Waiting on Parliament and on God

I've been following events in Parliament closely this past few days and will do for the rest of this critical week in European politics. I follow just as closely what media reports and the commentariat have to say about it. It's hard to know which group is the more worrying of the two. 

For ages it's seemed to me that MPs are dimly aware or ill informed on all the consequences of decisions they are required to take, often less interested in the common good than in preserving self-interests. Journalists and interviewers often seem poorly briefed, not quite up to date, and utterly devoted to over-simplifying every issue, and enforcing binary options to which an instant response is required from their unfortunate victim. 

I find myself reluctant to trust the majority of public voices, whether elected or employed in the media, to speak the whole truth in the service of all citizens. It's argued that all this disagreement, division and harsh debate about the way forward for the country is what democracy is about. What I see is elite groups struggling for control, not for a unifying consensus, setting a bad example that exacerbates existing social division in the population. It's recipe for civil strife if many on both sides of the brexit debate feel their voices are unheard and don't get what they thought they wanted from the outcome of this agonising process. 

Britain is no longer a society in which Christian moral values and spiritual influence set the tone or give a lead in nurturing a more just and equal society. We have become to a much greater extent a multi-faith and plural culture, tolerant in some respects, but overly lax and permissive in others. The total proportion of people of any faith who practice their religion and apply its teaching is perhaps a quarter of the population. To have a secular environment in which all believers enjoy equal respect and treatment can be beneficial to the common good, but at what price? To have secularism as a dominant ideology fostering individualism, striving to discredit and exclude religious thought and influence from the public debate, poses a grave danger. 

It's all too easy for cultured despisers of religion to dismiss the faith perspective on the grounds of differences in beliefs and the awful conflicts these have generated, and ignore elements of different religious paths on which believers do unite in pursuit of truth justice, equality and goodness. The idea of Christendom is a lost cause, but the spiritual reality of God's kingdom, and human beings as God's children transcends culture and religion. I believe it can and should be worked towards by all people of faith, thinking and working together for the common good, regardless of differences. And to make any fresh impact on the wider world, every household of faith has to set its own house in order, purge itself of deceit, corruption and exploitation. Believers in God have lost so much of their credibility, it's easier said than done to restore it, maybe beyond us humans, but not beyond God. So, it's a matter of watching and waiting on God for the kingdom to break through - yet again.

A bewildering Nabucco

This evening we went to the Millennium Centre for the WNO rendering of Verdi's Nabucco, accompanied by our neighbour Liz, whom we invited to join us, as we had a spare ticket. As ever, orchestra and singing were magnificent, driven by diminutive  conductor Xian Zhang, who was subjected to the indignity of being plucked off her feet in a big bear hug during the final curtain call by lead singer David Kempster. To my mind, his enthusiasm wasn't sufficiently respectful of her prowess as musical leader. He wouldn't have done that if the conductor had been a bloke.

I didn't so much quarrel with the innovative production as spend far too much time trying to figure out what its modernist minimalist setting and symbolism meant to  convey. The positioning of the cast on stage sometimes left me puzzled as to which actors were supposed to be Hebrews and which Assyrians. Would I have been any the wiser if I'd gone to the pre-performance talk

I don't think I was alone going home disappointed. Nevertheless, American singer Mary Elizabeth Williams brought terrific energy and style to the role of Abigaille. She's a diva, she knows it, and enjoys inhabiting her dramatic stage persona just as much as she enjoys singing a musically challenging role. Maybe she understood the producer's intent better than anyone else on stage. We last saw her a couple of years ago in the role of Verdi's Floria Tosca. It was equally as engaging to watch as well as hear.

Unusually, on the way in to the performance, I met four different people I knew from my time as city centre parish priest - two of them were Welsh clerical colleagues. Nabucco has always been a favourite with the home crowd, whether the WNO programmes it as part of a 'Faith' season or not.

When we got home, aware that I had no ministerial duties to require early rising, I stayed up late and watched 'Wallender' on iPlayer. Another moving portrayal of a man stricken while still working flat out at solving evil crimes by the onset of early Alzheimer's disease. It was very moving, sad and thought provoking to watch.

     

Prelude to a night at the opera

After another day housebound by weather and the miserable effects of sinusitis, we ventured out this evening to the Millennium Centre, for supper at Ffresh, the stylish in-house restaurant, where we were greeted by a Welsh speaking Maitre d', and served by a French speaking Quebecois. 

Afterwards we attended a talk given by David Pountney, librettist and opera producer, about composer Arnold Schoenberg's life and his operatic masterpiece 'Moses und Aron'. His special guest was theologian and broadcaster Mona Siddiqui, one of Britain's top islamic theologians and inter faith dialogue specialists. They had done the same double act this morning at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, and seemed glad to have another go at it on home turf. It's one of a series of events under the banner 'One World, Many Faiths', mounted to accompany the summer 'Faith' season of operas, well just two of them actually, the other being Nabucco. We have bookings for both in the coming month.

I didn't know anything about Schoenberg apart from his name being associated with use of the twelve tone musical scale. Despite its length, David Pountney's biography of Schoenberg's life and work was informative and interesting. and Mona Siddiqui's valuable comments and reflections left me wanting to hear more from her. The theme of their conversation was that of identity in relation to religious faith.

Schoenberg was born into a non-practising Jewish family. His search for spiritual meaning led first to conversion to Christianity. Then, well before the rise of Nazism, he encountered and was subject to the social germanic anti-semitism of the era, and reacted against it by reverting to Judaism. His consciousness awakened to the profound evil of racism and the need to campaign actively against it, which he did with prophetic discernment and fervour in the political sphere, finally joining other German exiles in the USA during the time of Nazi supremacy.

As a man of Jewish ethnicity disposessed of its ritual and community life, Schoenberg strived to engage with the religious and spiritual meaning of Jewish scriptural foundation texts, discovered in the context of modern secular liberal values and his pride in German artistic cultural heritage. His opera 'Moses and Aron' centres around the relationship between the Moses the inarticulate man who walked and talked with God, and Aaron his brother and divinely appointed spokesperson to the children of Israel. Its setting is the story of the Exodus from Egypt and sojourn in the wilderness up to the fabrication and destruction of the Golden Calf and death of Aaron.

Schoenberg wrote both libretto and music, but only completed the first two acts. These were performed in concert for the first time just before his death in 1951 and premiered as an opera on stage six years later. His use of the twelve tone scale, in which each musical tone and semitone is equal to the other, was intended as a revolutionary innovation heralding a new era of artistic musical consciousness. It's more than coincidental that in Schoenberg's latter years, Swing was evolving into Bebop taking Jazz in a new and revolutionary direction. Black Jazz musicians, were also struggling with questions of identity post-slavery, in an 'emancipated' society that was nevertheless riddled with racism. 

Schoenberg's engagement with the Torah as an outsider to Jewish religious tradition led to a realisation that the first two Commandments required an uncompromising moral and spiritual austerity hardly congenial to human beings. This may be what having faith in God demands in the wilderness, in times of crisis, but what happens in the promised land? Or is there no promised land, in a world so ridden with injustice and tyranny?

The evening's conversation was a stimulating prelude to a night at the opera still to come, and touched upon many more issues than it pursued. It was the beginning of an interesting dialogue about what it means to come to the sources of faith, if not faith itself, out of a society that has lost touch with its identity and roots in religious culture and spirituality. It's an issue that has resonance for all kinds of believers eager to share their faith. Remarkably, it occurred in a precinct of highest artistic endeavour, rather than in seminary, cathedral, mosque or temple. I'm sure there are historical precedents for this. It was just good to be there.