence

[Jordaens, The Supper at Emmaus, 1645]

And now back to food as sacrament--what we'll be talking about this Sunday at St Barnabas. In Monday's post I wrote, "A sacrament points to something beyond itself, but it is more than a sign. It has multiple layers of meaning, but it is more than the religious version of a symbol. A sacrament is a special kind of symbol that actually makes present the reality it evokes." The sacrament of bread and wine, then, in some way makes Jesus Christ present.

How does that work?

Catholics still use a medieval explanation called "transubstantiation." Lutherans speak of  "sacramental union." Calvinists talk about "spiritual presence." Other Protestants use terms like "holy mystery" or "real presence." Orthodox Christians like the word "mystery" and, as far as I know, don't try too hard to explain it. Many evangelical Christians celebrate the Lord's Supper but don't really believe in sacraments at all (my husband once referred to their theology as the "real absence"). Anglicans, as John Cleese wittily pointed out in his "Consumers Guide to Religion," have a democratic spirit--"if you want transubstantiation, you can have transubstantiation. If you don't want transubstantiation, you don't have to have transubstantiation. All you do is go down the road to another Church of England church and not have it."

I'm not going to argue for or against any of these positions. I rather like the quatrain that probably originated with John Donne but is usually attributed to Elizabeth I:

’Twas God the word that spake it,
He took the bread and brake it,
And what the word did make it,
That I believe and take it.

Whatever our theology about sacraments, most Christians agree that

• eating together fosters community
• the Christian community is "the body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:27)

The earliest Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:42). Somehow when they broke bread together, Jesus was present with them and in them, and they were present in him.

Bread and wine are dynamic symbols. Sharing bread and wine is a powerful sacramental act. All explanations inevitably fall short, as the disciples on the Emmaus Road discovered. Only when they broke bread with the stranger did they realize who he was.
_______________________________

This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'm leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

On the royal wedding: a note to its cultured despisers

3-year-old Grace van Cutsem is not amused.

Some of my friends apparently identify with the kid on the balcony. The royal wedding? How anachronistic: "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" How tiresomely patriotic: all British Empire and military display. How clichéd: "England's green and pleasant land." What a colossal waste of money - a  £50k forest in Westminster Abbey! Some of these critics are even women.

I confess: I hear them, and I more or less agree with them, and still I got up at 4:00 a.m. and watched the wedding, every minute of it, just as I watched Charles and Diana's wedding 30 years ago, hanging on to every word, every image.

In the evening I came back for more, and when I turned on the TV news, I knew why I can't tear myself away. What are the options? Shelling in Syria. Rising death toll from tornadoes in the American South. Libyan civil war spilling over into Tunisia. Endless political bickering. The only happy news came from London.

The romance! the dress! the hats! the horses! the trumpet fanfares! the choir! the queen all in yellow! the gorgeous young couple, so obviously in love! Do I want to turn from that and blog about union bashing or cow bashing or Obama bashing? I don't think so.

I mean, what's the reason some of us get exercised about politics and the economy and international relations, anyway? Isn't it because we have a dream of love and beauty and peace for all? Don't we want to affirm the words spoken by the Bishop of London yesterday, that "every wedding [should be] a royal wedding with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future"?

As "we stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril," can't we agree with the bishop that "we shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another"?

To be sure, the bishop pointed out that "personal relations alone will [not] supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden." And royal weddings, of course, will not eliminate poverty or dictators or conspiracy theorists. But when 2 billion people gather around the TV set to watch a wedding (or a funeral or the Summer Olympics), it is not mere escapism - it's a celebration of the things that give life meaning, the values we share that we hope, by our political involvement, to extend to as many people as possible.

THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe

What word first comes to mind when someone says Nigeria? If you have an e-mail account, the word may be scam (someone urgently needs your help to get money out of a bank account and promises great rewards if only you give them lots of personal information...). If you are Anglican, the word may be Akinola, the name of the primate archbishop who for several years has been in a doctrinal and power struggle with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

But if you are like most Americans, you may not know that Nigeria has the highest population of Africa's 60 countries and territories, that it exports more oil than Iran,  or that 40% of the population is Christian (see the CIA World Factbook for more data about Nigeria).

