99 – Tree of Life and Death

Author: Dinah Livingstone. Published March 2011 in issue 99 of Sofia.

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Contents

Articles
Reviews
Poetry
Regulars and Occasionals

Editorial

Sofia 99 March/April 2011 First, I must apologise if you were expecting your magazine at the beginning of March. It has come to you a bit later because I have been abroad.

However, the March Sofia usually has an Easter theme and this is also true for this issue: Tree of Life and Death. A publication date at about the time of the Spring Equinox seems more appropriate and in future the first Sofia of the year will be an Easter March/April issue and published on March 21st or thereabouts. The other three magazines for the year will continue to be published on the 1st of the month: the Summer Sofia in June, the September issue, and the Christmas Sofia in December.

For our title Tree of Life and Death Anthony Freeman has contributed his two-part Eden Project.

In Part 1 he reflects on the origin of moral consciousness, starting from the story of the ‘fatal tree’ in the Garden of Eden. In Part 2 he looks at how the Passion Narrative in St John’s Gospel picks up and ‘reverses’ the theme of the tree in the Garden of Eden. The tree of the Cross undoes the harm done by eating the fruit from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, so that the ‘Tree of Death’ becomes a ‘Tree of Life’. In the words of the ancient Easter hymn:

Mors et Vita duello conflixere mirando Death and Life in strange strife.

Easter is the struggle of life against death. The Garden of Eden story of our ancestors eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil can be seen as a story about the achievement of moral consciousness, which surely, is not a ‘sin’ but an evolutionary advance.

However, the arrival of moral consciousness means humanity becomes an animal that can be not only kind but unkind. We have a choice.

In our history we see the colossal cruelty human beings, including religious people, have constantly inflicted upon one another, especially the rich and powerful upon the weak. (Fascinatingly, Freeman speculates that ‘the evolutionary Original Sin was b bullying’ and up to this day we have seen plenty of that by religious people, as well as others). Throughout our history we have also seen heroic struggles of resistance to bullying and countless examples of great kindness and nobility.

That is the struggle of life against death, the struggle for humanity. Jesus was unjustly killed by the powerful of his day. We do not have to believe – how can we? – that his corpse was resuscitated. The story of his resurrection is a crucial (in every sense) ‘poetic tale’, which we can believe whole-heartedly with poetic faith. It proclaims that in the struggle of life against death, life is stronger than death, love is stronger than death. Even though as individuals we all die, the struggle for humanity, for kindness, matters supremely, whatever the cost. What kind of animal are we? We are a poetic kind of animal who can be kind or unkind. To choose human kindness (which includes poetry) is our salvation.

Of course there are other ways in which trees are our salvation (we and our planet cannot survive without them). Of the huge amount of possible material about trees, we can, of course, only present a tiny selection here, with we hope, a few surprises. There is a ‘magical’ tree in the traditional ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, who meets a supernatural being, the Queen of Elfland, by the rowan tree. She carries him off by the road which is neither the road to Heaven nor to Hell, but to Elfland. There he must keep silence for seven years until she finally releases him, giving him the gift that he can never lie. That is the story of the Tree of Life and Death editorial Acknowledgment The frontcover photograph for Sofia 96, June 2010, is ‘Crossroads’ by Martin Liebermann. It can be found at: flickr.com/photos/liebermann/580181284 where some of his other fine photographs can also be seen.

Sofia 99 March/April 2011 4 SOF Annual Conference Brain, Belief and Behaviour Leicester University 22nd – 24th July 2011 This year we approach religion as a human creation from the perspectives of neuroscience, practical theology and behavioural psychology. Our principal speakers will be: x Colin Blakemore x Gwen Griffith-Dixon x Alan Allport For more details and booking forms see insert fliers or contact:

Sea of Faith Conference ‘Tanahlot’ Main Road Brighstone Newport, Isle of Wight PO30 4AJ 01983 740172 sofconf11@yahoo.co.uk emergence of a poet (in contrast to Plato’s exclusion of poets from the Republic because they were liars).

Thinking it over, I saw there were parallels with poet Anne Ashworth’s brave, hard struggle for honesty, which she continues to relate in Part 2 of her Spiritual Journal printed here. We also have my favourite poem by Dorset dialect poet-parson William Barnes: ‘Trees Be Company.’ Poet, rock climber and botanist Libby Houston tells how she discovered three new tree species (of the sorbus genus to which the rowan tree belongs), while clambering about on Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. Her account is immensely cheering in a world where we constantly hear of species being threatened and becoming extinct. Long-term SOF trustee, cabinet-maker Oliver Essame, describes an intimate lifetime relationship with wood. And Cicely Herbert writes about the British Library great exhibition on the English language, which can also be compared to an enormous tree.

