Thought for the Day

Good Morning,
‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people:’ these beautiful words from Isaiah open the Seven Weeks of Consolation which begin now, and lead up to the Jewish New Year.
Yet only days ago was the bleakest date in the Jewish calendar, the Fast of the Ninth of Av, marking the destruction of Jerusalem.
The embers of the fires that devoured God’s temple were still red hot in memory; the surrounding hills, once forested, were devastated. Yet the rabbis insisted on proclaiming Isaiah’s words of comfort. How dared they? How could they be so brazen!
Would we say, “Take comfort!” while the flames near Madrid and Bordeaux are burning, bringing horror to the people, fire-fighters, animals?
But the prophetic message was not: ‘Don’t worry. It’ll all be okay.’
Rather, it is ‘We must look on disaster, then take hope, not by turning away, but by living differently. ‘Prepare a highway for God,’ Isaiah continues: ‘Make the world better,’ he demands.
I thought of his words as I cut turfs to help Tracy and Roger Mclachlan rewild their 91 acres at Bac Dhub in the Highlands. We were building leaky dams to raise the water level of a stream so that it would rewet and restore the peatland. In short, we were doing what beavers do naturally. ‘The peat will regrow one millimetre per year,’ Tracy explained. ‘But it’ll absorb more carbon than trees.’ It’s her pledge to the future.
I compare that one millimetre per year to the forest fires raging forward and shudder. Where’s your comfort, Isaiah?
But I know that countless local groups worldwide are saying: ‘This is our place, our park, trees, birds. We’re determined to do everything we can for our world, our children, our future.’
I speak to Simon Oldridge, Co-founder of the National Emergency Briefing UK, in which the country’s leading experts on security, health, food and weather tell the climate crisis as it is. The film of the briefing has already been screened to over 2,000 groups.
‘People feel better when they’ve seen it,’ Simon explains. They say, ‘The issues aren’t being boxed away. There are things we can do. People feel motivated.’
Action from the bottom up is great, Simon acknowledges. ‘But we need urgent, galvanising leadership from top down,’ because this is about everything: energy, agriculture, how we eat, travel, insulate homes.
That’s Isaiah’s message. ‘Look up and see!’ he insists. This is God’s world. Take comfort, not by turning away, but by treating creation with the love, justice and respect it demands.

28 JULY 26

27 JULY 26

25 JULY 26

The stunningly beautiful goddess Calypso offers Odysseus something that you might think no human being could ever refuse: never to age and never to die. Stay with me on this Island and you will achieve immortality. And yet refuse it he does.
I am really excited to see the new Christopher Nolan film version of The Odyssey. Last summer holidays I read it to my boys whilst we were holidaying on the next island along from Ithica. And there are so many fascinating philosophical and theological issues it raised: not least, what are we to make of Odysseus’ preference for risk and death over immortality and agelessness. Earlier this year the American tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson launched his Immortals programme; at a cost to the individual of a million dollars a year, it offers a promise held out in its strap line “don’t die”.
In a fascinating essay on why Odysseus is right to refuse this, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that there are some things that the immortal Gods are not able to do that human beings are: not least amongst them is to show courage. If you can’t risk anything because you cannot die, then how can you possibly be courageous? What sort of life would the hero Odysseus have if he stayed with Calypso on her deathless realm, and gave up any need for his famous craft and resourcefulness? And what would love itself mean if you could never put anything on the line for others? That’s why we cheer Odysseus on as he decides to refuse Calyspso her seemingly unrefusable offer.
Despite being a convert from Christianity to Judaism, Nussbaum intriguingly suggests that there is something about this giving up of immortality that explains one of the key features of Christian theology: of God becoming human, of a God who is prepared to suffer and die in the name of love. What is attractive about both Odysseus and Jesus is that they are both prepared to have skin in the game, which is pretty much the very definition of incarnation.
Personally, I don’t buy the idea that that science could one day make us immortal. But, and here’s the point, even if it were true, I think we should refuse it. Indeed, I don’t think we often fully grasp what immortality of this sort would mean. Because to live beyond the realm of suffering and death is to live in a way that is no longer human – without the possibility of heroism, without the possibility of risking all for love. Why is it, for instance, that so often in Greek mythology, perfect Gods fall in love with imperfect human beings rather than their own kind? Because fragile humanity can exhibit exciting virtues, risky love-soaked courage in the way that the gods just cannot.
Of course we don’t want those we love to be taken from us. Yet also, death is what makes life valuable and precious. In the words of the late Queen Elizabeth II, “grief is the price we pay for love”. What Odysseus discovers on Calypso’s Island, is that without death, life will be drained of its meaning.