Maybe you'd like to learn more about this important African country, but history books make your eyes glaze over. Try a novel written by a Nigerian: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for recent or contemporary Nigeria; Chinua Achebe for the clash between traditional African society and the British colonizers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Published in the late 1950s and still in print, Things Fall Apart is probably the best-known classic of African literature in English. Alix Wilber, calling it a "relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism," summarizes it well in an Amazon review:

Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy.... 

And the story is certainly tragic. Time after time, Okonkwo's fear of weakness drives him to actions that hurt others, and yet he is basically a good man, hard-working and respected. Eventually, however, he comes in contact with British missionaries and colonial administrators, and his strength fails him. Nothing he does can hold his people together. The white man, says his friend Obierika, "has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."

As I listened to the first part of the book (masterfully read by  Peter Francis James), I found myself thinking about the popular view that all religions lead to the same place. The Ibo gods, though, did not seem to take very good care of women and children. Men were allowed - and sometimes even required - to beat or murder their wives and children. Maybe missionaries weren't such a bad idea, I thought. Or maybe the Ibo people just needed a good dose of the European Enlightenment.

And then the white missionaries came. One was a fool, one was likable, one was an intolerant bigot. The result was the same: the missionaries' strange teachings united with the colonial rulers' will to dominate, and Ibo society was doomed. Women and children ostensibly gained more protections, but their men were humiliated. Families broke apart. Democratic traditions were abandoned. European religion and government, aiming to help them (and, of course, to profit from them as well), ended up destroying an ancient civilization.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," wrote William Butler Yeats in "The Second Coming." "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned."

Achebe's Things Fall Apart describes a triple tragedy. Okonkwo - noble but flawed - is a tragic hero. His village - indeed, the entire Ibo kingdom - is also a tragic hero. Its strength and goodness and beauty are real but imperfect, and in the end it cannot stand against the foreign invaders. And even some of those invaders are tragic heroes. The missionary Mr. Brown, for example, who respected the Ibo customs and was liked by the Ibo people, went home to England a broken man.

In 1901, Nigeria (so named by the wife of a British colonial administrator) became a British protectorate. In 1914, it became a colony of Great Britain. In 1960, just a year after Things Fall Apart was published, it gained independence and became the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Its official language is English.

The Archbishop and the President have a problem

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

--William Butler Yeats, from "The Second Coming"

Two of the best people in public life today--in my humble opinion--are the President of the United States and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both are intelligent, thoughtful, well-read men who care deeply about justice, not only for themselves and their immediate constituents, but for the whole world. Both are complex thinkers who understand that every issue has many aspects. Both practice empathy: they see value in their opponents as well as in their adherents, and they dream of finding common ground, reconciling adversaries, and creating peace on earth.

By no means do Barack Obama and Rowan Williams lack all conviction. But--dogged on all sides by passionately intense extremists--both men seem unable to say, loud and clear, "Here I stand." Obama, still hoping to come up with a viable health plan, dreams of bipartisanship; while Williams, navigating among bishops from Africa and North America, appeals to the via media.

The results?

In Congress, a formerly fairly good health bill has been rewritten to the point that it soon may do just what Republicans warned it would do, back when it didn't do it: that is, cost too much. So of course Republicans don't like it, even though they're the ones who are making the changes--but Democrats don't much like it either, since it may no longer do what needs doing.

In Lambeth, a decades-long series of non-decisions and non-comments regarding gay clergy has driven conservative Anglicans to Africa or Rome while leaving liberal Anglicans feeling betrayed, wondering why their former champion has not even spoken up about the proposed death penalty for gays in Uganda.

I really like President Obama and Archbishop Williams. I like them because they are thoughtful reconcilers, and I think both of them have really good ideas. I would love to have a beer with either one, any time. The question is, can they do their jobs if they continue to be simultaneously irenic and visionary? Or does a public figure eventually need to draw a line in the sand, even though a lot of people will end up on the other side of the line?

