Life in all its fullness

Having it all by Jo Ind

There is a great deal of debate about whether it is possible for a woman to 'have it all', by which is meant a fulfilling career, a loving husband, a great sex life and still having time to keep fit, make her own chutney and see her children compete in the egg and spoon race.

People panic themselves into trying to achieve all of these things without reckoning that ultimately we are not in control. We might well suffer from a debilitating illness, be infertile, be unjustly imprisoned or the victim of a stabbing which leaves us paralysed from the neck down. We are not the sole architects of our destinies, whatever the lifestyle gurus might say to the contrary.

Happiness is not about being able to tick the boxes – partner, health, career, house, children - however good those things are in themselves. It is about both more and less than that. There is no connection between someone’s outer good fortune and inner sense of wellbeing. Ask any therapist. Ask someone who has lost his arm in a car accident and despite that, or maybe because of that, exudes the bubbly playfulness of God.

Life in all its fullness is not about having it all. It is about learning not to be afraid. It is feeling connected to everything that is. It is compassion. It is knowing we are loved. It is saying: 'Yes' to the moment at hand. The Good News is that these things are available to us, whatever our situation.

Jo Ind is a journalist and author. Her books include Fat is a Spiritual Issue and Memories of Bliss: God, Sex and Us.

A new kind of resilience by Alison Webster

I write this in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings (7 July) and attempted bombings (21 July). By the time you read this there may well have been more. Many have been reminded that life is fragile, survival (injury and death) random, and that the big question is: how do we live and flourish in the light of this? For most of human history, and for billions around the world today, this question forms the backdrop to everyday life. Those of us who have grown up in a context of relative security and material affluence are unusually privileged.

Mental health has been defined as, ‘the emotional and spiritual resilience that enables us to survive pain, disappointment and sadness.’ In other words, it is not a ‘state’ but a ‘process’, a set of skills and strategies that can be learned and developed.

Our society is entering an era when we need a new kind of ‘resilience’ – corporate and individual. Speaking on Thought for the Day on 8 July, Rowan Williams spoke of the need to keep believing in what is positive and hopeful, not allowing the terrorists to have their way, which is the way of fear and ‘sick desolation’.

Resilience comes not from hunkering down and putting up a protective shield, but from opening up and taking risks. For the mental wellbeing of us all, now is the time to embrace cultural, religious and racial diversity as never before; to resist stereotyping, however much the tabloids try to persuade us that it is common sense. To remember that suspicion narrows our vision, whilst creative risk-taking enhances it.

Alison is Social Responsibility Adviser for Oxford Diocese.

Fresh courage take by Frances Young

My eldest son was born in 1967. We are still changing nappies, and still get upset when he is distressed and cannot tell us what is wrong. He was born at full term but at premature weight – he had been deprived of oxygen and nourishment in the womb. With an abnormally small head and brain, he has extreme learning disabilities: no self-help skills, no language, and in adulthood he has lost the limited mobility he once had because his hips permanently dislocated. He takes drugs to prevent epileptic fits. He cannot be left alone, but attends a day centre in the week. My husband and I share all his care, apart from about nine weeks' relief each year.

Over the years I have moved beyond the ‘Why?’ questions to find myself drawn deeper into the classic truths of the Christian faith. Mary at the foot of the cross has become a ‘type’ of all mothers who in one way or another ‘lose’ their sons. Persons with disabilities have become essential to the body of Christ, because they ‘image’ God in the crucified Christ in a way that is missing otherwise. Creatureliness is at the heart of the human condition, and we all share vulnerability and mortality. Mutual love and interdependence are core values which produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5).

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
(William Cowper)


Frances Young is Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham.

Flourishing in community by Timothy Radcliffe

Can we flourish alone? That is a real question in Western cultures, which are deeply individualistic. Most societies believe that human beings need community if we are to be fully alive. There is a Zulu saying, ‘A person is a person because of persons.’ We receive our existence from the smallest of all communities, our own parents. Christians believe that we shall finally flourish in the largest of all communities, which is the whole of humanity gathered into unity in the Kingdom.

We all belong to multiple communities: families, football clubs, networks of friends, places where we work, internet circles, churches. A community should not be a tight prison which shuts out strangers, but opens me to others. If being a supporter of Manchester United or a Catholic means that I must hate supporters of Liverpool or Protestants, the something has gone wrong.

My most important community is a Catholic religious Order called the Dominicans, scattered around the world in more than a hundred countries. For nine years I lived at its HQ in Rome. We were more than 30 brothers from 21 nationalities. This stretched open my mind and my heart, demanding that I see the world through African and Asian eyes. I discovered different ways of cooking, joking, praying and thinking. If we can learn friendship with strangers now, then it is a small preparation for the Kingdom, in which there will be no strangers any more.

