07 Jul

A woman of evasions

Ten years ago I was living in the City of London, only three hundred yards from St Paul’s and the Rev’d Canon Lucy Winkett who came on Thought for the Day this morning to reflect on the bombings of 7th July. It was a strange performance. Ms Winkett began by saying that one of the first indications something was amiss was that mobile phones weren’t working. This, she said, “Cut us off from one another.” It made me wonder how people were not cut off from one another before mobile phones were invented. But then she got serious:

She said that on 7/7, “Prayer became less a petition and more an accusation, and for many God was indicted.”

I confess I had to go to the BBC’s website and play that sentence again and again to try to discover its meaning. I still haven’t discovered its meaning, so I shall have to resort to asking questions and hope that someone reading my blog will be able to help.

Question: Why bring poor old God into it? I thought the atrocities committed that day were perpetrated by a group of Muslim lads from Yorkshire. Surely, if anyone is to be accused or indicted, Lucy, they were the ones?

Question: Was God being blamed because political correctness demands we don’t blame the Muslims – in spite of what the historical facts reveal?

Then Lucy reached her peroration and told us firmly that “the easy language of faith” is inadequate for the understanding of what happened on 7/7

Question: What is easy about faith and its language?

I can speak only from personal experience and a lifetime’s conversations with teachers and friends about the matter of faith, and I can tell you that neither they nor I has ever felt that faith and the language of faith come easily.

Question: Of whom was Lucy speaking when she mentioned users of the easy language of faith? I’ve never met any.

Question: Is there, please, someone reading this who does find that faith comes easily and therefore that its language can be described as easy?

Perhaps there is only one person who finds faith and its language easy. Perhaps that person is Rev’d Lucy Winkett?

Can you hear me, Lucy?

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