This edition of Sofia has a large crop of letters, reviews and regular items such as the SOF Sift column from a former Vice Chair of Catholics for a Changing Church, Christine Hacklett, and Radio Rockall with a report of an ugly little story of censorship.

Finally, please note the advertisement on the right hand side of this page for the SOF Annual Conference in July. It will take place in Leicester, as usual, and has a strong line-up of speakers on the subject of Brain, Belief and Behaviour. With the magazine you will receive an insert flier telling you more about the Conference and containing an application form. That is to encourage you to come, and to sign up as soon as you can to give cheer to the organisers.

I hope you will enjoy the magazine, approve the little springward shift of the publication date, closer to Easter, and find that it has been worth waiting for.

P.S. Thomas the Rhymer is said to have been one of your Editor’s ancestors. One family member claims to have his sword, which is almost certainly a fake!

Sofia 99 March/April 2011 18 Brilliant Cartoon I was amazed (and delighted) to read your comments on government policy (to which I say ‘Amen’) and the cartoon (which is brilliant). But I wonder what any Con. or conned Labs readers may think. So be it.

A few other points which may interest you:

The TV show. My immediate reaction was to be appalled by the kind of slanging match which went on, and I wrote such a note on the website. But watching the programme again since then I have realised that they did give you a reasonable opportunity to talk – but I still felt what followed was hardly a reasonable discussion. So my report on the chairman remains in effect: ‘Could do much better’.

The first answer to the whole question should surely be a Joan-like ‘It all depends on how you define the word “Christian”.’ If it means accepting Jesus as a role model (as my dictionary suggests) the answer is Yes. If it means necessarily including the whole doctrinal Greek-like structure which ‘the scoundrel Christ’ added to the ‘good man Jesus’ (à la Pullman) and foisted on the Church by a pagan Roman emperor because it suited his purposes, – the answer is ‘No’. As simple as that.

I gave a copy of Sofia to my daughter. She was surprised and interested to learn my current view. She and other folk also watched the TV and were very interested in the SOF view, as was an intelligent grandson. Previously they have all been fervent nonbelievers. Maybe that tide will ebb !

I also showed Sofia to a carer here (we live in a group of bungalows covered by a care system). She was amazed. Said I have a reputation here of being a ‘very religious person’ – probably the result of my wife once telling a carer I used to be a Methodist minister, but not saying that stopped 60 years ago). At a Xmas ‘do’ someone sitting near us asked ‘Do you mind if I sip a little wine? I know Methodists object’. It’s a funny old world.

And I hope you didn’t mind my sending the cartoon to David Cameron, and Ann Black of the Labour I.E. I should have asked you.

David Hatton Althorne, Essex david.hatton19@btinternet.com Thank God! ‘I give Thanks to God, in whom I do not believe.’ What a wonderful prayer! Thank you, David Hatton.

— David Hatton, Althorne, Essex

Please will you print the whole of Louis de Bernière’s poem? If that is not possible, more details so that it can be tracked down. It would be lovely to read it out at our local SOF group. Looking forward to the London Conference. Thank you for all that you do.

Julia Nicoll Hemel Hempstead This poem was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2010 but is no longer up on their website. We can’t print it whole in Sofia for copyright reasons but I found the full text on uk.answers.yahoo.com. If you can’t get it I will post it to you. – Ed.

— Julia Nicoll, Hemel Hempstead

What about Joseph?

I was disappointed to see the front cover of the December 2010 issue. In the foreground is a picture of Mary holding the child Jesus and, in the background the shadowy figure of Joseph. If we believe that Jesus was a human being, then he had two parents, equally responsible for his creation. In the Old Testament the creation story in the book of Genesis tells us that, having created various animals, God chose to create human animals in his own image and likeness. The story tells us that God created them, male and female.

From these, God’s creation, presumably all the earth, was populated.

The New Testament tells us of a new creation, raising human animals to a spiritual dimension, and thus fulfilling the potential foreseen at the original human creation. As in the first story God chose a woman and a man to begin his new creation. Mary was a young woman who had only one precious gift – her virginity. Until fairly recently women who were found to be pregnant before marriage were deemed ‘soiled goods’ , and even today in many cultures are disgraced and rejected by their families. In this story, Mary is asked to renounce the only power she, as a woman, possesses, and this she freely and willingly does.

Having done so, she is taking a great risk, as she does not know what the future may hold for her, even death. This doesn’t happen because we are told Joseph was a ‘ just man’ , but instead he considers ‘putting her away quietly’. However he too responds to God’ s challenge, to forego his power as a man to choose a Sofia welcomes comment and debate.

