Putting the Cowpat into Context

I got told off last week. Well, maybe not so much told off as told to explain myself.

I had been accused of calling someone, maybe more than one person, a cowpat. Did I? Actually, yes I did but the context is important. It wasn’t a word I had conjured out of thin air on the spur of the moment and the insult wasn’t personal.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.” But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you (Matthew 5:38-42)

I was discussing the whole slapping thing with a group of young people. There is a perception out there in the world that the slapping thing is about not retaliating and not standing up for yourself. You are not allowed to hit back but you “take one on the chin for Jesus”. That is not what it is.

A slap in Jewish culture at the time of Jesus had a very specific meaning. It was a deep insult. It wasn’t about physical violence. It wasn’t a challenge like throwing down a gauntlet. A slap was deeply insulting. It was about showing contempt. How you slapped mattered. Using the palm of your hand was a slap delivered to an equal. Using the back of your hand was delivered to someone you considered to be inferior – the person equivalent of a cowpat.

With a back handed slap to the right cheek, not only are you insulting someone, you are also telling the world you think they are inferior – a master to a slave, a husband to a wife, a parent to a child.

OK, so we pretended to slap each other’s right cheeks with back handers and just in case we didn’t know we were being insulted we called each other “cowpat” and laughed a lot. It’s quite possible that some weren’t laughing. They stopped at the cowpat and didn’t move on. The next bit of Jesus’ teaching didn’t sink in.

Jesus went on to say “turn to them the other cheek also”.  He didn’t say you just “walk away”. When you turn the other cheek you are inviting a second slap. However the person who is slapping is dealing with a left cheek, not a right cheek. It’s almost impossible to backhand someone’s left cheek with the right hand. The person slapping, if they want to continue slapping, has to use an open palm – a slap between equals. What you are saying, by offering the left cheek is “You might consider yourself superior to me, but I don’t accept that. I refuse to live your way.” It doesn’t really matter what someone else thinks of us – we are not going to define ourselves in their terms. We are not going to return the insult either or involve ourselves in a tit for tat scuffle.

So much of Jesus’ teaching, whether it comes in thirty second sound bites or in fully blown stories or parables, come with a context. We don’t always know the context. We interpret the teaching in the light of our own culture and experience and miss what Jesus rally meant.

We don’t often get insulted with a slap to the right cheek. Our insults come in other ways. I was watching “Room 101” a week or two ago. Celebrities were asked to identify things that they didn’t think people should do, explain why and then, if they have convinced the panel host their irritation was shovelled into the bin – the metaphorical bin.

It wasn’t a celebrity that I could put a name to. He was complaining about aggressive atheists. These people are not content to live and let live. They insist that the believer is always wrong and see it as their duty to drag the believer into a reasonable and a scientific world. There are not gentle people. They don’t always use reason, or intelligent debate but often throw insults around like “stupid” and “moron”. He didn’t like that aggressiveness. The panel host agreed and the aggressive atheists were disposed of.

We don’t seem to have worked out how to respond to the insults that come our way. I think we go on the defensive or we whinge a lot about the unfairness of it all. We tell ourselves that we are being targeted – and we are. We mutter and we grumble.

If this is the promised persecution then we should be rejoicing. We should be claiming all the resources God gives to respond with kindness - part of which is not allowing them, the aggressive atheists, to continue their mockery and the ridicule.

I lift up my eyes to you,

to you who sit enthroned in heaven.

As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,

till he shows us his mercy.

Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,

for we have endured no end of contempt.

We have endured no end

of ridicule from the arrogant,

of contempt from the proud.

(Psalm 123)

The Psalmist shows us how – powerful lives lived with open eyes fixed on God and with His mercy poured upon us and through us.

Slowing Down

What was I doing at 4.00 am yesterday? Go on, take a guess. Asleep perhaps? Actually, no. I was sitting outside on the garden bench listening to the dawn chorus.

