I will never forget the moment, some 10 years ago now, when our Muslim social worker asked my partner and me the casual question - "And what religion will you bring the child up in". We were in the process of adopting our eldest child. We had not even met him yet. We were going through what seemed like a rather long process of being prepared for parenthood.
Being amongst the first Gay male couples to adopt a child in this country - the territory was rather new - for the social worker as well. They wanted us to "practise" for a while - and so for several miserable weekends, we were asked to go to the adoption home and feed the children. Dear Lord! It was a nightmare. I think they thought if we could survive that, we could survive anything - (I know that thought crossed my mind several times). But having passed the test, we were now looking at the nitty gritty of adoption. Who was likely to be the primary parent? Who was likely to provide the discipline? Etcetera, etcetera.
The innocent question about religion caused a three week break in the process, while we discussed the matter. Backwards and forwards it went. My partner, Leon, loathed the Church. The Church had almost proved his mental undoing, in its lack of care for him; in its homophobia; in its dreadful hypocrisy and alienation of Gay and Lesbian people. He was very uncertain indeed. On the other hand, he was pretty much at sea from a religious perspective. A kind of wannabe "spiritual" type, with not a great deal of focus, or specific practise to offer.
I, on the other hand, had been a priest - had studied and taught Theology for gazillions of years and had left the Church the moment the struggle was over. What was the answer to the Muslim social worker’s question? The truth is, it was an inoffensive question. She wasn’t expecting any particular answer. We could have said “None!” and we would just have moved on in the conversation. But we decided to interrogate the matter with what was, for both of us, surprising intensity.
We discussed the nature of faith. We discussed the practise of belief. We discussed our own journeys – the positives and the negatives. And we came to a decision – strange in the eyes of many and peculiar, sometimes, even in our own judgement. We decided that we should raise the children in the context of the Christian faith –despite our own serious misgivings.
And so that is what brought me back to the Church. A baby. The absolute epitome of human frailty and human need. A baby, with a newly minted laugh and eyes so clear, you could see eternity in them. A baby that came into our lives, to change them forever.
We called him Gabriel – and it is his job to put the angel on the top of the Christmas tree every year. We called him Gabriel, the harbinger of good news. We called him Gabriel, because that was the first name we agreed upon while flipping listlessly through a bible one Sunday in Church, during a boring sermon.
And tomorrow, Gabriel will be serving at the High Mass on Christmas Day, dressed in a cassock and surplice and looking utterly angelic, smothered in incense and feeling the surge of the Haydn “Jugendmesse” and the swirl of hieratic language. Of course he may, one day reject it all. That will be his choice and that will be his unquestionable right. But when and if he does so, it will be from the position of an insider. He will know the stories that form such a massive part of our philosophy and our culture, for good or for ill. He will understand why some people pray to a God and have hope for the future and show love to their neighbour. And, hopefully, if he does reject it all, he will be a better person for having taken what is good in religion and making it his own.
Of course, there are dangers. It is also possible that he will imbibe the bewildering levels of prejudice; the terrible bigotry and the hatred, which is also part of religion. It is possible that he will start to see himself as superior to other people. It is possible that his brain will start to ossify and become closed to science, and change, and possibility. That is also a feature of religion. But it is bad religion – and I hope that he will be enabled to see that and to reject it.
In the meantime, I will thrill at the sight of the child I have been entrusted with, dressed like an angel, doing his service with a diligence and dedication that really inspires me, when together we pause at the crib of another baby. A child who, it is said, can lead the lion and the lamb to find peace with each other. That is an ideal I want for Gabriel. That is a vision I want for myself.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Solar
Ian McEwan is undoubtedly a great writer. Few would argue with this assertion. He is also a great thinker and is wont to research the topic of his novels to virtually PhD level. In this one he is a physicist, in Saturday he is a neurosurgeon, in Amsterdam a musicologist and in Enduring Love, a micro-biologist. It must be exhausting! I mean, writing a novel is hard enough. Writing a novel which sometimes reads like a thesis on opaque material, is another thing altogether!
Many of the reviews say that the main character of the novel, Michael Beard – a Nobel Prize winner in Physics – is dislikable. And of course, that he is. He has lived for years in the glow of one solitary achievement. Indeed, his entire career has been based on that one event. He is uncaring. He is selfish. He is entirely unfaithful. He steals ideas. He eats too much and he drinks too much. He uses his intellect to put people down and intimidate them. He is, truly, a dislikable character.