Review: The Matthew Shardlake Mysteries by CJ Sansom

2009 has been a good year for Tudor fiction. Hilary Mantel's hefty Wolf Hall, a portrayal of Henry VIII's strongman Thomas Cromwell, won the Man Booker prize for fiction. Best-selling novelist Philippa Gregory added a back story to her seven Tudor novels with The White Queen, about Henry VIII's maternal grandmother Elizabeth Woodville. And C.J. Sansom, whose first novel about the fictional hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake was blurbed by P.D. James, added a fourth book to the series, Revelation.

I am 40 pages into Wolf Hall, and I'm not sure if I will continue: it is a literary novel that is heavy on character and light on plot, and it is very long. I have read only one Philippa Gregory (The Queen's Fool), and I enjoyed it: as I recall, it was a page-turner of a romance in a well-researched historical setting. Sansom's books fall in the middle of the literary-to-popular continuum. They are mysteries, but (like most P.D. James books) they are also fully developed novels with well-developed characters, intricate plots, and serious concerns that go well beyond whodunit.

Sansom tells his stories in chronological order, so it's a good idea to begin with his first book, Dissolution (read my review here), whose events take place in 1537 when Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell are breaking up monasteries. The second book, Dark Fire (reviewed here), involves Thomas Cromwell's demise in 1540.

In book three, Sovereign, Shardlake accompanies Henry VIII's 1541 "progress" (massive displacement of the entire court designed to overawe the populace) to York. Major players include Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; and Catherine Howard, Henry's foolish child bride. Book four, Revelation, finds Shardlake back in London in 1543, desperately trying to steer clear of political intrigues--but of course falling headlong into one involving Cranmer, Henry VIII's former brother-in-law Thomas Seymour, and Catherine Parr, whom Henry wishes to make his sixth wife.

I've been reading Sansom as distraction from twenty-first-century politics--I'm weary of furious accusations hurled back and forth between liberals and conservatives in politics and religion over topics ranging from abortion to Afghanistan--and I find Tudor England strangely comforting: clearly, we are not living in the worst of times. As Sansom describes it, some of the sixteenth-century problems sound familiar. Religious conservatives battle religious innovators. The rich take the property of the poor. The poor find themselves without health care. Rumor has it that weapons of mass destruction are being developed. Rulers bypass courts of law and illegally torture people without formal accusations or trials. The Book of Revelation becomes popular, and people expect the last days. Religious fanatics turn into killers.

Perhaps Sansom means for me to think, Whoa... look where we're going, look what could happen here. I'm afraid that my response is more shallow (I may be in denial). For example, as I read about what happened to prisoners in the Tower of London, I thought, Whew... I'm glad I live now and not in Tudor England. But Sansom is looking at how power operates, especially when there are no counter-powers restraining it, and what he sees is worth pondering.

Fortunately, Sansom also looks at goodness. As a skilled novelist, he gives us well-rounded central characters with flaws and virtues inextricably mixed. Still, Shardlake is reassuringly kind most of the time, and he unflaggingly pursues justice to the best of his ability. His physician friend, Guy Malton, is compassionate; Shardlake's young assistant Jack Barak is loyal and courageous. Even as you fear that one or another of the characters is about to make a huge mistake, you trust their intentions. They will not turn on you. Perhaps they will make their tumultuous world a better place.

The Shardlake mysteries are long, ranging from 400 to nearly 600 pages. Fortunately, they do not drag. Sansom follows the good novelist's dictum: Show, don't tell. He keeps his characters on stage--these books are all written in the first person--and moves the plot largely through fast-paced dialogue. It's nice for a reader to have some prior acquaintance with Tudor England, but extensive knowledge of the period isn't required. A quick romp through the PBS series "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" would suffice, or an even quicker viewing of "A Man for All Seasons" (a film you should review if you plan to read Mantel's Wolf Hall, since the book completely reverses the film's portrayal of Sir Thomas More and Cromwell).