Where did I intend to be at 4.00 am yesterday? Go on, take another guess. Asleep for sure. Actually no. I intended to be down by the Caledonian Canal with a bunch of other people, listening to the dawn chorus with an expert telling me which birds were singing. Apparently it’s not an every-bird-at-once-top-of-your-voice celebration of a new day. There’s an order. The blackbirds tend to be first up and then some other bird’s next and then another one and so on until eventually every bird is singing. I wanted to be there with the experts but driving with eyes half open and body half dozing didn’t seem a safe option.

“They’re claiming ground, Mel,” said God. “Why don’t you claim some ground too?” I don’t sing at 4.00. I snore perhaps. I wasn’t about to wake up the neighbours with a loud, off tune warble but I did pray. I don’t claim that my prayers shook the gates of hell. Eyes half open, body half dozing – it didn’t match up to that generation of powerful men of prayer who also prayed at 4.00 am.

The Dawn Chorus thing at the canal was one of the opening events for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland. They had pancakes afterwards.

What was I doing at 6.00 pm today? Go on take a guess. Watching TV? Tackling the ironing pile? Actually, no. I was down at the Bike Shed in Grant Street at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. They were hosting an art exhibition on the theme of New Beginnings. The people who produced the art were mostly beginners, and mostly
using art to express feelings and emotions.

There were one or two people that I knew. Creativity in Care have been involved in the project and it was good to catch up with folk. I also bumped into a writer friend whose opening conversation starter was “Have you done your homework?” Eh? The homework might refer to homework given at a Thursday creative writing class which I sometimes go to.

There was coffee to drink, pictures to look at and people to talk to. I did all three but not in equal measure. I brought my empty paper cup home seeing as it’s the first time anyone has written my name on a paper cup before. I’ve seen it in adverts but never thought cafes did it for real. The pictures? You know, I have one picture that would have fitted in. One wall was dedicated to people’s Picasso portraits. Maybe I ought to frame mine I did years ago. There were other paintings too. Some real things like lions and tigers (and bears), and some landscapes, and some other stuff and I really don’t get.

Having done the socialising, we were invited to listen to a few speeches. Nothing long. Just information really about what different groups did about mental health. As ever, the hearing aids were left on the sideboard at home so the head was tilted slightly to favour the good ear.

A man was invited to give a longer talk about mental health. He was fiddling with something the whole time as he read his speech. There wasn’t much in the way of eye contact.

He was talking about the need to slow down our lives. The stress that we deal with is often as result of the hectic pace of living.  We are like those pinball machines – like the bouncing around, pinging this or that, lights flashing, sirens going off, levers pulled and snapping and everything frantic. We need to slow down.

His first suggestion was learning how to juggle. It’s apparently a Samurai thing, the hand and eye co-ordination and concentration. I once tried to learn to juggle with a trio of apples. The apples got bruised but there was a wonderful apple fragrance in the room afterwards.

His second suggestion was fishing. It’s not a Samurai thing this time and has more to do with quietness and peace and watching the water for evidence fish presence than anything. This I have done twice. The second time I caught a fish – it was a baby fishing pool, so crammed with fish for beginner fisher-people, and sweetcorn on the hook rather than anything exotic, that you would have to be very unlucky not to catch anything.

His final suggestion, and what he had been fiddling with the whole time, was making flies for fishing. Somewhere in this house there is a box – a red plastic box divided into little compartments. It contains flies for fishing – hooks, feathers, wires and stuff. The speaker made a fly by twisting fine wire, snipping here and there and adding strands of colour. It was pernickety stuff and not something you could do while watching an episode of Coronation Street. A friend of mine is learning the skill of paper folding. Not origami. Flower and stuff. It is mind-focussing. She also knits jumpers with complicated cable patterns. I write poetry.

It’s not that the problems go away, the man said. It’s just after this time out spent juggling balls, or fly fishing, or making flies for fishing – or paper folding, or complex cable knitting, or writing the poem – afterwards you come back to something fresh. What you couldn’t seem to do before you did the juggling, you can now seem to do much more easily.

The slowing down – if only the world would let us slow down! The world doesn’t have time for the time-wasters.  It’s all about setting and meeting targets and filling every second of every minute with activity.

