In these days when the spiritual path is often presented as a somewhat soft and even self-indulgent affair it is something of a shock to come up against an altogether different view. And that is what we do when we sing John Bunyan’s great hymn, ‘Who would true valour see’, based as it is on the spiritual pilgrimage as set out in ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ – perhaps, with Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, the greatest and most enduring literary achievement of 17th-century Puritanism. There is nothing airy-fairy about the pilgrim path to the Celestial City. It is hard, dangerous and beset with perils, some obvious some less so. More rationally-obsessive Unitarians have sometimes cavilled at the hymn’s vivid imagery with its “giants”, its “hobgoblins” and its “foul fiends”, perhaps failing to appreciate the psychological and spiritual realities which these metaphors represent. Life’s pilgrimage is indeed beset with dangers and obstacles, both external and internal, that must somehow be confronted and dealt with if it is to make any progress.
But one set of obstacles that may be easier to recognise are the “dismal stories” with which the pilgrim may and probably will be surrounded. Bunyan writes that the purveyors of such stories “ do but themselves confound”, and are put to flight by an inner strength which “no lion can…fright”. But how do we manage to deal with the “dismal stories” with which we are surrounded in this not-so-different age?
The month of January is one when, perhaps, “dismal stories” can loom large in our consciousness. It is, all too often, a pretty dismal time, the power of which to cast its gloom and depression on our fragile minds should not be underestimated. Christmas and New Year celebrations have faded away all-too-swiftly, perhaps leaving a legacy of unpaid bills and overspending. The days may be lengthening by seconds but they remain short and the nights long. And although there may be some of those bright and sparkling winter days, all too often it is dull, grey and insidiously cold – a “dismal story” in itself. But that is all part of the natural cycle with which we have always lived and which, it should be said, provides us with snowdrops as a cheering harbinger of springtime resurrection. We can deal with winter, “come wind, come weather”, if our inner resources are not already overstretched. But sometimes they are.
This may be due to the various personal travails with which all of us must deal – with varying degrees of success. We may find the inner strength, the “avowed intent”, to transcend them; we may struggle to surmount them, and even manage it in the end; but sometimes we will be overwhelmed and be plunged into what Bunyan called “the slough of despond” or, worse still, “an iron cage” in which “a man of despair” is “shut up”. These grim images are no mere fancy, of course, and will probably be all too appropriate for all of us at some point in our lives.
But apart from our own personal struggle with our own personal “dismal stories”, there are those which we face as a human community. Not least of these is the Covid pandemic, which continues to blight our lives and to drag on – and will, perhaps, for years as the Greek alphabet of variants stretches out ahead of us. ‘Living with the virus’ is an oft-heard phrase but even if its medical impact can be diminished its ongoing power to affect our lives is worryingly hard to predict. And that is even more true in places with less access to vaccines and medical resources than we have.
And there are other “dismal stories” too that challenge the optimistic view that the world is becoming a safer, happier, fairer and more united place. And not least of these is the environmental crisis of which humanity has all-too-belatedly become aware, having ignored the prophets for all too long – those prophets being the proclaimers of uncomfortable truths that political and economic interests, not to mention most of the rest of us, would rather not hear.
For some fifty years the voices of those warning of impending crisis were ignored, ridiculed or suppressed; dismissed as irritating ‘prophets of doom’ whose “dismal stories” could be safely ignored. There was a time when people who delivered “dismal stories” were called “Jeremiahs”, Jeremiah being the Old Testament prophet most given to predictions of unrelieved gloom and disaster. But Jeremiah’s tragedy, like that of Cassandra in Greek mythology, was that he was not believed even though he was right. Jeremiah lived in the kingdom of Judah, the southern half of what had once been the united realm of David and Solomon. But all was not well. Jeremiah attributed Judah’s imminent peril to its faithlessness, its disloyalty to the Covenant between itself and its God, Yahweh. Much of this had to do with the greed and immorality of the ruling class and with religious observance or the lack of it. But it was also to do with injustice and the plight of the poor and the disadvantaged.
As Jeremiah put it, speaking to the king and his courtiers as Yahweh’s mouthpiece, “Deal justly and fairly, rescue the victim from his oppressor, do not ill-treat or use violence towards the alien, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.” Do justly, Jeremiah says, and the Davidic dynasty, its “retinue and subjects” will flourish, but disobey this demand and “this palace will become a ruin” (22: 3…5), and with it the city and the land itself. Jeremiah was predicting the downfall of Judah, its conquest by the superpower of the age, and the captivity of Judah’s ruling class in Babylon. In prophesying this Jeremiah may or may not have been speaking for God, but he was revealing an acute awareness of political reality and the self-deluding weakness of Judah. And it wasn’t just the king and his courtiers who Jeremiah targeted. He also condemned the scribes “with their lying pens”, “the wise” who are “put to shame”, those “high and low” who “are out for ill-gotten gain”, and even – or especially – the religious leadership, of whom he declared, “prophets and priests are frauds, every one of them.” They took the easy path and held back on the truth: “…they dress my people’s wound, but on the surface only, with their saying ‘All is well.’ All well? Nothing is well.” (8: 8…11)
And the prophecy of Jeremiah has an environmental dimension too, indicating that human folly has consequences for the earth itself. Speaking for God, he declares, “My people are foolish, they know nothing of me” (4: 22), “The whole land will be desolate and I shall make an end of it. The earth will be in mourning…” (4: 27-28).
But one category of the people are spared the wrath of Jeremiah’s prophecy. He says, “Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord; for he rescues the poor from those who would do them wrong.” (20: 13) And, as it turned out, the poorest sections of Judah’s society were not sent into exile in Babylon. And so there is good news for some in Jeremiah’s prophecy, and in fact – despite the general gloom – there is good news more generally later on. Taking up a theme common in Old Testament prophecy, Jeremiah promises an eventual restoration for Israel – meaning the Jewish people more generally: “Virgin Israel, I shall build you up again, and you will be rebuilt.” (31: 4). There is a need for even the most severe of prophets to offer some hope, to find hope in pretty hopeless situations. And the truth is that although false hope is a trap to be wary of, and although hope is no guarantee that prophecy’s darkest predictions will not come to pass, at least in part, it has often been the human experience that some light persists. This is no facile promise of better times just around the corner, but it is a call not to give up, not to surrender to despair, but instead to work in our own time and place for what we believe and know to be true and right. That is the best response to those “dismal stories” and it is the way to claim the “right to be a pilgrim”.
As the Unitarian minister and liturgist, A. Powell Davies, wrote in his book of prayers, ‘The Language of the Heart’, “When it seems to us that all before is dark, give us to remember that so it seemed to many who went before us…let us know that the great and good of every time have had to find their way, as we must, by their courage and in confidence and trust. Help us, O God, to keep close company with their spirits.” To which I, at least, can say Amen.
Cliff Reed
Minister emeritus, Ipswich Unitarian Meeting
(CMR060122)