And if you've heretofore paid no attention to the sixteenth century, let Sansom initiate you. He's only up to July 1543, but I'm guessing Matthew Shardlake will be back. Archbishop Cranmer will sorely need his services during the brief, chaotic reign of Edward VI (1547-53).

Catholics, Protestants, the via media, and roadkill

If you have any interest in the Episcopal Church, you've already been exposed to far too many summaries, comments, analyses, predictions, outbursts, and uncharitable remarks about what Bishop N.T. Wright has called "the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism." I am not going to offer an opinion here about what has been done or should be done. Instead, I'd like to point out something very interesting about Archbishop Rowan Williams's official response to the Episcopal General Convention 2009: one of his major concerns is not just holding the Anglican Communion together, but also preserving unity with "the Church Catholic."

In 2006, some three years after Rome suspended ecumenical talks with Canterbury because of Gene Robinson's consecration, Williams met with Benedict XVI. This is part of what the pope said to the archbishop:

Recent developments, especially concerning the ordained ministry and certain moral teachings, have affected not only internal relations within the Anglican Communion but also relations between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. We believe that these matters, which are presently under discussion within the Anglican Communion, are of vital importance to the preaching of the Gospel in its integrity, and that your current discussions will shape the future of our relations. It is to be hoped that the work of the theological dialogue, which had registered no small degree of agreement on these and other important theological matters, will continue to be taken seriously in your discernment. In these deliberations we accompany you with heartfelt prayer. It is our fervent hope that the Anglican Communion will remain grounded in the Gospels and the Apostolic Tradition which form our common patrimony and are the basis of our common aspiration to work for full visible unity.

Williams appears to share Benedict's wish for "full visible unity." Though several years ago he wrote that "an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might ... reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage," his response to General Convention has quite a different tone. It is not the time, he says, for the Church to bless same-sex unions and thereby change the way it has "consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years." It is not the time for admitting people living in such unions to the ordained ministry. Not enough "painstaking biblical exegesis" has been done. The necessary consensus for so far-reaching a change does not yet exist.

I expected Archbishop Williams to do whatever he could to keep Anglicans under the Canterbury roof. I was surprised, however, at his strong concern for "the Church Catholic," by which he appears to mean not only the Anglican Communion but also the Roman Catholic Church and probably other Anglican ecumenical partners as well. Eight of his 26 paragraphs appeal to ecumenicity:

7. ... it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also....

8. ... a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole....

9. ... So long as the Church Catholic, or even the Communion as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle. (There is also an unavoidable difficulty over whether someone belonging to a local church in which practice has been changed in respect of same-sex unions is able to represent the Communion's voice and perspective in, for example, international ecumenical encounters.)

15. ... This again has an ecumenical dimension when a global Christian body is involved in partnerships and discussions with other churches who will quite reasonably want to know who now speaks for the body they are relating to when a controversial local change occurs. The results of our ecumenical discussions are themselves important elements in shaping the theological vision within which we seek to resolve our own difficulties.

18. To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity...

19. ... some see this as best expressed in a more federalist and pluralist way. ... But it is not the approach that has generally shaped the self-understanding of our Communion – less than ever in the last half-century, with new organs and instruments for the Communion's communication and governance and new enterprises in ecumenical co-operation.

22. ... there is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a 'covenanted' Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with 'covenanted' provinces.

23. ... perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a 'two-track' model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure. If those who elect this model do not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the 'covenanted' body participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.

Anglicans pride themselves on being neither Catholic nor Protestant, but rather a via media incorporating elements from both traditions. The Episcopal Church in the U.S., by insisting on its own view of truth and justice without general worldwide concurrence and in the face of much opposition, is acting in a very Protestant way. The Archbishop of Canterbury, by appealing to tradition, authority, and consensus, is sounding quite Catholic. And yet, in his genial Anglican way, he doesn't want to banish the Protestant dissenters--"there is no threat of being cast into outer darkness," he writes.

But can the via media persist as a viable ecclesiological model? Or has it already become the median strip where roadkill piles up as traffic rushes past in opposite directions?