War Scenes

By the time I got to the ecumenical Prayer Breakfast at the Baptist Church in Hornington on Saturday, breakfast was over and prayer had long since begun. Naturally there was only one subject on people’s minds and Patrick, the retired Baptist minister leading the reflections, did a sound job bringing out the ramifications of events in Ukraine and the world’s response to them, including the effects on the poor both in Russia and here as sanctions cut in and prices rise. Yesterday I was in school to do assembly with the year 1s, and decided not to talk about war but about Lent: but Alison the headteacher told me the diocese had already sent through a bundle of resources about ‘how to talk to children about war’, not inappropriately as there is one child in the school of Ukrainian extraction.

I doubt the diocesan material includes anything on ‘how to talk to children about the potential end of civilisation’, but my prayers at the moment focus on the war not escalating beyond poor Ukraine. I’m a little calmer about this than I was since reading up a bit about what the situation actually is in respect of the global stock of nuclear weapons, and observing how moderate the Americans are being, but still think there’s a fair chance none of us will make it as far as Easter. It’s not just Mr Putin whose mind seems full of illusions: tyrants rarely fall in single, catastrophic events, tyrannical political systems even less often, but our liberal media love the idea that massive demonstrations will storm the palace and pluck the despot from his throne, or ill-conceived foreign adventures lead to his downfall as plucky small nations defy him. It’s the story they always tell, and it’s fanciful. Hope isn’t a strategy.

Cylene the Goth got in touch to ask how they should address St Olga: I boggled a bit as they’re a pagan. They were treating St Olga of Kyiv in the way they would a pagan deity, gathering things that the entity might like as an offering. ‘I’ve got blue and yellow candles for the Ukrainian flag’, Cylene said: ‘Should I offer vodka, or mead? What would have been around in her time?’ we had an interesting discussion about how the invocation of saints in the Christian tradition differed from pagan approaches. I was quite moved that Cylene even thought of it.

Father Jeffrey of the Roman parish offered the ministers a Shrove Tuesday lunch, and once we were safely through a discussion of clerical shirts and the game casserole I raised the topic of the war. How were my colleagues assimilating all this? Alan from the United Reformed Church admitted that he was so unsettled he was procrastinating about almost everything he had to do ‘because part of me thinks there’s a 5% chance none of us will be alive by Sunday’. Marlene from Tophill just felt fazed and anxious. Jeffrey got us back on a spiritual level by reminding us of the traditional triad of spiritual weaponry we emphasise in Lent – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We may feel powerless, but we are not: these things are ammunition in the Lord’s hands and, while they may not affect the surface of things, they operate against the deep roots of evil which causes so much pain in our world. I found that very helpful.

Finally Gisele, our new Lay Reader who has shifted her allegiance from Tophill, alerted me to the Diocese in Europe’s call for churches to pray about the war at 6pm this evening. A late email rounded up a dozen souls who sat in an intense silence in front of the blessed sacrament. Several of us had Russian or Ukrainian connections and Sylv our Pastoral Assistant brought in some photographs from the Ukraine gathered by her husband who worked there in the 1990s. I even mentioned St Olga in the summing-up: I hope she, and the angels, heard. Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.