A Tragedy For Us All |
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Elaine Kennedy is a member of the T.HO.M.A.S. team. The extent of mass grief shown lately for two little girls, cruelly murdered in Soham, seems to have surprised and perplexed many of us, judging by the number of debates this global manifestation of emotion has aroused. Someone on the radio asked: ‘why more public outpouring for two little girls than after World War II?’ Psychologists have put forward many different points of view: many social and cultural changes are affecting the way we behave and interact. But what about a deeply-seated, fundamental factor which affects each and every human being: our spirituality? We may be affected, as people, by shifting populations; by globalisation; by the internet etc; but we are, many of us, at the moment in a state of spiritual up-rooted-ness, aridity and totally lacking in regular, balanced ways of manifesting our spiritual needs. Every time I watched or read about the Soham tragedy, and the unravelling of its effect on the public, I was reminded of my favourite short Breton Fisherman’s prayer: ‘Oh help me, Lord; your sea is so big and my boat is so small!’ In the past we had organised religion and whereas it had all sorts of defects and left much to be desired, nevertheless it was a means of collectively acknowledging that we don’t know everything. We are limited as humans and we have a deeply-rooted need to show solidarity in our limitedness. We had regular meeting places in which to share our non-understandings; our anxieties; our horror stories; also our every-day, banal problems. People during World War II who prayed together endured together. There was a spiritual accepting in the non-understanding because the horror was spread over a community who knew how to connect with each other all the time. And there were many of these constantly inter-supporting communities. But now, fields of flower bouquets and candle vigils have become our occasional, but highly necessary spiritual meeting places. Princess Diana’s death; the Hillsborough disaster; the murder of two children; these are moments where we can meet and share our smallness, our concerns and fears. We used to do this regularly with people we know but now we have huge public outpourings in response to tragedies which are not just an expression of outrage, sorrow and wishing to reach out, but also a need for individuals to vent spiritual unease and un-resolved emotions. It is an accumulative happening, the more people ‘unload’ visibly, the more other people feel they are being given the chance to do the same. It is a liberating chain-reaction of spiritual experience. In letting go of so much regular religious structures, we have pushed to the furthest edge, and half buried, something which is a fundamental part of our human make-up, and so we have lost the flow of spiritual flotsam and jetsam which kept us in reasonably healthy equilibrium. We have marginalised our spiritual selves. This becomes more and more evident with every large-scale emotionally charged event. Momentarily we are coming away from the edges of our spirituality and marginalisation and reminding ourselves, and one another, that we all belong to one human body, irrelevant of whether we are from Soham or from the other side of the world. Modern, affluent culture tends to give us, through materialism, an impression that we are allknowing, developed, superior human beings. Then comes the sharp reminder that thehuman person can be broken; they can behave in ways which seem completely out of kilter with the majority of us. And the lid comes off our squashed spirituality: that area of ourselves which is our soul; that area we don’t understand and is beyond any explanation by any human being or even the most advanced technology. So suddenly, an act of inhumanity; a tragic death; a disaster brought about by human error; these events remind us that we are, after all, small and vulnerable beings, just as we always have been. We are limited creatures who walk the earth; we are not, after all, all-knowing Gods. These disasters could happen to us! How do we begin to take that in? Millions of parents in the past few weeks have thought: how would I begin to cope? A great deal of scorn is poured on mass demonstrations of grief and emotion; yet the scornful themselves, in their own way, are talking about it! We all need spiritual replenishment without which we cannot cope alone; some of us just don’t like to admit it because we don’t want to acknowledge our sameness to the rest of our fellow humans. What worries and saddens me is the thought that if this is our latest form of prayer, is it only going to be triggered off by occasional tragedy and disaster? Old fashioned regular forms of prayer did have the huge benefit of feeding our spiritual strength and allowing us to stock up for a bad day. Constant reflecting and sharing produces a balanced reaction to disharmony. This is where there is a huge hole in the market. This is the marketplace the modern-day Church needs to focus on and frequent. We could do with taking time out from our hi-tech existences and ponder on this whole area of our humanness which is so real; so potent and so neglected; yet has, for a great part, turned away from old-fashioned organisational structures. The internet and media seem to be becoming a form of market-place which try to draw us together on a relatively superficial level. But it would only need one catastrophe to annihilate these technological giants! Imagine it! One tidal wave or meteorite and: No more surfing the net; no more sending text messages; no more newspapers; no more ten o’clock news. Some humans will still exist, our needs will still exist. And..oh yes...God would still be there! Food for thought? |
