13.12.2015
Courage in a Time of Fragility – Archbishop’s Address at Memorial Service for Paris Atrocities
Archbishop Michael Jackson gave the address this afternoon (December 13) at the Ecumenical Service of Remembrance for those who died and suffered in the Paris attacks. The service took place in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Donnybrook, exactly one month to the day since the attacks.
Paris: a Dublin Commemoration, Donnybrook Church, Sunday December 13th 2015
A reflection: courage in a time of fragility
By Michael Jackson, Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin
St Matthew 2.18: A voice was heard in Rama, sobbing in bitter grief; it was Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were no more.
VIOLENCE
Violence shatters; it cannot construct. Violence destroys; it cannot build. Violence taunts the positive to the point of creating a negative that does not, can not, will not listen; and it does so because it obliterates anyone who might speak against it. Its definition of creation, therefore, is destruction. Violence knows no gratitude and violence knows no mercy. And so the paradigm unravels. And so people are deliberately killing and killed. And people die scandalously, wrongly, unnecessarily. And we mourn and grieve them still and shall continue to do so. The state of being that unfolds is what we call a state of numbness, following a tragedy that nobody predicted and nobody could prevent once it began to unfold. And this is what happened on Friday November 13th in Paris – a city of great beauty and vitality, a city of attractiveness and sophistication, a city of complexity and exclusion as well as a city of art and elegance. Paris is Paris and all you need to do is to mention the name – and people across the world know what you mean, where you are talking about. And that is clearly part of the reason why November 13th 2015 happened.
CHANGE
Violence, tragedy and terrorism change lives. And so does war. They change them irreversibly because they destroy lives and they destroy the lives of countless other people by association. The normality of going out for a meal, going to a concert, attending a football match is destabilized, disabled and destroyed. A place of innocent friendship becomes a place of sporadic gunshot, pre–planned bombing and relentless fear. And these events change a culture by changing a number of things all at once. Those of us who have for long taken the Enlightenment culture as a given have both a challenge and a responsibility as never before. The challenge is not to capitulate to the change in the climate of respect by retaliation and by diminishment of the human person – whether it be ourselves or The Other, whether it be close to hand or far away – by a downward slide of disrespect to dehumnanisation. This takes time, it takes patience and it takes a nimble and a generous mind. But it also takes a conscious decision. The responsibility is to keep using the language that is being eroded and hollowed out. And we need to do this because language carries perceptions and perceptions change minds–sets and mind–sets create fantasy as a substitute and as a successor for reality if language is allowed to unravel.
WORDS
It would be very easy, for example, to cease to use the word: radical itself. Radical has come to mean: at war, making war. It brings with it all of the distortions needed to emplace a mind–set of hate. And so, phrases like Radical Islam do violence and insult to a long–established World Religion that is deprived of any comeback because the two words trip off the tongue together; and they have a meaning that is both destructive and unarguable. Radicalization has come to mean the negative and downward spiralling of relationship with others; it results quickly in The Other becoming incompatible with the outworking of the most aggressive expression of myself, properly understood. And here we have it again. If radical means going to the root and growing up from below the ground, then aggressive properly means moving towards someone rather than bearing down on someone in a threatening and destructive way. Carefulness about language and its use is something everyone can do, irrespective of adherence to a Religious Faith or belief system. It has to do with what I call a ‘respect system’.
The word radical need not lead us in the direction of nihilism. We need to continue to speak of radical humanity, of radical Otherness and of radical justice, truth and compassion if we are to have a global society that works organically for all its inhabitants, if we and they who make international policy decisions are to hold together righteousness and justice in our time for the coming time. This asks us to dig more deeply that we have needed to into our humanity for courage in a time of fragility.
ECOLOGY
All of life has an ecology, all of life is an ecology. We have just emerged from a sustained UN Climate Summit held in Paris from November 30th to December 11th. Pope Francis has brought into everyday conversational vocabulary the word desertification. It of itself connects the environment and the mind in ways that we really do not want to hear, if they do not tangibly affect us. It presents us with a wilful aridity as an alternative to abundant living. But what we euphemistically call climate change connects us directly with three ecologies: moral ecology, social ecology, economic ecology. And all of this brings us face to face with the standoff between justice and injustice in our day. The residue of history is an amalgam of justice and injustice and this radical appreciation of history needs to be part of our response to violence and terrorism at some point. This is why we have language, this is why we have a voice, this is why we are able to communicate. This is the urgency of consultation and decision and action. And always the poor get poorer; the women and children and the aged are the first port of call for diminishment and degradation, the first vessels of violence. As was said at the recent National Ecumenical Prayer Service here in Dublin in preparation for The UN Climate Summit: hope and fear cannot occupy the same space – invite one to stay. The context and the climate come together to give us fresh responsibilities and new opportunities for courage in a time of fragility and for the issuing the invitation to hope itself to stay.
IN THE TIME OF ADVENT
In our commemoration, we move from Friday 13th to Sunday 13th. One calendar month later we remember here in Dublin the people of Paris and all who mourn their loss. We do so with a solidarity that is determined to stand for freedom and fairness while standing against superstition and submission. We commemorate all of those who died and all of those who suffer on–going and horrific injuries and loss. We pray for our enemies, as Jesus Christ enjoined us to do. We meet in the Season of Advent with the prospect of Christmas before us, however scanty our engagement with the one and however poor our appetite for the other. One thought that helps me is a comment made to me in a totally different context and ahead of The Paris Tragedy by a friend. It has helped to carry me through this long, long month. It is this: as the darkness gets blacker, so the light gets brighter. This is the mountain we all need to climb, finding the light in the darkness, finding the hope in the fear, finding the life in the death. May God guide us in the blackness with the light of faith as we seek for courage in a time of fragility.
Isaiah 55.1: Come for water, all who are thirsty …
Revelation 22.17: Let the thirsty come; let whoever wishes accept the water of life as a gift …