But at the same time, he is pretty much the victim of his own circumstance. The death of his student, whom he discovers cheating with his fifth wife, is not his fault. He sees it as an opportunity, however, to settle scores and does so with precision and clinical care. He simply makes the best of a bad situation, instead of doing the honest thing and suffering the consequences.
As in all McEwan’s novels, there is a singular event, which sets in motion the course of the rest of the story. This is the event, and there are, of course, consequences. And the consequences play themselves out. But in this one, I could not but help remembering an event in my childhood. The consequences were not the same, but the feeling of powerlessness was.
I cannot remember how old I was, but probably a teenager, living with a brother who was 10 years older than me. He was tidy. I was not. He would empty his rubbish into my room. I would just accept it.
One day, however, I came home to find my mother looking very serious. She held up part of a book (a book which had obviously fallen into pieces) and asked me if I knew what it was. I said it was part of a book. Which book? She wanted to know. I said I had no idea. But this she would not believe. It was a “dirty” book, she said, and of course I knew what it was because it was found in my room. It didn’t matter how much I denied it. I was guilty. And the guilty party – to save his own skin – stood by silently, accepting nothing. I was powerless. The evidence was clear.
Now, Professor Michael Beard, the Nobel laureate of the book, was equally not guilty. But he then makes himself guilty, of other crimes. Of covering up. Of being a coward, a liar, a cheat. These are things he has control over. These are things he could have done differently, and morally and without damage and hurt to others. But he chooses not to. And the position of privilege he has always enjoyed, allows him to make those negative choices.
So, he forges ahead on his stolen idea, buoyed by his previous easy history, with no fears for his future. And of course, this is the point. His work is now in climate change. It is about creating new ways of creating and harnessing and deploying energy. He is, in himself, the very image of the human species – arrogant, bloated, self-satisfied, armed with a little knowledge. Instead of choosing the ethical route, it creates ways of justifying its present destructive position.
And my view is that you cannot read this book and not see yourself in there somewhere. Somewhere in his “dislikeable” and unpleasant character lies the you and the me. And that is what makes the book so extraordinarily readable – despite is sometimes fairly dense scientific passages.
McEwan has that most admirable quality in a writer – the ability to observe and document human nature, in all its bewildering perplexity and contradiction. And so, yes, it is true, Professor Michael Beard is a horrible person. But if you cannot see yourself in some measure, in that really unpleasant character, you are, I would suggest, deluded.
Solar by Ian McEwan is published by Jonathan Cape, London, 2010
Many of the reviews say that the main character of the novel, Michael Beard – a Nobel Prize winner in Physics – is dislikable. And of course, that he is. He has lived for years in the glow of one solitary achievement. Indeed, his entire career has been based on that one event. He is uncaring. He is selfish. He is entirely unfaithful. He steals ideas. He eats too much and he drinks too much. He uses his intellect to put people down and intimidate them. He is, truly, a dislikable character.
But at the same time, he is pretty much the victim of his own circumstance. The death of his student, whom he discovers cheating with his fifth wife, is not his fault. He sees it as an opportunity, however, to settle scores and does so with precision and clinical care. He simply makes the best of a bad situation, instead of doing the honest thing and suffering the consequences.
As in all McEwan’s novels, there is a singular event, which sets in motion the course of the rest of the story. This is the event, and there are, of course, consequences. And the consequences play themselves out. But in this one, I could not but help remembering an event in my childhood. The consequences were not the same, but the feeling of powerlessness was.
I cannot remember how old I was, but probably a teenager, living with a brother who was 10 years older than me. He was tidy. I was not. He would empty his rubbish into my room. I would just accept it.
One day, however, I came home to find my mother looking very serious. She held up part of a book (a book which had obviously fallen into pieces) and asked me if I knew what it was. I said it was part of a book. Which book? She wanted to know. I said I had no idea. But this she would not believe. It was a “dirty” book, she said, and of course I knew what it was because it was found in my room. It didn’t matter how much I denied it. I was guilty. And the guilty party – to save his own skin – stood by silently, accepting nothing. I was powerless. The evidence was clear.
Now, Professor Michael Beard, the Nobel laureate of the book, was equally not guilty. But he then makes himself guilty, of other crimes. Of covering up. Of being a coward, a liar, a cheat. These are things he has control over. These are things he could have done differently, and morally and without damage and hurt to others. But he chooses not to. And the position of privilege he has always enjoyed, allows him to make those negative choices.
