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4 min read

Hold or cut the golden thread?

There's a ‘mysteriously beautiful’ vision threaded through our world, writes Stephen Cottrell. In an extract from his Dear England book, the Archbishop of York considers the Beatitudes.

Stephen Cottrell

Stephen Cottrell is Primate of England and Archbishop of York. He has authored 20 books.

A CGI render of a grid of golden lines receding into the perspective
The golden thread.
Joshua Sortino on Unsplash.

The heart of Jesus’ teaching is found in the longest teaching passage in the Gospels, it is known as the Sermon on the Mount. 

It begins with a mysteriously beautiful passage known as the Beatitudes. 

Here Jesus sets out a series of maxims that at first sight seem to be his equivalent of the Ten Commandments. Like Moses, the Old Testament prophet who received the latter, when Jesus receives the Beatitudes he has gone up a mountain. 

And like Moses he has a series of short, pithy things to say that will then need a lifetime to work out. 

However, the Beatitudes are not a moral code. They are not things you can either do or not do. They are attitudes to which we can aspire. Rather than describing the moral life, a code by which we can justly live alongside each other in society, they describe what it looks like to 'go the second mile’. They describe what perfect love in action looks like. 

Here they are: 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

I don't propose to spend ages unpacking these. But alongside the Ten Commandments themselves, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, the Beatitudes have become one of the central documents of the Church. 

Living by them is the work of a lifetime. 

They are the centre of Jesus' teaching. Their meaning, however, isn't always self-evident. Like his stories, they need inhabiting. 

They are very challenging. It isn't easy to be merciful. It isn't easy to make peace. Especially if the likely outcome is the persecution we usually make efforts to avoid. Not that there is anything good about persecution. As we know, mockery and ridicule hurt. How much more hurtful is it to be hunted down because of your witness to peace? Nevertheless, it is witnesses to peace that Jesus is recruiting here. His own life, and everything that he teaches, led this way: to the peace that is beyond the world's understanding and is about a wholeness and totality of giving and receiving love. 

Jesus is inviting us to live with a different set of attitudes. And he does not baulk from acknowledging that these attitudes will bring us into conflict with the carefully protected interests of those who secure power and influence for themselves at the expense of peace. They exchange it for what is little more than a truce. At best, an absence of war, what we live in our jealously guarded siloes and forcibly protect our borders, repelling intruders and stamping on those who even dream differently. 

In our own society, thankfully, we enjoy freedoms of speech and action. This means that we rarely meet with much opposition beyond people's unreflective apathy or polished disdain. But these freedoms we enjoy should not be taken for granted. They have been hard won. They could easily be lost. Especially if we fail to see where they have come from; precisely this realisation of the dignity and worth of every person and our responsibilities to each other that arose through Christ. 

Unfortunately, these things that underpin what is best in our society are not self-evidently the best. We've got so used to them that we easily imagine they are. But actually, we don't observe them in the world around us. Nature, for instance, is not democratic. Nor particularly caring. The weakest usually die first. The fittest survive. Nor is it much different in human communities. Our history - always written by those who win - is one bloody story of conquest after another. 

Empires rise and fall, and there is very little to suggest that there might be another kingdom where a different set of values prevails, and where the king turns out to be the servant of all. But that is precisely the Christian narrative. It is a golden thread running through human history. In every age it can either be held on to, or cut away; left to our own devices, especially when our backs are to the wall, we find that the human compass is usually set towards self-preservation. Our empires and systems are usually designed to keep others out. Or at least in their place, so that they can serve us. In this so-called ‘real world’, shepherds do not go in search of one lost sheep, as Jesus suggested God does, in one of his parables. That would be uneconomic. Like the rest of us, they play a percentages game, and for the sake of the ninety-nine, we accept the loss of the one. The strongest and the wiliest prevail. That's just how it is, we say. If we can help the weak, we will. But if we can't, or if it affects us badly, we won't and we don't. 

This is why the world needs a set of values - and a story - that will save us from ourselves, and our worst instincts. This is why we need a set of values that are rooted in a tradition whose stories and whose very heart are, gloriously, the life and teaching of a person who is himself the revelation of God's love and purposes for the world he made and loves - who even laid down his life to search out those who are lost: the very image of the invisible God. More than that: someone who loves us and knows what it is like to be us, who has experienced from the inside just what it is like to inhabit a divided and compromised world. 

Therefore, the Beatitudes are a set of values and attitudes by which we can inhabit the world differently and through which we can begin to see what matters in the world and what must be done. 

 

Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World is published by Hodder & Stoughton.  

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Creed
Sport
6 min read

Sweating the soul

A mantra-laden spin class generated more than sweat for Alianore Smith, it raised philosophical questions too.

Alianore Smith

Alianore  is a theologian, communicator and author. She works for a global charity based in London.

A spin class rider smiles and gives the thumbs up sign in front of other riders.
SoulCycle.

Last year, I learnt an important lesson: cycling and spin classes are not the same thing. 

Of course, they both take place on bikes – one moving, one stationary. And they are both exercise. But the similarities stop there. 

Let me explain. 

I’m a cyclist – and a smug one at that. My cycle commute to work, three times a week, comes to a round trip total of about 15 miles.  

So, when I was invited last summer to take part in a SoulCycle class in aid of a charity I care deeply about, I jumped at the chance. How hard could it be? I can ride a bike. My cardio-vascular fitness is above average. It’ll be an easy way to raise awareness of the charity, and maybe have some fun in the process. 

How wrong I was. 

