A recipe for inner peace

My contribution to BBC Radio Humberside’s Breakfast programme on Tuesday 24/06/08

Good morning, a little while ago I was asked contribute to a cookbook for a healthy life.  Being asked for a recipe is not an unusual experience as any number of organisations will bring together a ‘celebrity’ recipe book as a means of raising funds.  So when parishes, PTAs or local societies make such a request I have a number of recipes to offer them.  This, however, was the first time that I had been asked for something healthy and as I looked through my list of favourite recipes, I realised that double cream and saturated fat featured in every single one of them.

So it was back to the drawing board. Casting around for some ideas, I remembered that there is far more to being healthy than gathering the right ingredients for a dish.  So much of life appears to be in a rush, sweeping us up into a maelstrom of activity – children to collect; deadlines to meet; so much to do; expectations to live-up-to.  Alongside the rush, and perhaps a consequence of it, there is so much conflict in our world, not just on a global/political scale, but also more locally within the politics of community, work and, at times, even in our homes.  It is small wonder that we can become exhausted.  So, I came up with a recipe for the sort of inner peace which can nourish us during the rush and bustle of the day and which may help us avoid becoming part of the conflict.  So on this Tuesday morning I thought I would share that recipe with you and if you can’t take a note of it now you can find it on my blog www.BishopDavid.co.uk along with the rest of my contributions this week.

The Ingredients you need are as follows,

A large worldview

A generous understanding of others

A sense of proportion

5 minutes of quality time

A measure of humility

A dash of humour

A seasoning of prayer

Method

Find a quiet corner and take all the hassles, expectations and dilemmas which demand our time and attention, and set them against all the troubles, sorrows and joys in the world.  Think of all the people we find difficult and see them not as opponents or competitors, but as fellow pilgrims in this life and full of the same vulnerabilities as we are. Think of the really challenging things in our lives and balance them with the good things and the blessing which we fail to count.   Allow all this to settle for five minutes and accept that we may be part of the problems we encounter, smile at the nonsense to which we contribute and thank God that we can laugh at ourselves. After five minutes, rejoin the rush.

I find that this recipe gets better if made every day.

Spare a thought

My contribution to BBC Radio Humberside’s Breakfast programme on Monday 23/06/08

The news from Zimbabwe that the Movement for Democratic Change has decided, in the face of mounting violence and intimidation across the country, not to contest the presidential election run-off, is a salutary reminder of Lord Acton’s observation, as far back as 1887, that ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.  It is a desperate situation for the people of this country – a place so full of natural resources and potential, yet held in the vice like grip of a corrupt regime which presides over the economic chaos which gives rise to so much poverty and injustice.

The people of Zimbabwe join with those of Burma and Tibet in experiencing the political impotence which comes when those who have power have no real interest in the long-term flourishing of the individual, but are consumed with retaining power for themselves.

Of course on a Monday morning in Humberside all this seems a long way away and it is tempting to relegate the plight of the Zimbabweans to the background chatter of the news headlines.  There are other things more pressing on our time and demanding of our attention – yet one of the strengths of our age is that the plight and sufferings of others has an immediacy which draws us into their situation.

Freedom is a precious commodity, which I believe is God-given.  It gives us the dignity of making choices about how we shape our lives and our futures.  In a democracy we surrender something of that freedom every time we go and vote. Elections give us the opportunity to comment on the way in which our freedom is being used by the government and if we feel that they are wasting the opportunities we’ve given them, then we can remove them from power.

It has taken us a long time to reach the point where the democratic choice of each and every adult is part and parcel of our freedom and a sign of our dignity with in our community.

We quickly forget the struggles that we had in our own country for everyone – male and female to be able to vote.  Indeed it wasn’t until 1928, only some 80 years ago, that women in England got the same voting rights as men.  The struggles for the right to vote where about status — to be given the vote confirmed that a person mattered – they had status.

The way in which the people of Zimbabwe are being treated by their government just says that the people don’t matter – in the eyes of a corrupt regime the people have no status.  And as our week gets underway we may well feel that there is nothing we can do to change this situation – but there is – we can give them status by just pausing to think about them.  Those of faith can hold the Zimbabweans in their prayers and those who don’t have faith can still stop and give the people of is Zimbabwe a status by keeping them in their hearts and minds.

One might feel that this is a rather small and inconsequential response to the plight of a people so abused by the powerful — but deeds of darkness flourish when the world is preoccupied with its own busyness.  Robert Mugabe’s regime will fall, but its end will be hastened by a world which recognizes that people of that country, each of them, have a status which cannot be removed by the corruption of politicians and in the meantime we gave a small amount of our time each day to think of them because they may not matter to your Robert – but they do to us.