A World in Need of Visionaries

I am always impressed by people on the ground and in a variety of contexts who grab the moment and come up with what looks like simple actions or projects that turn out to be life transforming for many, including themselves (that is the ones who have grabbed the initiative). These people I call visionaries. They are not the usual leaders’ that media and organisations hyper-ventilate over. They are ordinary people who would claim no gift of seeing into any future. What they see into is the moment and the people and circumstances around them, and this is what makes them extraordinary. This is what I sensed in my recent viewing of the movie Defiance (2008) - a true story about four Jewish brothers from West Belarus in Poland who escape from the Nazis after their family is murdered and decided to resist.

The general trend of most of our lives is organised around the principle of living for tomorrow, for the future, rather than the moment. Hence, with the downturn in our economic life, pundits immediately raise concern about the future of the economy and pensions. I was made aware of this when I recently called my aging parents in Guyana to find out how they were faring in that part of the world, which was once my home. They could not understand my concern. Not even my younger brother, a university lecturer in natural sciences, nor my aunt, a British citizen and a retired nurse living in Greater London, could be bothered with all the fuss.

In fact, it was my aunt who pointed out to me that as a person of faith one needs a different perspective in life – that is, to live it one day at a time. Tomorrow, she suggests, is always a day away. Now, as person keenly concerned about the environment and the future, this becomes a hard idea to swallow as rights of the future have implications as to how one lives at the moment. Yet, in the grabbing of the present, without too overwhelming a concern of the future, is precisely where visionaries are grown and come alive.

There is something sharply liberating in just doing what is needed to be done and trusting it would all work out in the end. Whatever the religious stripes of visionaries, they all share two things in common: faith that transforms and faith that making a difference is possible by taking the risk to grab the moment and believing in hope, contrary to all the evidence around. What difference are WE going to make this day, ripe with anticipation and possibilities?

copyright Jagessar May 25, 2009

A World in Need of Visionaries

I am always impressed by people on the ground and in a variety of contexts who grab the moment and come up with what looks like simple actions or projects that turn out to be life transforming for many, including themselves (that is the ones who have grabbed the initiative). These people I call visionaries. They are not the usual leaders’ that media and organisations hyper-ventilate over. They are ordinary people who would claim no gift of seeing into any future. What they see into is the moment and the people and circumstances around them, and this is what makes them extraordinary. This is what I sensed in my recent viewing of the movie Defiant (2008) - a true story about four Jewish brothers from West Belarus in Poland who escape from the Nazis after their family is murdered and decided to resist.

The general trend of most of our lives is organised around the principle of living for tomorrow, for the future, rather than the moment. Hence, with the downturn in our economic life, pundits immediately raise concern about the future of the economy and pensions. I was made aware of this when I recently called my aging parents in Guyana to find out how they were faring in that part of the world, which was once my home. They could not understand my concern. Not even my younger brother, a university lecturer in natural sciences, nor my aunt, a British citizen and a retired nurse living in Greater London, could be bothered with all the fuss.

In fact, it was my aunt who pointed out to me that as a person of faith one needs a different perspective in life – that is, to live it one day at a time. Tomorrow, she suggests, is always a day away. Now, as person keenly concerned about the environment and the future, this becomes a hard idea to swallow as rights of the future have implications as to how one lives at the moment. Yet, in the grabbing of the present, without too overwhelming a concern of the future, is precisely where visionaries are grown and come alive.

There is something sharply liberating in just doing what is needed to be done and trusting it would all work out in the end. Whatever the religious stripes of visionaries, they all share two things in common: faith that transforms and faith that making a difference is possible by taking the risk to grab the moment and believing in hope, contrary to all the evidence around. What difference are WE going to make this day, ripe with anticipation and possibilities?

copyright Jagessar May 25, 2009

MP's Expenses, Public Office and Morality

It is not only the Press/Media that have a field day with the abuse of expenses by our Members of Parliament (MP’s). Those who have been at the heart of our financial meltdown and in the spotlight and those who are cynical about politics and politicians are also having a good laugh. One is ever mindful of the well used maxim about the person who laughs “last”. As the plots of these stories thicken the last “laugh” is yet some way in the distance.

Tax-payers, decent, honest and law-abiding citizens are dismayed about the revelations and the blatant and high-handed ways people and a system conspired to rob the public coffers. And we ought to be. Even a donkey with reading abilities can see that the rules from the Parliamentary Green Book are at pains to point out to MP’s the need to be “above reproach”, about “the misuse of public money” and the need to avoid arrangements that can point to an MP or someone close to them benefiting from public funds. I am sure this situation, usually critiqued and represented as the corrupt practices of politicians from the majority world and their “banana, coffee, tea or oil “republics by British politicians and media, is going to create more cynics from among us. There are those, on the other hand, who have never had faith in politics and politicians and may mutter through their teeth: "we told you so".

