An impasse. An impossible dilemma. A feeling of being stuck. Between a rock and a hard place. It feels like this to me and so many of us. The pendulum keeps swinging between 'all in' and 'all out'. It feels like a zero-sum game, this Brexit crisis. If some group win, others will have to be losers. The origin of the idiom, 'between a rock and a hard place', springs from Homer's Odyssey. In this legendary Greek myth, Odysseus must pass between the treacherous whirlpool Charybdis(The Hard Place) and a horrid man-eating cliff-dwelling monster called Scylla (The Rock). In popular TV animation 'The Simpsons', Homer is forever finding himself in that place of dilemma. So much of the show's popularity is based upon his utter foolishness and his grappling with his character flaws. Here, in this still shot from the animation, Homer is quite literally caught swinging between A Rock and A Hard Place!
But, eventually, the wrecking ball must stop swinging, surely. And even Homer will emerge from the crisis.
Today we continue to watch on helplessly as our political representatives struggle so much to find a way between the rock and hard place that is Brexit. Compromise seems to be in the air. But hard hearts and stubborn wills are still at work in the House of Commons and Number 10.
Sam Wells in his Thought For the Day on Radio 4 this morning suggested that pragmatism and principles are always in tension in the human story - whether within the religious community or the political.
Politics works where everyone gets enough, he suggested.
The Early Church, nourished by the four different Gospels, reflected much on the challenge of principles and pragmatism.
Dr Wells reminded us that in Matthew's Gospel we have Jesus saying: 'Whoever is not with me is against me.' But Mark's Gospel has Jesus quoted as saying the opposite: 'Whoever is not against us is for us.' He went on to say that in the 17th Century, religion started getting a bad name precisely because people of faith were not willing to compromise.
'Compromise remains the hardest part of politics,' he concluded. 'Politics only works once we realize we won't get there unless we all got there.'
I was listening to a podcast on NPR, ‘Don’t Panic’.
ReplyDelete‘What happens if we treat change as a friend not an enemy’, says Tim Harford the author of ‘Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives’.
Harford speaks of music improvised by Keith Jared, a famous jazz pianist. Jared improvised music at concerts. He turned up to play one evening, only to find that the piano he was to play had twelve keys that didn’t function, was out of tune, the black keys were stuck, the upper register of the keyboard was harsh and tinny sounding, as the felt had worn away, and the piano was too small for the size of the hall. It didn’t have enough volume for the music to carry across the hall.
He refused to play. The organiser , a seventeen year old girl begged him to play. Feeling sorry for her, he agreed. That night, Jared played music that turned out to be his most popular work. It is the best selling solo jazz album in history and the best selling piano album- the Koln Concert. He avoided the harsh upper registers, he stuck to the middle of the keyboard. In order to be heard, he played rolling, repetitive riffs. He also stood up and banged on the keys. Jared did not expect the resounding success that resulted from playing the broken piano.
Harford says,
‘We are faced with the unplayable piano but we can get something great out of it.’
Harford goes on to tell the story of commuters, during a 48 hour tube strike. They were forced to find an alternative route and mode of transport. After the strike, thousands of people stuck to the new method they had discovered: it was a better way to travel. Had it not been for the strike, they would not have found it.
In the Bible, Peter finds himself in a dilemma when the servant girl asks him if he is not also a Galilean like Jesus. Jesus, himself, asks God, in the garden of Gethsemane, if He would take away his cup of suffering. The immediate aftermath was devastating for the disciples and Jesus, but in the long term, the result was a resounding success.
Let us pray that the chaos we find ourselves in, will be a force for good.