Timothy Radcliffe OP is a Dominican friar, living at Blackfriars, Oxford.

Life in all its forms by Susannah Rudge

To whom does Christ offer life? Even ‘inclusive’ communities, which stress God’s love for everyone, can often overlook an important point – that the Christian message of reconciliation and hope does not only concern human beings.

This is not a recent oversight. Christians through the ages have reflected endlessly on the nature of salvation, but few have looked beyond the human perspective to affirm the redemption of the whole created order. Some have even explicitly denied the importance of the natural world. Aquinas, for instance, argued that nature existed only for human ends, and saw Adam’s ‘dominion over the earth’ not as respectful stewardship but as a licence for exploitation.

Yet this was not Christianity’s heritage. The Jewish scriptures affirm the value of nature, recognising Israel’s God as the creator and Lord of the universe who is revealed in all he has made. They promise that though nature is now finite, and sometimes chaotic, it will become eternally harmonious in the time of future salvation. The New Testament writers locate this salvation, for creatures as for humans, in Christ, in whom ‘creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay’ (Romans 8). The idea is not that humans should transcend or ignore the material world, but that all things are given the chance to enter into a new kind of existence, freed from finitude and united to God in eternity.

Today, modern technology allows us ever-increasing dominance over nature. Thanks to environmental campaigners and the media, most of us are aware of the damage human activities have caused to the natural world. I’ll be the first to admit, however, that my response has been woefully inadequate. Nor have the Christian communities to which I’ve belonged offered much encouragement; I’ve heard plenty of sermons about how people should treat each other, but few about the right treatment of nature. However, we must improve. Aspiring to live ‘life in all its fullness’ must involve recognition and respect for everything which shares God’s gift of life.

Susannah Rudge is part of a Jesuit volunteer community in Liverpool. She was a member of SCM's General Council in 2004–05.

'You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here.' by Chris Mead

I like watching films. I mean I really like watching them. I’m not sure at what point a hobby becomes an obsession but I’m certainly in that neighbourhood. I live my life in the hinterlands of the fanatic, in front of a flickering silver screen that tells me stories, teaches me and sometimes, if I’m very lucky, sings to me.

There is a theory that the human race seeks to define itself through the tales it tells. We thrash out our humanity by degrees, flinging fictions and fantasy every which way, seeing how far we can stretch reality and still recognise ourselves. Be it fairy tale or sonnet, slash-fic or urban legend, airport page-turner or magnum opus, we start to discern the shape of our soul through the thrust of our narratives.

There are some, then, that place religion in this category, merely a collection of stories that teach us how to know ourselves better. As a Christian I am caught somewhere between ferociously refuting this point of view and kind of seeing what they mean. For me the true successor to this millennia-long tradition of global story-telling is cinema. When the lights fade down around me, when miracles and wonders start unfolding before me, I feel wise and strange and connected to something bigger and older than myself. Even, and this is the weird part, if I’m watching something like American Pie 5: How do we keep getting away with this?

I can draw a very real parallel between my faith and my film-watching habits which is why I’m always so annoyed at Hollywood’s treatment of Christianity. I’m not talking about Gibson’s gore-fest Christ or even the horror genre’s steady succession of sallow-faced priests and corrupt clerics. I’m talking about the perception of normal, everyday Christians. These fall into two distinct categories: a) the humourless bigot and b) the psycho.

And that’s it.

Let me give you an example: in One Eight Seven Samuel L Jackson plays a high school teacher who is both an inspiration and a father figure to those in his classroom. In an early scene, apropos of nothing, we see him kneel in prayer before going to bed. When I first saw this scene I nearly jumped out of my seat. Finally, I thought, here’s a Christian on film who lives his faith through his actions, who doesn’t preach or whine or irritate but simply tries to do what he believes is right.

Of course, at the end of the film it turns out he has been slaughtering children on a perceived mission from God. So here we are, the forgotten billions, the sub-section of Christianity whose idea of a perfect Saturday night doesn’t necessarily include wearing white sheets and ritual sacrifice. I think we need to ask ourselves some serious questions about why we’re always portrayed in this unflattering manner. If cinema sees us as a bunch of killers n’ killjoys then some of the blame has got to rest on us. Especially if you believe, as I do, that popular culture is a funfair mirror into our collective consciousness.

Perhaps Christianity is a collection of stories and fables, but they’re stories with real blood pumping through their veins. They’re relevant and ballsy and revolutionary, tales of power and faith. We are the children of these stories, walking in footsteps that stretch back through centuries, journeys that were begun in mud and desert sand. These are the things we believe in, the stories that drive us, ideas and beliefs that have lasted for generations. We shouldn’t be ashamed of them, we need to shout them louder, so that those that twist a fundamental message of love and acceptance into something divisive and hateful can no longer be heard. Then perhaps we’ll see a different kind of Christian on our television and cinema screens.

