I / We apologise -- Yeah, right...

A genuine apology means not merely that I feel sorry. It means that I know that my part in what happened was wrong, and that I have determined that it won't happen again. At a deeper level it means that I have had a change of heart -- I inwardly reject whatever it was that caused me to do/say that thing. Apology means that I have accepted my personal responsibility for what happened, I acknowledge that it was wrong and should not have happened, and that so far as it lies with me it will not happen again.

So real apology lies much more in the will than in how I say I feel. How I feel, even if I feel devastated, is not the issue.

In recent times we have a curious phenomenon. People are apologising all over the place. It has become trendy. Or it has become for some an exercise in damage limitation. Prime Ministers, Presidents, Popes and Bishops, are having to apologise. Others who see themselves as Victims are, often self-righteously, requiring apologies. Apologies are alleged to help towards something called Closure. I don't know what Closure is, and I suspect no one else is sure about it either. In some cases it seems to entail some implied permission to go ahead with a funeral, or to get on with life, as though these things were not possible before.

Media call it the "sorry word", which, as often as not, they say they're not hearing. But when we do hear the Sorry word -- from some celebrity typically, some sporting icon after the latest gang sex episode, or some commercial tycoon who caught his fingers in the till -- we tend to say Yeah, right. It is as though the secular world has really no pathway for healing and restoration, no redemption except for some pathetic ritual apology routine, which is about as empty and hypocritical as anything they criticise in religion.

But I think real apology is just as important and moving as it may be rare. I also think its currency has got drastically devalued in both secular society and the church, in these times.

If all you want is your oppressor to say he is sorry, publicly and humiliatingly, and then you will feel better, and perhaps put it all behind you (another cliche) -- well that's OK, and sometimes it can even be arranged. Then everyone is at liberty to say whether they think the apology is sincere (as though they have any way of knowing). Always there will be some who are satisfied with the expressed apology, and others, possibly many more, who are not.

Perhaps now political and church leaders should cease issuing apologies, for just this reason. For a real sincere apology to be given and then questioned, or rejected, is insulting, doubly humiliating, and perhaps destroying. But to issue merely formal apologies is also insulting, in other ways.

On a more personal level, if you wish your oppressor to confess sorrow and amendment of life, that is quite another matter. That is what the Bible calls metanoia, change of heart and mind and will, a turning around, a new heart and a new start. It is what is meant by repentance.

I don't think secular culture has any way of doing this. So real apology is rare, although ritual apologies are surprisingly common. On the other side of metanoia is not merely peace and resolution of past issues, but also a new life and resolve.

Local culture

This is Sunday (evening), 24 May -- and we have just phoned Rhys in Brisbane to wish him happy birthday.

Mary and I got ourselves to a rather remarkable concert in Warkworth, this afternoon, in the historic old Anglican church. They have a very versatile and well-installed electronic organ. Some people get sniffy about these things -- they prefer a genuine pipe organ, they say. Well, no doubt, but the modern electronic (digital...?) instruments are respectable and useful instruments in their own right, it seems to me. They are affordable by smaller churches. We had one in St Peter's, Mt Wellington, and it was actually better for our purposes than a pipe organ. It is 1000 times better than a couple of badly-played guitars, a piano, and some compulsive enthusiast with a trumpet. Or drums.

On this occasion we had the Auckland City Organist, Dr John Wells, who lectures at the university, composes preludes and fugues and other stuff, and is recording an organ version of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. He's talented and very pleasant and witty. So he gave us a programme called The Well-Tempered Afternoon, and it consisted of some J S Bach, some Handel, some Mendelssohn and Vivaldi -- and some John Wells. His own works were played on the parish's fairly ancient piano, and he managed to break the ivory off one of the keys in the process. All good fun. All of this for $20.00. Who needs to travel in to Auckland for culture...

He did explain why Bach called his composition The Well-Tempered Clavier. It all has to do with tuning for different key signatures, and how the modern piano is really a compromise that can be played in any key. In Bach's day the keyboard instruments were tuned only for certain key signatures. And in German, Bach's title means "The Well-Tuned Piano".

So, we enjoyed ourselves. All the music was lyrical, tuneful... And was soothing, since I had just found a flat tyre on my car (which had only just had a new set of tyres fitted), and we had had to come in Mary's car.

The abuse of children

A very high-powered commission in Ireland has produced a massive report on the abuse of children in Catholic institutions in the mid-20th century. It's monstrous. On the web, the .pdf files are huge. And sickening. Needy and helpless children knew nothing other than sustained torture, beatings and floggings, sexual assault, injustice and exploitation, fear and suffering, through their childhood and adolescent years -- at the hands of professing and vowed christian servants in orders such as the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy...(Mercy...heaven help us all...)

And that's just Ireland. This is not ancient history. The recipients of this christian service, many of them, are with us today. Many of them remain crippled and consumed with anger.

This is the shadow side of catholicism -- of importance to me, because I am a Benedictine Oblate, and therefore somehow committed to catholicism. I have always known that, wherever you are in the christian outfit you have to take the rough with the smooth, the ugly and the botoxed with the beautiful, the sinners with the saints. You have to buy the whole rotten field because it is there that the treasure is buried...