So, he forges ahead on his stolen idea, buoyed by his previous easy history, with no fears for his future. And of course, this is the point. His work is now in climate change. It is about creating new ways of creating and harnessing and deploying energy. He is, in himself, the very image of the human species – arrogant, bloated, self-satisfied, armed with a little knowledge. Instead of choosing the ethical route, it creates ways of justifying its present destructive position.
And my view is that you cannot read this book and not see yourself in there somewhere. Somewhere in his “dislikeable” and unpleasant character lies the you and the me. And that is what makes the book so extraordinarily readable – despite is sometimes fairly dense scientific passages.
McEwan has that most admirable quality in a writer – the ability to observe and document human nature, in all its bewildering perplexity and contradiction. And so, yes, it is true, Professor Michael Beard is a horrible person. But if you cannot see yourself in some measure, in that really unpleasant character, you are, I would suggest, deluded.
Solar by Ian McEwan is published by Jonathan Cape, London, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Lunch with the Chancellor
Yesterday, as a guest of Tito Mboweni, I attended his graduation where he received an honorary D (Comm) from Stellenbosch University, one of the major intellectual centres of the Western Cape. A number of things surprised me.
Firstly, the casual nature of the affair. I was uncharacteristically, in suit and tie. The last time I attended a graduation (my own!) that is what people wore. But here, the rest of the audience was in short pants and T Shirts (I exaggerate a little, but not very much!)
Secondly, I was surprised by the huge amount of black graduands in a thing called “Military Science”. No-one could explain to me what the attraction might be. Otherwise, this particular graduation was the science graduation. And the lines and lines of white young things who were graduating in various genetic, physics, biology and suchlike degrees was tedious in the extreme, but interesting in comparison. There would be an occasional (apparently unpronounceable) black surname, which would herald whoops and shouts and ululation from the black sections of the crowd – while the white bulk of the crowd would tolerate it all good-naturedly. (Or, when it got a bit out of hand, shake their heads slightly and mutter something to each other.)
So, there was an obvious pattern. In general, the lower degrees were dominated overwhelmingly by white students. Higher degrees, however, showed a good mix, if not even a parity of black students. And Military Science, conversely (and whatever it might be!) had the very rare white student. I am sure there must be some explanation for why this is the case, but it certainly looked peculiar to me.
At the luncheon afterwards, the two graduands, honoris causa, gave speeches. The one was Whitey Basson, driving force behind the mighty Shoprite Checkers group. Johann Rupert, inheritor of the Rupert tobacco industry fortune and Chancellor of the University, got up to introduce him. They were clearly friends. Basson gave three sentences of his speech in English and the rest in Afrikaans. The American sitting at my table was lost. The South African black, sitting next to me, shook his head.
Then Mboweni got up to speak. He began by saying that he had thought rather hard about accepting a doctorate from Stellenbosch, for three reasons:
Firstly, because he wasn’t sure that the ceremony would be in a language he could understand; Secondly, because Stellenbosch has a very particular negative history in South Africa and he was not convinced that it was engaged in changing that image as fast as it might; And thirdly, because he didn’t know what his comrades in the struggle would have to say about his accepting a doctorate from that university.
I noticed that the Afrikaner couple opposite me got that glazed look my children get when I am telling them something they don’t want to hear. The former Reserve Bank Governor went on. He spoke about the drama of returning exiles being faced with turning round what was essentially a bankrupt economy. And, as he had been frequently reminded by the likes of Johan Rupert, they “had never run anything”. Not a shop, not a business, not a city – and certainly not a country. They had never run anything.
And then he spoke about the remarkable turn-around which had been effected, by a left-leaning government (no less!), consisting of people who had “never run anything” – but who were clever enough to work in close conjunction with the people who had been running the country up to that point. And then to turn the titanic economy of the country around, to a point where, just before the world crash, we enjoyed a surplus.
He emphasised again, that the people who had done this had “never run anything before”. Indeed, the person they appointed as the finance minister was a “skollie” from the Cape Flats who had once apparently stabbed someone.
I saw Johann Rupert’s face become somewhat glum. And I enjoyed it enormously. Of course, he was politely agreeing. But it was polite, nothing more. And then Tito went on, talking about the University. There could be no “Afrikaans” University in South Africa. Because all the Universities need to belong to all the people of South Africa. All the schools in the country need to belong to all the people of the country.
And so, Tito concluded, he had decided to accept. It seems his fears were unfounded.
