'Will I learn?'

Sunday 16th August, 2020

I have picked up Alexander McCall Smith's 'The Sunday Philosophy Club'. It is such an easy yet profound read. Miss Dalhousie is a philosopher and her actions and her curiosity and her investigations ( I have not yet read to the conclusion so am ignorant of results and endings) are peppered with philosophising. I relish the to and fro of the arguments, the reflections on morality as well as the various characters who are used to portray particular beliefs and styles of life.

In fact Miss Dalhousie directly addresses the thesis of 'The Compassionate Mind' which I am also reading. It analyses evolution to uncover and display the actions and reactions of humans today. In it is no specific place for religious faith yet Miss Dalhousie faces that and finds no answer to belief/unbelief yet shuts the door firmly on certainties of either camp. She also addresses the question of the justification of lying which has been exercising my mind of late.

Then came a streamed sermon from Ballin in County Mayo, Ireland. The extraordinary and puzzling gospel reading of Jesus meeting the non Jewish woman seeking his help for her daughter. He initially dismisses her as being outside his remit which is only to the House of Israel, even referring to non Jews as dogs. The preacher spoke of prejudice, intolerance, hatred and of accepting all peoples and all creation as sacred. He suggested Jesus's confrontation was a learning curve. I heartily agree that Jesus did not know it all. He too evolved in knowledge and wisdom and it was not all a foregone stylised conclusion. He did not have a road map but rather a vocation, a vision.

This is true of us all. The preacher quoted Nelson Mandela as to how children are not born with prejudice, hatred, friction but learn it. So too Paul Gilbert in the Compassionate Mind sets out how we can learn kindness and compassion. We have life, a set of genes and talents, a set of experiences but while still alive we can learn and each moment is a moment of conscious or unconscious choice, very little is indifferent.

My fourth input this morning was a meditation from the USA. Here the succession of 'order, disorder, reorder' in our lives, minds, purlieus is the developing, maturing and christianising of ourselves. A bold discussion which Miss Dalhousie would have loved to ponder with her Club. So do I. The question is 'Will I learn'?