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Sofia Editor: Dinah Livingstone, 10 St Martin’s Close London NW1 0HR editor@sofn.org.uk letters Sofia 99 March/April 2011 virgin to be the mother of his child. Even today not many men would happily accept such a situation, and in an earlier age they would, presumably, risk being despised and ridiculed as weak. But this, like Mary, Joseph freely and willingly does.

It is from these two ‘weak and powerless’ people, Mary and Joseph, that the Christ-child is born. Thus, God becomes incarnate in human flesh, and a new era for humanity begins. Christianity needs to identify, in its theology, liturgy, and biblical exposition, both the masculine and feminine in its imagery of God. And both women and men relinquish their power to dominate, and co-operate together, for Christ to be born in this generation, and the Kingdom, for which Christ prayed, to begin to appear on earth. But power comes in many guises and is incredibly hard to relinquish, and this is seen just as often in religious as in secular society!

Valerie Langdon Fareham, Hants.

— Valerie Langdon, Fareham, Hants

Imaginary Number I’m grateful to Eric Whittaker (Sofia 98) for his exposition of how slippery, and perhaps arbitrary, the words ‘exist’ and ‘existence’ can be, not only when we apply them to God, but also in apparently straightforward contexts such as maths and physics. He has pointed out that because the imaginary number i – which was indisputably invented by humans – works so effectively, it would make no sense to deny that it exists. I think his point may be taken further. As with i, I suggest, so too with all the ‘real’ numbers.

Although I understand some mathematicians would disagree, I believe that before any humans started to think numbers, no numbers existed. The same is true of – among other things – music, and language.

Lloyd Geering, in a keynote address to the New Zealand Sea of Faith conference in 2008, put all of this into what has been for me a very enlightening context, borrowing an idea from the philosopher Karl Popper.

Popper ‘suggested that to understand “all that is” in a way that does justice to human existence and to human knowledge, we should think of three worlds...

The first is the physical world, which now consists of the vast space-time universe... But in the course of time... through the collective creativity of the human species [our planet Earth] began to bring forth a nonphysical, non-spatial reality – the world of consciousness. [Then] conscious human reflection on these experiences, in collective conjunction with one another, created a third world. This also is nonphysical and non-spatial. It contains language, the names of things, ideas, stories, religious beliefs and rituals, arts... The idea of God belongs to this world.’ One thing that follows from what Lloyd said is that the words ‘is’, ‘exist’ and ‘existence’ have somewhat different meanings – or at least the criteria we must use in deciding whether something ‘exists’ or not will be somewhat different – according to whether we are speaking of what Popper has called World I, World II and World III. Things in World II and World III are all ‘non-physical and non-spatial’ but they truly exist.

For me, this has moved my understanding beyond the discussion of ‘realism’ and ‘non-realism’ of a few years ago, which I never found very helpful. I am once again comfortably affirming that God does ‘exist’ – because I now locate God neither in heaven nor on earth, but in ‘World III’ – the world created by human culture.

— Donald Feist, Dunedin, New Zealand

Donald Feist, Dunedin, New Zealand, feist@clear.net.nz The writer points out that the whole of Geering’s address is up on the New Zealand SOF website: http://sof.org.nz * Eric Whittaker clearly struggled in his attempt to square a belief in God with the reality or otherwise of mathematical symbols, and in so doing left me unconvinced. (Sofia 98) Yes, mathematicians refer to common finite numbers as real, but I guess this in order to distinguish them from others which they name as irrational or imaginary. They may also take this position due to over-familiarity – in much the same as believers in a real God. If we take as ‘real’ the notion that physical objects are there when we are not perceiving them as well as when we are, then numbers can only ever be (as you put it) a construct of the human mind. They certainly have no physical reality; five cows exist to be sure, but like all others the figure five is an abstraction, a symbol we have created to number a given quantity of matter or objects.

As an electrical engineer I have also found the imaginary number i to be useful, but in order to avoid confusion with the symbol for electric current, engineers refer to it as j. Nevertheless, the fact that something is useful does not make it real. Eric believes in God because it enables him to discuss how the world works, from which I assume he sees God as both the author and sustainer of all things. For him it was a short step from ‘real’ numbers to a ‘real’ God, whereas my ‘non-real’ numbers could be likened to the non-real humanly created God we in SOF talk about.

Belief in a real God may ‘work’ for many people, but philosophically it is not good enough. One has only to ask the question ‘who made God?’ to realise that there is no end to the search for the origin of all things in this fashion. I hold that energy is real because it is the essence of everything physical; without it there would be nothing. It follows that the only possible candidate for the post of creator is energy, but even then one cannot escape from once more asking the question where it came from. Surely the only honest answer to all this is we do not know and moreover, never will.

— John Gamlin