Tag Archives: kenarchy

My Aunty Judy

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My aunty Judy is a heroine of mine (one of many incredible and strong women in my life). She is an example of a life poured out in love for those around her. She is a district nurse, working in rural north Yorkshire in the North East of England. I heard a story about her recently which inspired me and challenged me deeply.

I found out that Judy was visiting a certain patient of hers, who has a severe and chronic airways disease, unable to even leave the house due to her level of breathlessness. Judy went to this lady’s house and had never seen such squalour. The lady was too disabled to do any cleaning herself, and therefore none had been done for ten years! So, on the following day, when Judy could have been a having a well deserved rest, as she already works well over her allotted hours, she went and cleaned this lady’s house from top to bottom. The “system” had turned a blind eye to this lady’s needs, but Judy knew fine well that with the amount of dust and fungus in the house, this lady stood little chance of improving her breathing at all. No extra pay, no thanks from the lady, but rather a disciplinary hearing from the management powers, for going beyond her remit! But the lady now has a clean house, because Judy was willing to be a toilet, forgiving the system for its failings, cleaning up the mess and releasing more life in the process.

To embrace kenarchy is to embrace humility.

But when she’s not nursing, she is caring for children with severe mental and physical illnesses in her own home, to give their parents some respite. And when she is not doing this, she is often trekking halfway across Europe to help her eldest son who is setting up an eco-backpackers place in Bulgaria! And amongst all of that she cares deeply for her 4 other children and their families and her own mum, my Nanna, who’s health is seriously declining. Talk about going the extra mile!

Yet she has learnt the secret of rest and refilling in the midst of it all so that she doesn’t burn out. She has found the secret that God is really with her as she serves others. This is where God is found – with those who are in need! She has learnt about unforced rhythms of grace.

No job is too small for us, no person too unclean to be embraced and no task is beneath us. This is the kind of love that transforms the world.

The Ring of Power

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I’m currently reading Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings to my eldest son. We have just finished that part in ‘The Two Towers’ in which Gandalf has returned to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli at the turning of the tide. He makes this awesome statement about Sauron the dark lord:

‘That we should wish to cast him down and have NOONE in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the ring (of power) itself has not entered into his darkest dream.’

There are still the stirrings of revolution in many nations. But revolution that is based on violence and only replaces one form of dominant power with another sort of hierarchical dominance is no revolution at all.

Kenarchy is about the emptying out of power. It comes from an understanding that the politics of Jesus were about emptying out power and utterly transforming it. Leadership is not only to be kenotic (that is poured out for others), it is to be kenarchic (that is emptied out) so that we begin to understand that the lowest place is the highest place. We begin to understand that level playing fields are the order of the day. We are not looking for new political parties, but a new politics, that is a new way of relating to one another. We are not looking for new economic regulations, but a new economics. We are not searching for peace maintained through violence but a genuine love of one another, including the love of our ‘enemies’ that transforms how we live together as humanity.

William T Cavanaugh gives a radical reinterpretation of the christian eucharist in the light of this. We live in a divided world in which the ‘powers’ crush and break the multitude. When Jesus breaks bread and gives it away, he is not looking to form an exclusive club. He is, rather inviting us to partake of this kind of givenness, to embrace brokenness in the face of violence and to find that this way of life-poured-out-love finds hope in resurrection. As we eat the bread, we receive life, we become life and we give life as we share with others. The bread is given and is available to all who will receive it. Our barriers are broken down, our borders and our flags lose their relevance. We become part of this trans-local body that only exists to bring life, love and peace. There is no politics (way of doing life) that is more radical than this.

The nation state project holds power at the centre. It uses the components of money, law and control through violence to do this. I believe that as we build relationally in our localities we can find new ways of being. This is happening on a vast scale already and many stories are emerging of alternative ways of being that provide a different narrative to the dominant (economic and political) one of our day.

At What Cost?

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I was handed a book this week entitled: “People over Capital” (the co-operative alternative to capitalism) and I’m looking forward to reading it on my way to Toronto later next week. The back cover starts with these words: “Economic turmoil, rampant inequality, austerity politics, climate chaos. Capitalism is clearly failing and ordinary people are being forced to pay the price. Faced with such deep-rooted problems there is real hunger for alternative ways of organising our economic systems.”  Increasingly I am becoming aware of the effect of what Foucault calls “biopower” or the commodification of life itself.

The film UK Gold has highlighted with insightful and expository brilliance the true relationship between the UK ‘democratic’ government and the corporate giants. If we’re not careful, we turn a blind to the cost of the cuts and the immense toll that the squeeze is really having on the little people. Whilst literally billions of pounds are being siphoned off into tax havens to bolster the super rich, we are making unbelievable cuts to our public services and welfare systems. The heartbreaking truth is that we are paying for this, not only financially, but people are being eaten up like bread, fodder for the economic machine that is destroying the very life we are made for. I know of two people in the last few days who sadly took their own lives under extreme pressures being placed on them as they tired to serve the public good – one a police officer, the other a social worker…….

I have blogged about ‘revolution’ and the need for something utterly and life-givingly different to what we have now, but I maintain that even in the face of the pain and sorrow, stress and strain that many find themselves in, the answer has never been and will never be violence. There is another way, and it is the way of love. We must love those who perpetrate these crimes against humanity. Our only hope is to forgive the wrong we are suffering and so find a better future for us all. How do we ‘turn the other cheek’ when we feel smacked in the face by an uncaring system that would squeeze the very life out of us for the sake of keeping the economy going? How do we give of ourselves lovingly in the face of such opposition and uncaring greed? How do we dance to a different rhythm than the dominant marching beat that sets it’s metronome to the whims of ‘market forces’?

Now is the time for creative experiments, like those of William Penn, before his sons sold out to greed and dominating hierarchy. These are days to love our enemies until there is nothing left for them except to love us back, as Martin Luther King demonstrated. We are in a moment of extraordinary potential. We must not rush, but take our time to let new hope, vision and pragmatic ways of reorganising ourselves to germinate within us. Kenarchy is about emptying out power, laying our lives down in love for one another, prioritising the dispossessed and radically renegotiating our relationship with money (sacred economics). We can remain as we are but the stark ongoing cost will be destruction, demoralisation and death. Or we can put on love, forgive the past, learn from it and embrace the future. It will cost us everything, but our hope is one of life.