How Fast Were The Magi?

I heard a preacher recently cross-examining children. Among other things, she asked them how old Jesus was when the magi came with their gifts. One young girl - eightish at a guess - suggested, hesitantly, that he could have been about one, to which the preacher replied that she was wrong. Jesus, the preacher reckoned, must have been far older because it would have taken the magi a long, long time to travel all that distance.

Three learning points - at least - from this. Firstly, don't ask questions where you don't know the answer yourself, unless you are properly prepared to listen. Secondly, children actually know a surprising amount, so don't discount what they say. Thirdly, double check your own assumptions. Fourthly - a bonus point - giving children the third degree is not the same as being interactive, and bluntly telling them that their answer is just wrong is poor teaching (not to mention that you risk making yourself look plain ignorant).

So, how old was Jesus when the wise men came? The Bible story, told in Matthew's Gospel, doesn't directly say, but it does tell us that Herod checked when the wise men first saw the star then sent his soldiers to kill all the children in the area under the age of two. So he certainly thought Jesus was not a babe in arms but no more than two years old. So 'about one' is a pretty fair estimate.

What about the distance the magi had to travel? Well, from modern Tehran in Persia to Bethlehem is around a thousand miles. The magi almost certainly would have come from west of there, so 1,000 miles is the maximum likely distance (Baghdad would have been about 550 miles). The Bible doesn't mention camels - it doesn't even mention how many 'wise men' there were - but if they were important people they would have been mounted on something, and camels are as likely as anything else.

On decent terrain - they would have been using ancient trade routes - a camel can comfortably travel 25 miles a day, for day after day. The humans involved may not have been so hardy, so a conservative estimate would be a hundred miles a week. That makes ten weeks maximum for the journey. On foot, people might travel at around half that speed, say fifty miles a week: a maximum of twenty weeks for the journey.

Long distance travel in the ancient world was not that unusual - there was a major trade route between China and the Mediterranean - and really not that slow.

So: ask questions, listen to answers, check assumptions, and always respect kids. That'll do for this post.

Abortion, Contraception, Homosexuality and Divorce

According to the BBC those are the topics of the two-week Roman Catholic synod starting today.
According to the Vatican the purpose of the synod is to discuss the family. Spot the difference.

More specifically, the official title of the meeting is "Pastoral Challenges To The Family in the Context of Evangelisation". To put it in slightly plainer English, this meeting is to look at "proclaiming and living the Gospel of the Family in a credible manner", whilst a second meeting next year looks at "pastoral care of the person and the family".

It is important to note that the preparatory document puts relating the Gospel to the family in the context of "preaching the Gospel to all creation". Unlike much of the comment which has arisen from various pressure groups, this official position does not directly reflect the commonly held church prejudice that focuses on marriage to the exclusion of single people.

The preparatory document lists many new concerns about the family:

The many new situations requiring the Church’s attention and pastoral care include: mixed or inter-religious marriages; the single-parent family; polygamy; marriages with the consequent problem of a dowry, sometimes understood as the purchase price of the woman; the caste system; a culture of non-commitment and a presumption that the marriage bond can be temporary; forms of feminism hostile to the Church; migration and the reformulation of the very concept of the family; relativist pluralism in the conception of marriage; the influence of the media on popular culture in its understanding of marriage and family life; underlying trends of thought in legislative proposals which devalue the idea of permanence and faithfulness in the marriage covenant; an increase in the practice of surrogate motherhood (wombs for hire); and new interpretations of what is considered a human right. Within the Church, faith in the sacramentality of marriage and the healing power of the Sacrament of Penance show signs of weakness or total abandonment.

That's a long list and, creditably, it does not just focus on the concerns of relatively wealthy Westerners.

The classic church response to challenges has been to focus on rules and restrictions: "Thou shalt not". It is just possible that the new Pope's approach over these meetings will be different:

By simply calling to mind the fact that, as a result of the current situation, many children and young people will never see their parents receive the sacraments, then we understand just how urgent are the challenges to evangelization arising from the current situation, which can be seen in almost every part of the “global village”. Corresponding in a particular manner to this reality today is the wide acceptance of the teaching on divine mercy and concern towards people who suffer on the periphery of societies, globally and in existential situations.

"The current situation" quoted being that remarried divorcees are excluded  from taking communion in Roman Catholic churches. Focussing on divine mercy and concern for the marginalised is a new approach (in this context). Hopefully it will lead the Catholic Church, which has around a billion followers, onto a new path which is less focussed on social control than in the past, and more focussed on helping people where they actually are.

