©The Rev’d Richard Browning
The following is a four part movement, depicting the work of chaplaincy with students, and, I propose, the four weeks of Advent. Using your right hand:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Centre | Extend | Turn | Return |
| Heart | Attend | Grasp | Ingest |
Speaking to students and now to you: 1 2 3 4; Heart. Attend. Grasp. Ingest.
Heart
You want to be free, established in yourself, a creature standing in your own identity, not occupied by another, or owned by anything other than your authentic self. A name for “being established in yourself” is sovereign.
Attend (stretch)
You want to be free and reach beyond yourself to that which is outside yourself. This is attending; the training of your mind and heart in your body to ‘lock on’, without distraction or prejudice. You want to be free and own your attention and hold it upon what is desirable; the good, the true, the beautiful.
There as so many distractions, temptations, algorithms that lure and buy and possess our attention. Sovereignty is not just about being established in ourselves. It is about having authority over our attention, free to be curious and open, questioning, wondering. There, to discern, and by discerning, grasp.
Grasp (receive)
There are two ways of grasping. One is the domineering act of acquisition or apprehension. The other and preferred kind of grasping, is comprehension, receiving as a gift; like ‘ohh, I get it’.
Ingest.
The final work is ingestion, taking into oneself the gift that comes from beyond, growing into the good, the true, the beautiful. This ingestion is not a function of acquiring, nor the anxious feeding of greed. It is about becoming, becoming more, more generous, more compassionate, more human, more like God.
1 2 3 4. Heart | Attend | Grasp | Ingest
A few notes on attention:
Paul Tillich, (theologian and philosopher) calls this action (attention) the first duty of love (he calls it listen).
The uncontrolled, directionless, distracted attention is a failure of maturation, the sign of the unfree, the infant, the enslaved.
Attention glued to the ungood, the untrue, the ugly is a sign of compromise, corruption, or addiction.
The failure to do this at all (attend), is an act of narcissism. By what great arrogance can anyone say “I am sufficient within myself. There is nothing to listen to or learn from.” This is the arrogance of certainty. Certainty is the death of faith, the precursor to cowardly acts of violence. Last Sunday two males acted out of certainty – an insult to any faith – and we recoil in revulsion at the monstrous violence.
“Deafness, the complete failure to attend to the other, and especially human suffering, is what leads to the betrayal of the human spirit.” (see Jacob Bronowski*) He uses the words of Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” I am drawing here on the life and testimony of the peerless intellect Jacob Bronowski who implores “we have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge (certainty) and power”. His solution is simple: relations, connection, closeness to others, close enough as to touch.
So we reach out in empathy to the Jewish community of Australia, especially in Bondi and surrounds. That same impulse turns us in solidarity against lethal violence in every place: Sudan, Congo, Gaza and off the shores of Venezuela.
A note on Mary
Mary does not allow herself to be occupied. She is sovereign. (The word for this in the scriptures is virgin). For such a young woman, established in herself, she claims the space to ponder. She tells the story of herself to herself: “I am the Lord’s servant”. Then she says: “let it be”. She ingests the love of God and becomes the mother of God’s promise fulfilled.
A note on Joseph.
If there is such a thing as biblical masculinity, let it be Joseph. He never speaks. He is respectful and discrete but also open to wisdom. He is flexible.
He is established in himself enough to walk in public with his head high, with Mary at his side, even though she is swollen with someone else’s child. His sovereignty allows him to give Mary shelter and the protection of his name and lineage. He is sovereign enough to receive a divine message, digest it and communicate it to others. He did this not once, not twice but three times.
Which suggests the starting point for sovereignty is not here (1 – the chest), but here (2 – outside ourselves, that to which we attend). The starting point is not in us, but beyond us. This jars with our dominant culture. In our culture the language of sovereignty means independence, self-sufficiency. But the biblical account, and here the story of Joseph suggests otherwise: we receive ourselves from outside ourselves. We find ourselves by what we in breath here, beyond us, through what it is we attend to.
A note on Emmanuel.
This is the story we have spent four weeks getting ready to grasp:
- Sovereign God
- reaches towards that which is not God, and attends with loving devotion
- and receives humankind
- and draws humanity into the very heart of God.
This is the story we seek to encounter. God receives our nature and becomes it, that forever, humanity is in the nature of God.
If this is the story of Christmas, then in Christmas we must draw near to humanity and the suffering of others; here in Indooroopilly; in our neighbourhoods and beyond. We must be alongside the suffering of others. As this story brings our attention to Bethlehem, we cannot forget this small Palestinian town on the West Bank, is occupied and bisected by a 16 foot wall, setting apart Palestinians from fields and water and olive trees and freedom of movement.
Conclusion.
You want to be free, established in yourself, unoccupied by unwelcome forces, sovereign over your attention. Able to attend to the good and true and beautiful.
I hold up Sofia Gurman, Reuven Morrison, Ahmed al-Ahmed**. In their sovereignty they responded to monstrous violence and resisted, defied and disarmed the ugly and untrue.
You want to be free, established in yourself,
able to focus your attention
on the good, the beautiful, the true.
Attending to the Christ whose attention is on us.
Let the very nature of God grow within,
That the nature of God come from you. Amen.
O Come Emmanuel. Come.
* The words and work of Bronowski is worth hearing in fuller account. Michael Parkinson said if he was allowed to interview just one person only, not thousands as he did, he would choose Bronowski. The following comes from an unpublished manuscript by Browing called The Light of The Days. He is talking about science and the ascent of humanity.
The end of episode eleven of The Ascent of Man finds the peerless Jacob Bronowski in Auschwitz[1]. It is an extraordinary documentary series. With this backdrop Bronowski says “deafness to human suffering leads to the betrayal of the human spirit, the assertion of dogma that closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilisation into a regiment of ghosts, obedient ghosts, tortured ghosts”. Science does not turn humans into numbers. “Look for yourself (Auschwitz), this is where people were turned into numbers.” He stands before a shallow brown puddle, drawing a line from it back to the flushing of human ashes from nearby crematoria just three decades earlier, declaring certainty born of arrogance propagated by dogma did this. Not science. He quotes Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” As humans ascend, he pleads, be relieved of the burden of certainty. Science is always at the edge of the unknown, every judgment “stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.” In his polished black shoes and pressed suit Bronowski then steps into the shallow brown waters and implores “we have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power”. Then stooping down he scoops up mud and water and makes the simplest, most glorious, most tragic statement: “we have to touch people”. We have to live with mystery, uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox, in relationship with people, even as we reach into the unknown to seek the known.
** Sofia and her husband Boris Gurman fought the two men before they even left their car. How implausibly amazing that they fought before it even began. In the extraordinary footage of Ahmed al-Ahmed there is an elderly man who moves into the frame and throws a brick, a remarkable statement of rejection and defiance against evil.
[1] A short clip of Ascent Of Man, episode 11 – Knowledge Or Certainty by Bronski can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltjI3BXKBgY