REFLECTION FOR JULY 2013 PETER MILLAR
petermillarreflects.blogspot.co.uk
Two octogenarian prophets of our time
– Amartya Sen and Richard Rogers.
Amartya Sen of India and Richard Rogers of Britain are both
80 this year. In their different, and complementary ways they are prophets of
our time. Sen is one of the great thinkers of the modern world and Rogers,
often controversial, is one of its most distinguished architects. Both have
influenced huge numbers of others on this small, shared planet, and their work
will be analysed, valued and criticised far into the future trajectory of human
history. In my view, they are secular and inspiring prophets: visionaries whose
contribution to our shared story is
great by any standards.
Prof
Sen has just brought out a new book with
his colleague Jean Dreze. It is called – An Uncertain Glory, India and its
Contradictions - and it deals with the enormous disparity in wealth between
those in the “new India” and the hundreds of millions who remain in abject
poverty within a country which is now a global player. The book is a powerful
critique on India’s boom. It still remains a basic fact that modern India is a
disaster area in which millions of lives
are wrecked by hunger and a pitiable investment in health and education
services. His statistics about present-day poverty in India are grim reading.
Truly grim.
Yet despite his critique Sen argues on the side of hope and
with a deep faith in human reason. He believes that the consciences of the
Indian middle classes can be stirred, and that political change will come, even
if not quickly. I think I am less certain of that.
Amartya Sen has been a towering thinker in many fields -
science, economics, public health, philosophy and law, yet his work is rooted
in the search for true justice among the world’s people. For Sen, the great
Indian poet Tagore has been a life-long influence. Like Tagore, he continues to keep the poorest people on earth central in his thinking. We salute him
at 80.
The controversial and distinguished British architect Lord
Richard Rogers 80th birthday is presently being celebrated by a
major retrospective exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy in London.
Rogers has designed a huge number of
world-famous buildings, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Lloyds
Building in London and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. His
work is acclaimed by many and disliked by others, including his best-known
persistent critic the Prince of Wales.
I like his modern, functional work, not least because his
great public buildings provide wonderful spaces for human beings to meet and
interact. The Pompidou Centre revolutionised museums by transforming what had
once been monuments for the elite into popular places of social and cultural
exchange, woven into the heart of the city. Rogers once said: “The street is
where society comes into itself. Watching TV on your own is not very inspiring.”
His public spaces are places of life, of celebration, of community, of hope.
Some people expect the prophets to be religious people in a traditional
sense. That cannot be said of either Sen or Rogers, but a prophet is
essentially a person who challenges us to see well beyond our own often limited
vision of life, of God, of other people, of the future, of the fate of the
planet. Without prophets whether they be within the church or outside it, we
are inwardly impoverished. Our way of “seeing” becomes static and we become
content with the often bland options which engulf and frame modern societies.
Father Richard Rohr whose writings so many of us all around
the world appreciate, puts it this way:
“Up to now, the
hegemony on Christian teaching and theology was held by an exclusive group –
males, educated, the Northern hemisphere, those with a vested interest in
organised religion, those who never went beyond their own denominational
boundaries.
At long last the
neglected perspectives are having their say – the feminine lens, the lens of
those on the bottom instead of just those on the top, the lens of Blacks,
Latinos and Asians, the lens of sexual minorities and all minorities, the lens
of the incarcerated and even the lens of sincere secular seekers.
Truth like beauty is in
the eye of the beholder – and we have a lot of new beholders”.
(This is
taken from a webcast under the title: What is the Emerging Church?)
As I look at the state of the world in which there is so much
injustice and misery it is easy to wonder where it will end up. Many commentators
believe that within a few generations there will be those on the top in terms
of wealth and power and the vast majority of the human race struggling to live,
with few in between. Is it not like that already?
Each day, often in a very fragile way, I try to walk
alongside those who are committed to hope, to compassion, to awareness -
whether they have a faith in God or whether they don’t. Many of you who read
these reflections are on a similar path. That is something to celebrate, even
when we sometimes feel the path is lonely. I see in people like Amartya Sen and
Richard Rogers two individuals, who even if controversial and often
misunderstood, stand on the side of hope
and justice and risk. There are thousands like them in every nation, but sometimes
they are silenced by governments and embedded power structures.
In my
latest book A Time To Mend: Reflections
in Uncertain Times (Wild Goose Publications) I included these words which are
part of a longer meditation:
For LIGHT still shines, and illumining
our days we walk together in it.
And in the walking we remember and
celebrate the miracle and wonder of life –
but also something more: the
unfolding and surprising purposes of God
forever at work in ourselves and the
world.