The ceremony was, to a completely acceptable degree, in English. And where it was not, it was translated. Secondly, the Vice Chancellor, Russel Botman has managed to change the face of the previously all-white, apartheid-loving institution to one which is at least somewhat more credible. At least it was the case that at the Chancellor’s lunch, something more than lip-service was being paid to the demands of transformation, by a range of people. And that has to be a good sign. (It was an equally good sign when whites started giving each other Mandela’s biography for Christmas, many years back).
But a curious joke, made by Rupert himself seemed to me to sum up the situation. He said that when the end of the world came, he wanted to be in Stellenbosch – “because Stellenbosch is at least 20 years behind everywhere else in the world”. Personally, I think that could be said for most of the Western Cape.
Firstly, the casual nature of the affair. I was uncharacteristically, in suit and tie. The last time I attended a graduation (my own!) that is what people wore. But here, the rest of the audience was in short pants and T Shirts (I exaggerate a little, but not very much!)
Secondly, I was surprised by the huge amount of black graduands in a thing called “Military Science”. No-one could explain to me what the attraction might be. Otherwise, this particular graduation was the science graduation. And the lines and lines of white young things who were graduating in various genetic, physics, biology and suchlike degrees was tedious in the extreme, but interesting in comparison. There would be an occasional (apparently unpronounceable) black surname, which would herald whoops and shouts and ululation from the black sections of the crowd – while the white bulk of the crowd would tolerate it all good-naturedly. (Or, when it got a bit out of hand, shake their heads slightly and mutter something to each other.)
So, there was an obvious pattern. In general, the lower degrees were dominated overwhelmingly by white students. Higher degrees, however, showed a good mix, if not even a parity of black students. And Military Science, conversely (and whatever it might be!) had the very rare white student. I am sure there must be some explanation for why this is the case, but it certainly looked peculiar to me.
At the luncheon afterwards, the two graduands, honoris causa, gave speeches. The one was Whitey Basson, driving force behind the mighty Shoprite Checkers group. Johann Rupert, inheritor of the Rupert tobacco industry fortune and Chancellor of the University, got up to introduce him. They were clearly friends. Basson gave three sentences of his speech in English and the rest in Afrikaans. The American sitting at my table was lost. The South African black, sitting next to me, shook his head.
Then Mboweni got up to speak. He began by saying that he had thought rather hard about accepting a doctorate from Stellenbosch, for three reasons:
Firstly, because he wasn’t sure that the ceremony would be in a language he could understand; Secondly, because Stellenbosch has a very particular negative history in South Africa and he was not convinced that it was engaged in changing that image as fast as it might; And thirdly, because he didn’t know what his comrades in the struggle would have to say about his accepting a doctorate from that university.
I noticed that the Afrikaner couple opposite me got that glazed look my children get when I am telling them something they don’t want to hear. The former Reserve Bank Governor went on. He spoke about the drama of returning exiles being faced with turning round what was essentially a bankrupt economy. And, as he had been frequently reminded by the likes of Johan Rupert, they “had never run anything”. Not a shop, not a business, not a city – and certainly not a country. They had never run anything.
And then he spoke about the remarkable turn-around which had been effected, by a left-leaning government (no less!), consisting of people who had “never run anything” – but who were clever enough to work in close conjunction with the people who had been running the country up to that point. And then to turn the titanic economy of the country around, to a point where, just before the world crash, we enjoyed a surplus.
He emphasised again, that the people who had done this had “never run anything before”. Indeed, the person they appointed as the finance minister was a “skollie” from the Cape Flats who had once apparently stabbed someone.
I saw Johann Rupert’s face become somewhat glum. And I enjoyed it enormously. Of course, he was politely agreeing. But it was polite, nothing more. And then Tito went on, talking about the University. There could be no “Afrikaans” University in South Africa. Because all the Universities need to belong to all the people of South Africa. All the schools in the country need to belong to all the people of the country.
And so, Tito concluded, he had decided to accept. It seems his fears were unfounded.
The ceremony was, to a completely acceptable degree, in English. And where it was not, it was translated. Secondly, the Vice Chancellor, Russel Botman has managed to change the face of the previously all-white, apartheid-loving institution to one which is at least somewhat more credible. At least it was the case that at the Chancellor’s lunch, something more than lip-service was being paid to the demands of transformation, by a range of people. And that has to be a good sign. (It was an equally good sign when whites started giving each other Mandela’s biography for Christmas, many years back).
But a curious joke, made by Rupert himself seemed to me to sum up the situation. He said that when the end of the world came, he wanted to be in Stellenbosch – “because Stellenbosch is at least 20 years behind everywhere else in the world”. Personally, I think that could be said for most of the Western Cape.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)