Jesus went fishing. Perhaps he knew how to juggle. Mostly he just left the crowd behind, climbed a mountain and spent time with His Father.

We need to learn some slowing down strategies. For the sake of body, soul and spirit we need to learn some and put them into practice.

Prayer – 4.00 am with the dawn chorus playing at full volume? Maybe not.

The Man with His Hands in His Pockets

Praise the Lord, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.

For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.

(Psalm 117)

It was not just my reading for yesterday morning, it was also my doing. I dug out a songbook from a Christian holiday from years back, flicked back to familiar songs and belted out a few numbers flinging my arms in all direction.

This time last week, not this time exactly but a little later in the morning, I went to a worship meeting. My own church family is part of a home church network. We have our main meeting on a Thursday evening. I am a Sunday church lass at my core. I love the Thursday evenings, but I miss Sundays.

The church is a newbie. I often wonder why churches plant new churches in places where there are already similar kinds of churches there already. It feels a little bit like church empire building rather than kingdom building, as if no other church can measure up to their own particular brand or label.

Let’s talk about the man with his hands in his pocket, shall we? It seems my nit-picking gene had placed itself just under my skin. There was a man in the row of seats opposite with his hands in his pockets throughout the time of worship. He might even have been chewing gum. Is this the way anyone approaches a monarch, earthly or not? Hands in pockets? Chewing gum? I thought not!

Many years ago my church then was the Plymouth Brethren. Yes, perhaps the opposite extreme to the charismatic churches I inhabit now. Hands in pockets and chewing gum would not have got you through the door. I think I miss the whole Sunday best dressing up for church. When I first began going to a charismatic type meeting, I continued to wear my Sunday best, and my hat for a while. Some woman took me aside and said that “we don’t do that anymore”. Apparently my dress and my hat were identified as bondage to an old tradition and needed to be cast off. I was desperate to fit in and wore jeans the next meeting.  I was not comfortable with the move. Yes, God loves us the way the way we are, but have the things swung too far in the other direction? Does casual attire also mean a casual approach in worship?

Back to the man with the hands in his pockets, and chewing gum. He was there. Singing, yes – but with his hands in his pockets and chewing gum. My eyes kept straying towards him. I was trying not to get hung up on it – but I was hung up on it. I didn’t know the man. I couldn’t see the state of his heart but presumed him to be less “holy” than me. Ouch! I soothed myself with bland thoughts like “He is in church. He’s not mowing his lawn or washing his car or watching TV” or any of the other things people who don’t go to church do instead.

Imagine a whack across the head! I was born into a Roman Catholic household and whacks across the head were common events then to bring the diverted mind back to a focus on God. Then it was a mother whacking me across the head. This time it was God himself doing the whacking – albeit more gently than my mum.

“I can see he has his hands in his pockets,” said God. “What I can also see is just because you don’t have your hands in your pockets on the outside, it doesn’t mean to say that on the inside those hands aren’t in the pockets.”

My mum often commented on how her outside was not always a reflection of the inside. Just because she was smiling on the outside, it didn’t mean that on the inside she wasn’t weeping. What happens on my outside doesn’t always reflect what is happening on the inside either.

I could give you a list of why I was not really engaged in worship – one of which was the spelling error in one of the slides. My nit-picking gene was in overdrive.

I read Psalm 117 became a living word that sliced through to bone and marrow. If I wasn’t totally engaged in praising God then perhaps I would be better spending that hour or two on a Sunday mowing my lawn or washing my car. If God is not my focus, if the man with his hands in his pockets is my focus – than I have missed it.

This morning I shall tread carefully. I shall remember who it is I came to meet with.  My hands will not be in my pocket, inside or outside because they will be lifted to His throne. His great love toward me, His enduring faithfulness will be my celebration.

.