Chris Mead is Christian Aid's Higher Education Resources Officer.

A different world by Fabian Radcliffe

The highlight of the SCM conference in March was the talk by John Hull. From the age of 13 he suffered steady loss of his sight, which was complete by his mid-twenties. Yet he sat there talking to us, with energy, enthusiasm and humour, positively embracing life in all its fullness, in a way that astonished us.

Had we suffered the same misfortune we might have complained. Not he. His life-work was teaching Education in Birmingham University, and though now retired (in his sixties) he works part-time and gives lectures and talks. How can he be so positive about his life, his work and his faith?

He is not the kind of person to let things get him down, though it was never easy. But a turning point came when someone said to him: ‘You are so lucky; you will never see your wife getting older’. At first he felt angry; but then he thought: ‘That’s true’, and he began to embrace blindness positively. He had thought of himself as a sighted person who cannot see. Now he became a blind person. Blindness changes the whole person, not just the eyes. You become a tactile rather than a seeing person. You begin to ‘see’ with your whole body, in a way that we sighted people find hard to imagine. We assume that our world is the whole world, so the blind are handicapped. But the blind person’s world is just as real, though different.

Blindness has not diminished John’s faith. He has no visual image of God now; but he lives with God, just as he lives with his wife and children of whom he has no visual image either. He is a living example of what ‘life in all its fullness’ can mean.

Fabian Radcliffe acted as reflector at this year's SCM conference. He was formerly co-ordinator of HE chaplaincy for the Catholic church in the UK.

A precarious vision by Laura Biddington

It is reported that, on being asked to produce a summary of the Christian faith on the back of an envelope, Rowan Williams would scribble the Lord’s Prayer. And he has a point. If we accept the historicity of this prayer, then what we have here is something of Jesus’ own vision for the world; an insight into the things he hoped and prayed for.

This prayer, in effect, is a vision of life in all its fullness. A world in which God’s kingdom is manifest is a world of inclusive community, radical equality and social justice; a world where people have the time and resources to live life to the full. It is a world where we all have the freedom to seek God’s will by exploring and utilising our gifts, talents and desires in order to discern where God, in making us who we are, might be leading us.

Being open to the will of God in this way is a precarious existence (indeed, ‘precarious’ is Latin for prayer), because we are committed to a way of life which is neither comfortable nor straightforward. It is not easy to forgive or to accept forgiveness, but as Mrs Gee Walker, mother of murdered teenager Anthony Walker, has said: 'Unforgiveness makes you a victim'. To truly live as forgiven and forgiving people, without denying the pain and difficulty of this, is to begin to enter the vision of the Lord’s Prayer.

It is a risky prayer, for it commits us, changes us and deeply involves us with the injustices of our world. We can be cut off from the richness of life by choosing only the easy things, the things that do not challenge or frighten or disturb us. We can choose not to be involved. But if we are open to the disturbing of our comfort, we can seek the coming of God’s kingdom, rely on God for our daily needs, live as forgiven and forgiving people, and enter Jesus’ vision of life in all its fullness.

Laura is chaplaincy assistant at Sheffield University.

Lay your burdens down? by Sarah Armstrong

Jesus came that we might have life.
The light of the world, come to bring life to us all.
His light overcomes the darkness
In the places where we fear we cannot go
He is with us and lives in us.

Often we are troubled by questions and doubt
Difficult decisions, unsure which way to go
Things which cause stress and anxiety,
which we would rather not have to deal with
Why me, Lord? Why now? I can’t do this on my own.
It feels like we've been given more than we can carry.
Why must life be this hard?

'I put my trust in God', we say.
We encourage others to do the same.
'Your will be done' we say each week,
but are we prepared for what this means?

In reality this is one of the hardest acts;
to hand our lives over to His keeping
We fear this loss,
this surrender of control over our lives.
When things are difficult we want to be able to do something,
want it to work out the way we would like
It feels like the most unlikely way to gain life.
How can I be more alive if I’m not in control?

But through this surrender, this submission to His will, we gain freedom.
Freedom from the burdens we carry,
from the obstacles we cannot overcome,
from the struggles which we cannot face alone.

He doesn't say it will be easy
He cannot and will not take away the pain we feel.
But he promises to be with us, by our side, always.
We must live through the dark times,
but within that darkness we feel His presence.

A presence which takes us through the trials of life,
and brings us to a new life with and in Him.
As we lay our burdens at Jesus' feet
We are renewed and refreshed, and find life again.
Trusting in Him, our lives are changed,
and even the darkest night,
the fiercest storm, cannot shake our confidence.

'Come to me, when your burdens are heavy.'
Put your trust in me,
and I will lead you into life.

Sarah studied at Swansea University and has been a member of SCM's General Council.