Today is so beautiful. Blue and white and breezy and joyous.
In the room where I work the sunshine through the skylight windows is dazzlingly bright, and all is much improved by this lovely straw bonnet from Pilgrim Hen, which allows me to work without my eyes screwed up tight against the light.
A happy day.
Something has happened recently that has stirred my heart.
On Facebook I came across an instance of Islamophobia, a propagandist photograph used irresponsibly with the expressed purpose of engendering religious hatred. It succeeded in this objective, and the stream of foul and savage comments that followed it rushed out like a burst sewer pipe.
Now, I have been dismayed by the cruelty of Sharia law. I remember reading about a scribe whose calligraphy was astonishingly beautiful, lovely to behold. He was a man of remarkable talent. But he stole something, so they cut off his hand. He managed to continue working at his art, but once again he was reduced to stealing. So they cut off his other hand. He committed suicide. And who was the gainer by that?
I have been chilled to the marrow by the beheadings, the public hangings, and by the contemplation of a tradition that will practice genital mutilation on girls and will bury people up to the neck then throw rocks at their heads until they die. There is no space in my imagination for any connection whatever between such behaviour and peace or human goodness.
But to whip up hatred against all Muslims because of the atrocities of some of them is not right. It is not so long since righteous Christians tortured their brethren on the rack and burned them alive over doctrinal disagreements. It is not so very long since in London seven senior Carthusian monks were hung by the neck til half-dead, then taken down, then had their genitals cut off, then were sliced open and their internal organs pulled out, then their arms and legs and heads were cut off. This was done because they would not renounce their Catholic faith in support of Henry VIII's political manoeuvrings to secure the divorce from his wife that the Pope would not grant him. Would we have Catholics spew out venom and hatred against us Protestants because that had been done?
There is no need to go back in history either. Enough abuse and sexual abuse of children can be heaped at the door of the Church to make people hate all of us forever, and enough bigotry and violence - verbal, physical and psychological to make people turn away from the Church in contempt, dismissing us as ignorant, primitive savages using human fears and insecurities as the tool of our agenda of domination.
But if there can be no end to hatred and prejudice, there can be no future for the human race. Compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, understanding, and willingness to differentiate between one individual and another instead of lumping all together as one category - this is not only good, it is intelligent; not only intelligent but necessary. Or the eventual bloodbath must finish us all. For who stands guiltless? Whose life is free of shame? Who can be held responsible for no cruelty, no malice, no violence?
In the media they talk of 'innocent bystanders'. What are they? I have never met one.
As I have contemplated these things I have seen that the cruel reign of Mammon has grown like a caul across human hearts beyond number. Prejudice, sloth, lust, avarice, envy, greed, indifference: these have become the hallmarks of our day - people are proud of them, manufacturers promote them in advocacy of their products!. 'The car/dress/jewellery/vacuum cleaner/house that will fill your friend with jealousy'. Great :0\
It is time to be in earnest about building the Peaceable Kingdom.
I am no activist. I am timid, shy and withdrawn. I dread confrontation and cannot organise events and people have never listened to me. I have no gift to persuade; I am not a natural leader.
But I can choose what is good as I bump along the bottom in the small and ordinary ways where my feet walk. I can choose gentleness, fairmindedness, loyalty, kindness, mercy and friendliness. I can choose to give people a chance and to encourage them. Even if I never do anything important or significance, my unimportant insignificance can paint in the details of peace.
For a long time now I have longed for my dream, The Quiet Way, to become reality. I dream of a group of people who love the Lord Jesus, not a new denomination in the Church but made up of people of any denomination, to walk together in fellowship, meeting to pray and encourage one another, dressing Plain as a witness to what they believe, to covenant together to build the Peaceable Kingdom.
And the still small voice is saying to me, 'Now is the time'. So, The Quiet Way has begun. I would make a website for it, but I don't really know how, so I'm going instead to make another blogspot that you can reach from here, setting out the principles and practice of The Quiet Way.
I am praying for God who is calling me to this (and this is not a thing I say lightly or readily, I am not one of those who hears the Divine voice telling her to write scraps of sentimental doggerel and eat rice krispies rather than weetabix for breakfast) to send me, to begin with, four other sisters who will do this with me. For I am afraid of the ridicule and the loneliness. Because of the history of psychiatric illness in my family, I am afraid that I am mad and this is religious mania. But the witness in my heart says: 'No. Persevere. God wills it.' So even mad, lonely and ridiculed, this is what I will do.
You who read hear, when you think of me, send up a swift little arrow prayer to the throne of grace, 'Please may she have four Plain-dressing sisters to walk with her in the Quiet Way, building the Peaceable Kingdom'. And God reward you for that.
The Plain Dress is for visibility and a witness, a sign in the world. And it is not for withdrawal or prudishness or disapproval or archaic expression of gender differences. It is for a sign of a life surrendered to the Kingdom of Christ and wanting no part in the Slime-mould of Mammon, to live in simplicity and humility, on the side of every human being and on the side of creation, in detail working steadily towards making our homes a sanctuary where people are healed and find hope, and making our lives into lights shining for justice, for freedom, for joy.