But this is unthinkable. To over-work a verb, I think Jesus also thought this.. Whoever harms one of these little ones, it were better for that person that a millstone were hung round his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. (Anyway, see Matthew 18:6, and Luke 17:2).

Someone on radio this morning pointed out that, at that time, plenty of people entered these religious orders, not because they wanted to, or had any sort of christian calling, but because of family pressure, social deprivation, total lack of prospects. These people became professed Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy -- to say nothing of other orders. The children referred to these institutions encountered teachers, supervisors, whatever, who had actually no vocation, no hope, whatever. Ye gods.

And I want to write something, perhaps another day, about apology and apologies, and how the whole currency of real contrition has got devalued... Another day.

But meanwhile, the children. Children have an absolute moral claim on adult care. It's not negotiable. The Irish children, and others around the world, are an ineradicable blot on the conscience of a great many christians, most of whom had nothing to do with it personally.

The old boys gather and blather

Some rich company today. Peter Wedde came up from Auckland and brought Graeme Ferguson -- these were my contemporaries at both Auckland and Otago Universities, and at Knox College. Long ago. All our marriages have survived, and between us we have seen and experienced quite a lot. Peter and Graeme still do things in the church, while I don't. We enjoy each other's company, and I suppose each of us thinks the others have mellowed, and that "they" needed to.

So we had lunch together. I made some rather fine pea and bacon soup, and some bread -- and Mary left some chocolate and apricot squares for us. We talked. I'm interested to note that none of it was bitter or recriminative, or regretful. It is as though we have made peace with life and unanswered questions and unresolved issues. Graeme battles on with the effects of his big stroke some years ago, but he sat at the table and one-handedly buttered and cut his own bread, and dealt with his soup. Of course we traversed theology and politics, and the state of the church from where we are. They loved the situation here, the view, the quiet.

These are people who embody the gentle, scholarly, sensitive and liberal company of Christ. Our wounds and scars show, I guess. We have long ago relinquished any need for dogmatism or control. We have ministered everywhere from Scotland to Papua New Guinea, from Cambridge UK to Australia, to Kiwiland, in parishes and theological college. Mary was sorry she could not be present, but maybe soon we'll organise another such luncheon here, with spouses.

Day at home

Mary is at work, which means at Middlemore Hospital. It means she has to live in an apartment the hospital has provided for her in central Auckland, and take the train from there each day -- Tuesday to Thursday. I see her in the weekends.

I had to get blood tests, urine tests. It meant having no breakfast, driving to Warkworth, joining the queue of fasting supplicants hanging around there, and getting my doctor's form in at a reasonable time of waiting. I await results. Went to the doctor yesterday -- well, to the locum for the bloke who will probably be my doctor now -- and she, a very laid back lady, seemed merely to be amused at everything. That's fine with me. They'll phone me if there is anything untoward.

So tomorrow I have a visit from maybe three old colleagues in the Presbyterian Church, which I have departed. So they are good and loyal old friends, and I will entertain them with pea and bacon soup, and fresh bread that I have made.

Update

This is 18.05.2009. I went to set up a blog, and discovered I already had two from way back some time. It was interesting to read them and see how I have moved on in that time. Blogs are by their nature egocentric, and that is what I am trying not to be. But you can't write a blog without the use of the first person singular pronoun. And that's an irony, because I have just been fulminating about what the NZ Herald currently calls journalism -- which so often consists in columnists interviewing themselves, one way or another, about some apparently newsworthy person.

How do you feel about...? It's the standard interviewer question, and often it's astoundingly banal and inappropriate. It assumes that how someone feels about someone or something is news. Typically people these days haven't the remotest idea about facts and circumstances, subtleties and history, but they sure know how they feel. So egocentrism rules.

My wife Mary and I are now living at Algies Bay, which is about an hour's drive north of Auckland. You go to Warkworth, a lovely town but steadily now being ruined by "development", and then about 11 km out to the coast, via Snells Beach. We bought this property back in 1981, after we came back from Fiji. It was to be out retirement home, and in the meantime a holiday place. About 3 years later the estranged husband of a tenant burned it down. So we built this house, with a little self-contained flat downstairs for our holidays, but tenanted upstairs. Now it's all ours, completely renovated -- and we look out over Kawau Bay and watch the changing light and clouds and boats and weather effects. It's all lovely. We are growing feijoas and guavas, apples and plums, and during the renovations we got a raised vegetable garden built, which Mary has now planted in useful things.

But Mary had decided to do a 3 months locum back in her old workplace, Middlemore Hospital. So until July she is heading back to Auckland on Mondays, giving our daughter Rachel a few hours with our lovely grandson Stephen David Ross, and then on to the apartment the hospital is providing for her in central Auckland. From there she can take the train to Middlemore and back on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then drive back here on Fridays, again via Rachel, Simon and Stephen. I think it's working well, but I'll be glad when the 3 months are up.

I resist various attempts to enlist me in this and that worthy local community thing. Despite this blog, I actually prefer my privacy -- especially from the church, right now.