Columba

Colm Cille. "church dove" is my name

but I am no peaceful dove and

I leave Ireland trailing bloody footprints

clutching a book of peace I stained with war

my penance fractures the heart in me

this journey north across the sea in

a coracle crib of hazel and willow frame and

stretched leather, births me again

not mothered to sea or sail we fight the currents

to reach Rathlin. Stars shine down. Then

a hot day to Islay. Blistered hands. Sun-baked head

eyes drawn backward to the home that spurns me

wind tossed we spiral through whirlpools of Corryvreckan

sea and islands, wind and waves

I feel the untamed power of the Almighty and

know myself impotent in His palm

a foreign landscape smudges the horizon

a different language waits on my tongue

The weight of three thousand dead presses on my soul

His power to transform fills me

His purpose shouts with every roll of thunder, is

written in the chasing clouds, in strands of grey

new birthed by the coracle, baptised by the sea

I am, at last, His Colm Cille, His peace herald dove

Here, in Iona, I make a new home

Four and a Half Days

I forgot to take my heart pressure tablets yesterday. I needed them!

The article in the “I” was about a school in Northampton proposing a four and a half day week. Yes, Friday afternoon off. The headmaster said it was all about time for teachers to collaborate and improve the curriculum.

The Secondary schools in my city adopted the four and a half day week this session. Some schools had been doing it already. The Friday afternoon was about cost cutting I think. The council could  make a saving by switching off lights and heating a few hours earlier. It wasn’t something teachers opted for, although clawing back that Friday afternoon might now be a challenge.

The hours we teach haven’t changed. The pupils get what they are supposed to get. We start a little earlier in the day and finish a little later. They’ve pinched a little of the lunch hour too. It is a rushed four and a half day.

The argument against was presented by one woman not happy with the idea of finding money for childcare. One man did the maths and insisted that 9.5% of his children’s education would be cut. He went on to say that it was all about teachers needing more chill time. He pointed out the already long holidays and ended up with the challenge – “They should work in the real world and then they’ll realise how lucky they are.

Is that not a man that knows no teachers? Is that not a man that has no idea what happens in the classroom? Is that not a man that really doesn’t know about the average 60 hours a week teachers do to keep their heads above water? Is that not a man that has to take a holiday in school holiday time when every travel agent on and off line increases prices significantly?

Let’s start by saying that I have worked in the “real” world. It wasn’t all that it was hailed to be. I admit it was an office job, filing paper and occasionally updating how-to manuals. I loved the politeness of it all – people saying “Thank you” and opening a door for me. That’s not something teachers get a lot of. It was also me and my own desk and any encounter with another human being was entirely voluntary. That’s not something teachers get a lot of either. It was, on this one occasion, mind-numbingly predictable and not the least bit challenging. I’d been in teaching before then for a few years, worked abroad, come home to changes in the way schools operated, had a body clock that insisted it was time to get married. I took a break and office temped for a while.

It might have been someone’s real world but it wasn’t mine. Put me in front of a classroom of pupils, something to teach then – I quite like the Martin Luther King unit some of them are doing at the moment, and I thrive. I shine. I perform. I inspire. I laugh sometimes. I cry sometimes. I argue. I challenge. I mark stuff. I shift known a trusted Microsoft power points into the google drive and spend hours after school trying to make the links work!

That’s what I do. That’s not what “my clients” do. They play with their mobile phones on their laps and snarl at me when I tell them to put it away. They write down a single word, maybe two or three, if pushed, to answer a question that needs a paragraph. They flaunt the uniform rules and wiggle gem encrusted bellies and crop tops at me. They complain about the heat, open windows, close windows, open windows, close windows. They borrow pencils and don’t return them and get declare “Well, I just won’t do any work then, will I?” when you tell them there’s no more pencils left to borrow – not that having a pencil in the first place meant they would to any work. They watch the clock and they sigh.

And why are they so rude? Because the man who did the maths and worked out that his child might be losing 9.5% if his family’s education doesn’t talk about teachers with any respect in the home.

I say to that man – you couldn’t do my job that’s why you pay me to do it.

BY all means step into my world and be me for a day or two.

You are right of course – I am lucky. Who would not want to be there when the penny drops and the child knows something they didn’t know a moment before and you made it happen?