My first clue that a SoulCycle class wouldn’t be like my normal commute was found on my visit to its website. The About Us page informed me that at a SoulCycle class – a ‘sanctuary’ – ‘tears will be shed’ and ‘breakthroughs happen’. The only time I ever cried whilst commuting was when I got my second puncture in a week, three miles from home, in the January rain. And, quite frankly, when you’re dodging taxis and swerving around pedestrians, breakthrough feels a long way off. 

And so, I headed off to my SoulCycle class, equipped with my padded shorts and my charity-branded cycling jersey. I arrived, hired my shoes, and headed into the changing rooms. And it was there that I was greeted by the SOUL Etiquette sign: 

SOUL Etiquette ‘To preserve soul sanctuary, we have a few simple requests’ 

  1. No text & chat 
    No cell phones or communication devices in the studio. If you are a doctor or your child is sick, kindly leave your phone with the front desk and we will get you if there is an emergency 

  1. Skip the cross talk 
    Talking during class is a major distraction for the spiritual folks around you 

  1. Laundry 
    We ride close together so we can feel each others’ energy. That being said, your neighbour does not want to feed off your odor. 

  1. Kindness is cool 
    Respect the rider on your left and your right. Treat the front desk the way you would like them to treat you. 

  1. The pack 
    There is a direct correlation between your energy and your neighbour’s ride. If you want to do your own thing, please don’t ride in the front row. 

I was fascinated. What lay ahead of me? 

Well, let me tell you: nothing could have prepared me for the class I took. 

A dark room, filled with mirrors, motivational quotes and – for some reason – grapefruit scented candles. About 30 stationary bikes, lined up in three rows. An instructor whose enthusiasm knew no bounds.  

I took a bike at the back.  

Within 10 minutes, I was sweatier than I have ever been, and questioning all my life choices up until that moment. Within 15 minutes, I had removed my charity-branded cycling jersey and drunk half of my bottle of water. There was still 30 minutes to go. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. 

And yet by the end, I was buzzing. Whether it was the endorphins, the sense of community, or the relentless cheerleading of the instructor, I wanted more. It was… remarkable. I very nearly signed up for another class there and then. 

From the signs in the changing rooms to the instructors’ soundbites, I was continually told what I could achieve if I tried. 

The instructor – a bouncy brunette whose name I can’t remember – led the class with an exuberance that I am yet to see anywhere else. At one point, she got off her bike and danced up and down the aisle in front of the class. Quietly rasping for air at the back, I had no idea how she had the energy to speak whilst pedaling, let alone dance. 

The thing that I found most fascinating about my SoulCycle class, though, was the ‘spiritual’ aspect. From the signs in the changing rooms to the instructors’ soundbites, I was continually told what I could achieve if I tried. That the ability to breakthrough my problems, to succeed, to achieve my dreams, was all held within me – I just needed to dig a little deeper, peddle a little harder, put my mind to it. 

At one point, the instructor made us repeat after her: ‘I can do all things…’ it was there that she paused. As someone who grew up in the church, learning memory verses of Scripture week after week, I immediately wanted to yell ‘through Christ who strengthens me!’, but instead was encouraged to complete the sentence with something (I can’t remember exactly what) about my own abilities and force of will. 

The whole class was deeply motivating. I left feeling like, quite frankly, I could achieve anything.  

Thing is, though, I’m an able-bodied, middle class, professional, white woman. I come from a two-parent family, and I’m happily married to a non-abusive partner. I have a stable income. Although some of these things are because of the work that I’ve done or choices that I’ve made, many of them are an accident of birth. The odds are – for the most part – stacked in my favour. The very fact that I would have been able to afford to attend this class if I’d wanted to (new riders pay £16 for their first class, and £26 per class from then on) shows a level of privilege that was seemingly completely overlooked.  

When things are working in your favour, it’s easy to assume that it’s because you’re the one doing something right. That was the philosophy that was shouted in catch phrases from the front – you can do it, just try a little harder.  

Breakthrough is on the other side of this spin class. Mind over matter. That’s the message of SoulCycle. 

But every life philosophy, every ‘spiritual experience’, has a flip side to it. 

But the problem with that philosophy, of course, is its flip side: if things go wrong – if you’re in an accident, if you get made redundant, if you lose your house or your health fails you – then, logic dictates, it must be that you’ve done something wrong.  

If you can no longer afford a SoulCycle class, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough, or you didn’t peddle fast enough, or you didn’t put your mind to it. 

Of course, this was never said during the class – it was far too positive for that. But every life philosophy, every ‘spiritual experience’, has a flip side to it. If everything happens for a reason, then sudden seemingly random acts of cruelty – cancer, the death of children, natural disasters – must be there to teach us something. If we can control the good things in our lives – the promotions, the achievements, the relationships – then if stuff goes wrong then it must be our fault as well. 

Is that really true? 

Human beings are relentlessly fickle. And we have a deep and overwhelming desire to think that we’re in control, that life is in our hands. And it’s comforting – when things are going well. But what when they aren’t? 

In her book Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved, professor of the history of Christianity and Stage 4 cancer patient Kate Bowler writes that ‘control is a drug, and we’re all hooked’.  

I can see how SoulCycle could get addictive. In fact, the day I was there, someone was celebrating their 750th ride at SoulCycle London. The endorphins, the encouragement, the relentless pursuit of ‘breakthrough’ and ‘growth’ and ‘progress’ – it’s intoxicating.  

When you grow up in the church, you learn a different way of existing. It’s not that you can do all things through yourself, but – as aforementioned – through Christ who strengthens you. The idea of relying on something outside of yourself, something all-powerful, all-loving, is one of the ideas at the heart of Christianity. It’s less of an emotional crutch, and more of a ‘catch-all’ reality for those of us who have realised that we’re not as in control as we once thought, or as we would like to be. 

 

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