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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!


The Sun Bearers, 1961 by Cecil Collins



The Good Man in Hell by Edwin Muir


If a good man were ever housed in Hell

By needful error of the qualities,

Perhaps to prove the rule or shame the devil,

Or speak the truth only a stranger sees,


Would he, surrendering quick to obvious hate,

Fill half eternity with cries and tears,

Or watch beside Hell's little wicket gate

In patience for the first ten thousand years,


Feeling the curse climb slowly to his throat

That, uttered, dooms him to rescindless ill,

Forcing his praying tongue to run by rote,

Eternity entire before him still?


Would he at last, grown faithful in his station,

Kindle a little hope in hopeless Hell,

And sow among the damned doubts of damnation,

Since here someone could live, and live well?


One doubt of evil would bring down such a grace,

Open such a gate, and Eden could enter in,

Hell be a place like any other place,

And love and hate and life and death begin.


Cecil Collins was once giving a talk (at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London) on the state of the arts, and after he had finished speaking, a questioner asked, 'Mr Collins, you do not appear to think much of the current state of the arts in England, to which country are you comparing us?' Cecil. straight of face but with a Cornish twinkle in his eye, shot back, 'Paradise'! 


It was the only measure of the worth of a thing that Collins would accept, and his art was wholly conditioned by a contemplative search to bear some of its light into the world, so that it might be illumined aright, Eden enter in, transforming, transfiguring, becoming a renewed, renewing earth.


It was Muir's labour too - how to allow the good man or woman to stand patiently in hell until hell itself surrendered to a redeeming light. It was Muir's practice as a critic and reviewer never to review a book that he could find nothing to commend. If you could not leaven with the good, be silent (a practice that we in our social media age might greatly benefit from)! Search out the seed of the good, even when you inevitably do not control the soil.


Then there was Dinah, the mother of Ann Wetherall, the founder of Prison Phoenix, and for a while my gracious landlady. She refused to think badly of anyone (except perhaps the Revd. Ian Paisley, well, no one is perfect), and you watched this unremitting positive regard untwist people, unfurl them, to their better selves and purposes. It was not that her life had been without suffering (and not a little danger), but she resolved to see the good, and the good slowly blossomed.


And in my own work world, some twelve years ago, we set out to find out what works in the field of helping enterprises grow and create productive, good jobs for people in low-income communities. We had no targets in mind. Let us find out the 'good' and help it flourish. 


By 2024, our partners had worked with 209,000 enterprises, created directly and indirectly 1.65 million jobs, and generated $35 billion of economic activity in those said communities. 


Given that a third of these enterprises also offered explicit social or environmental goods, we created all kinds of benefits beyond jobs that we had never considered  - 9 million children in Africa having access to clean drinking water at school, for example, or 500,000 patients with access to medical oxygen in East Africa. All done by focusing on what the good looks like, and nurturing it (with lots of other people's hard work too).

 

In a world whose bearings seem to be swinging wildly in unexpected, often forlorn directions, it is good to remind oneself of what simply lighting the lamp (and not debating the darkness to adapt Tagore) might look like - personally, communally - and be reminded that this was one of the focuses of the Incarnation, according to St. Augustine, not himself always a practitioner of seeking the light in others, that in Christ a way of seeing is restored, a new light is born, potentially in all, even St. Augustine apparently, and one that can be practiced in myriad ways, large and small. 


We can all practice resurrection.




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