Edges Magazine Issue 44 - God on the margins

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 44

May 2006

God on the Margins

You wanted one thing,
I wanted another.
We couldn’t have our cake
So we ate each other’.

This short poem describes a relationship heading for the rocks and is unfortunately not rare. The breakdown of people’s lives in relation to each other is common and the preventative measures not always that available.

At this season of the Church Year, Lent, it might be worthwhile just to think about that other breakdown between God and contemporary humanity. When the Reformation took place in this country and beyond, one historian called it ‘The Great Divorce’. But I believe what has happened over the last years and is still happening, is of an even greater damage to the spiritual life of our nation.

In the book of Genesis, where Adam took on God with one great act of disobedience, there were three major consequences. First, Adam and Eve, who had been comfortable before God and each other in their nakedness felt shame and covered themselves. Second, Adam hid from God with whom he once walked in the Garden in the cool of the evening. Thirdly when questioned by God, Adam blamed his partner Eve –‘the woman made me do it’. (Genesis Chpt 1 v 12)

Ill at ease with self, with God and with each other, we need in our lives, even when we commit our lives to God or to another person whom we love, a willingness to work hard at recovering our oneness with creation and God and self.

The traditional way of doing this is in prayer, where God reveals himself to me and me to my self

The Church’s calling is to announce the eternal truth of things. As well as trying to touch the soul we need to reach out to peoples’ minds – faith seeking understanding. One of the things about the recent programme ‘The Root of All Evil’ was that Professor Dawkins targeted religious groups and people who though they had a faith were not able to engage intellectually with any sense. In an article in New Blackfriars ‘Between Exile and Redemption a View of the Catholic Church in England, Allan White OP writes this – ‘Catholicism must attempt to regain some of the lost ground in things of the mind…..it should involve itself in service to the poor and marginalised. It should appeal to the idealism of youth and above all educate the young in faith’.

Maybe if we can do this really well as Church then we might have something to offer that will help our young people to do the two things that they seem to find most difficult – to commit themselves to someone and to be faithful. But I feel that with the present climate of God on the margins, if his hand does not build the house then all the shoring up, quick fixes and little preparation for life long commitment is destined to fail.

John Michael Hanvey is the author of ‘Prayed Out-God in Dark Places’. Now available through Columba Press Dublin