Patrick Comerford
I am working on completing a package of liturgical resources for priests and readers to use in my diocese when our churches begin to open again for public worship on Sunday 5 July.
In my search for appropriate readings, hymns, prayers and other resources, I am challenged by trying to keep a balance between rejoicing at our church buildings opening again, the sufferings of many families and communities in recent months, and the anxieties people hold for the future.
It is the role of a priest to teach people how to pray. It is an easier task to teach people to bring their needs before God in prayer or to pray giving thanks for the blessings they know they have received in life.
It is a more difficult task to teach people to pray for the needs of others, or to give thanks for the blessings that others receive when there is no obvious benefit or ‘pay-off’ for the person who is praying.
And, indeed, it is much more difficult to pray for our needs, when we know those needs are never going to be met, or to pray in words of thanksgiving when we have nothing, when everything is slipping away, as a victim, as an oppressed person, as someone who has fallen, who is forgotten or who is deemed by others as not worth caring for.
In a similar way, it is easy for white people to assent to the demands of black protesters when we share emotional and righteous anger at the wilful killing of a man on the streets or the racist response of President Trump to protesters, especially when he abuses the Bible and a church building for a blasphemous photo-opportunity.
It is more difficult for white people to understand the underlying rage that finds expression in daubing or tumbling monuments and statues on city streets. But as long as we decide how and when to measure out our sympathy and support, then we keep deciding that white people ought to be in control.
We have all heard jokes about Victorian charities for the ‘deserving poor,’ as though poverty still allowed society to discriminate. It is not good enough for white people to say ‘Black Lives Matter’ but qualify this by saying things such as ‘… as long as they protest in ways that are acceptable to me’ or ‘… and of course, all lives matter.’
Institutionalised and systemic racism will not be eradicated until all white people accept that the answer cannot be found in waiting while white people are allowed to negotiate the terms on which it is eradicated.
Once again, in my prayers this morning, as I was using the Jewish prayer book Service of the Heart, edited by Rabbi John D Rayner and Rabbi Chaim Stern, I found myself turning once again to the section on the theme of justice, and reading a poem by William Blake (1757-1827) that touches on many of these problems.
In this poem, which i have used many times before, William Blake writes about ease in prayer that often comes with everyday indifference to the poor in Vala or The Four Zoas, ‘Night the Seventh,’ ll. 111-29:
It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer’s sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
To listen to the hungry raven’s cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill’d with wine and with the marrow of lambs.
It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies’ house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children,
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.
Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill,
And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field
When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead.
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: ‘but it is not so with me.’
‘Compel the poor to live upon a crust of bread, by soft mild arts.
Smile when they frown, frown when they smile; and when a man looks pale
With labour and abstinence, say he looks healthy and happy;
And when his children sicken, let them die; there are enough
Born, even too many, and our earth will be overrun
Without these arts. If you would make the poor live with temper,
With pomp give every crust of bread you give; with gracious cunning
Magnify small gifts; reduce the man to want a gift, and then give with pomp.
Say he smiles if you hear him sigh. If pale, say he is ruddy.
Preach temperance: say he is overgorg’d and drowns his wit
In strong drink, though you know that bread and water are all
He can afford. Flatter his wife, pity his children, till we can
Reduce all to our will, as spaniels are taught with art.’
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