Personally I think it would be good to see that extending to an affirmation of committed gay marriages, and an encouragement for such couples to have children - whether by adoption or artificial insemination - and so form the faithful stable families that Roman Catholic teachings say they are so keen on. Although I suspect that would be many steps too far.

Not that a different approach is guaranteed. The (US-based) Catholic News Agency is busy reporting on (plugging) more conservative views on the family and pressing for simple restatement of old teachings. For example:

“Men and women need desperately to hear the truth about why they should get married in the first place,” the letter states. “And, once married, why Christ and the Church desire that they should remain faithful to each other throughout their lives on this earth.” The letter said that men and women need to know that in times of marital difficulty the Church will be “a source of support, not just for individual spouses, but for the marriage itself.”

In other words the pastoral needs of individuals should be secondary to protecting and promoting the institution. The letter they are reporting on also describes marriage and the family as "indispensible", a real kick in the teeth to the vast army of single people who faithfully serve Jesus as part of the Roman Catholic church.

So this synod is an opportunity for a major change of tone and focus for the Roman Catholic church (although not on the underlying fundamental values). However the forces of conservatism and authoritarianism are mobilising to stop that happening.

I am a bit dubious about the operation of the Holy Spirit through church denominations, indeed through organised religion in general, but if ever there was a time for prayer that the Spirit's movement might be truly effective, this is surely it. The lives of a billion people could be affected, for better or for worse.

All Change

We spent yesterday driving down the motorway to deliver our daughter (and a huge pile of stuff) to her new accommodation as she starts life at university. Very stressful and rather teary ... she was upset too ;)

Meanwhile our son, who graduated in July, looks like he has a job and will be leaving home in a couple of weeks. Likely another stressful, teary occasion, along a different motorway.

Then it will be just the two of us, at least during term time. However will we cope, after 22 years of living as parents, first and foremost?

It has to be said that an awful lot of other parents have been through this before us, and somehow survived. It's even labelled a 'syndrome', so it must be serious - and there's loads of advice all over the internet. The Independent has a good article here which ends with some sensible 'coping strategies'.

The site where I got the rather super picture above (just click on the picture to go there) begins with a good description of Empty Nest Syndrome, although by some sleight of hand it ends up plugging a book called Crowded Nest Syndrome. On the way it makes the point that often "the anticipation of children leaving home is more frightening than when they actually do leave". I think for us this rings a bell. And it brings back memories of earlier, similarly scary transitions, like their first day at school, which worked out okay in the end.

At heart I think the issue is about coping with change, especially at a time of life when it seems everything is changing too fast. Except that this always seems to be the way with change: nothing much seems to happen for ages, then suddenly loads of changes pile up on you at once. Leaving home ourselves, getting married, having children - they're all typically at busy times in our lives, they're all times when everything changes, and they are all times when a positive approach really helps.

Take getting married: back in the day a wife used to be known as a 'ball and chain', and my in-laws-to-be were horrified at the idea of their daughter getting married before she had the chance to 'see the world'. Actually, seeing the world together as a couple was a lot more fun. It's a matter of appreciating and enjoying the positives and opportunities that the life change brings.

Similarly with having children. It cut down on 'seeing the world' - so much extra stress and hassle in long distance travel with young children - but there are so many opportunities to do new things and enjoy new experiences together as a family.

And now we are back to being a couple again - but a middle-aged couple this time, with grown up children experiencing their own adventures. I don't know what new opportunities this will bring, but I'm sure they will be there; we just need to be alert and open, ready to enjoy them.

The past is a wonderful (hopefully) part of the way things are, and the future is a great unknown, but the present is an amazing gift, always full of unexpected things, ready for us to wonder at, to learn from and, especially, to enjoy.

Wherever you are, whatever changes you are going through, may God give you the great gift of enjoying your present, for all it is worth.

Why I Think Rowan Williams Is A Good Guy

(Part of the reason anyway).

Lulu, the six-year-old daughter of journalist Alex Renton (who doesn't believe in God), wrote God a letter:

To God how did you get invented? From Lulu xo

After some thought (you can read the full story here), he sent a copy of the letter to a number of people, including the head of theology of the Anglican Communion, based at Lambeth Palace. After a while a reply came from Rowan Williams himself:

Dear Lulu,

Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It's a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this –

'Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn't expected.

Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – specially in the life of Jesus – to help them get closer to what I'm really like.

But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!'

And then he'd send you lots of love and sign off.

I know he doesn't usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf.

Lots of love from me too.

+Archbishop Rowan

The letter went down well with Lulu, we are told, especially the idea of "God's story". But best of all is Lulu's response when her dad asked her what she thought:

Well, I have very different ideas. But he has a good one.

 I'm sure the archbishop would approve.