Of course, greed and self-serving interests are not the monopoly of one particular group, and one needs to be mindful of this fact. At the same time, our word pedalling performers (politicians) have accepted public offices and they should not be surprised when they are placed under public scrutiny. They should not be comparing themselves and their ills with the fact that in other professions this also happens. They are public servants and even if we want to put aside the ill-used term “servant”, the public aspect remains a fact. Whether they like it or not, they are models to the whole nation – one presently recovering from financial mismanagement.

We put them there. We have a moral obligation to know what they are doing there. And, we also have the power to remove them from their office. MP's are not above the law. Had I done this in my present job then my employer would have probably called in the police and I would have been sacked. I am also accountable. Finding replacements, however, may be more than a challenge given that the misuse and abuse is across the political colours. For as a former Archbishop of Canterbury notes, "the latest revelations show it was not just a few MPs with their noses in the trough, but a culture of abuse." One can breathe a sigh of relief that there are still some decent and honest politicians around!

Sin and human ambiguities are real – it is a flesh and blood reality and none of us are immune to it. What this underscores, once again, is the need for a spiritual or religious core to the ways we order and manage our lives. This whole debacle brings to the fore the issue of ethics and morality – much of which is quite scarce and absent from our society as a whole. One can be excused for asking whether the decline in ethics and morality as seen in the expenses scandal is a reflection of the rest of society. One is reminded of the timely observation of Zygmunt Bauman that because of “savage individualism” we need to locate our present day ills beyond the ills to something deeper, which is - the “absence of society”. We are drowning in our engineered culture of crass individualism. For me society is communal or communitarian, with a heart and moral conscience and it is one where accountability is central to the common good of society. Paying back is only the first step. There is a second step - stepping down in order to create a stronger moral ground to stand on.

copyright Jagessar May 14, 2009

image credit: www.mirror.co.uk/.../

A Scientific ‘Take’ On Prayers

The April 11^th issue of New Scientist carried a small brief about a small research that involved MRI scanning of the brains of 20 devout Christians. I wonder what their ecclesial affiliations or cultural backgrounds were especially since the research is quiet on this. Lutherans, I suppose! The Danish researchers asked the 20 volunteers to be engaged in two tasks: one religious and the other secular. Here we go again – the unhelpful desire of making a distinction between religious and secular!

In the 1^st task the volunteers were asked to silently recite the Lord’s Prayer followed by a nursery rhyme. According to the researchers identical brain areas got activated – those linked to repetition and rehearsal. In the second task they thought up spontaneous prayers followed by requests to Santa Claus. So what sort of responses or what parts of the brains got triggered? According to the researchers, with the spontaneous prayers they discerned patterns linked to when people communicate with each other and “activated circuitry that is linked with the theory of mind – an awareness that other individuals have their own independent motivations and intentions.” [p.9].

What is interesting is that two of the activated areas are those associated with processing desire and that which considers how another individual (God in this case) will react. Also activated, were “part of the prefrontal cortex linked to the consideration of another person’s intentions, and an area thought to help access memories of previous encounters with that person.” [p.9]

Not surprisingly, the prefrontal cortext (key area in terms of our thinking) was dormant during the task related to Santa Claus. Hence the researchers were able to deduce that for the volunteers (all adults and I suppose white Danes) Santa was fictitious and God was perceived as a real person – expecting reciprocity. For the researchers, but not necessarily new for many faithful believers, this shows that when people say they pray to God they actually believe they are talking to someone. Just take a walk down to your nearest Black Pentecostal Church to experience this fact! Now both atheists and believers have latched on to this with vigour to defend their own position. For Atheists, the tests demonstrated what they have been always contending: God is pure illusion. Christians, on the other hand are rejoicing that this is more evidence to show that God is real.

The reality, however, is that what this suggests has nothing to do with the existence of God, but only with the subjects’ belief about the existence of God and the researchers own subjective use of bodies of knowledge (which is yet to be recognised) to carry out their experiments. Needless to say, they could have consulted me and many others before wasting state funds on such exercises.

In the meantime, scientific findings aside, prayers may be just what people need at this time of economic woes and the fear of swine flu. Talking to someone, Divine or otherwise, always carry cathartic possibilities.

copyright jagessar May 6, 2009