To Touch
August 25th, 2003
Dear Friends
It has been another interesting month, temperature aside. I, like you,
have been busy and I trust that you have experienced the same sense
of fun and fulfilment .
One of the fun things was to visit Roundelwood to do the health thing!
It is important to have some first hand experience of a business you
oversee in some or other capacity even if it means stripping off to your 'smalls' and having your back pummelled. Imagine lying there on an electric blanket, being basted in peppermint oil, shrink wrapped like a Christmas Turkey and left to stew. Those who travel with me know how hilariously uncomfortable I feel being frisked at the Airport.
I have always believed these therapies were appropriate for the namby pambies in this world! But the experience set me thinking. Why are we so repressed in our culture about touching, and being touched? I thought of the instances in which Jesus touched and healed, about the time a woman touched his garment and about the brusque attitude of the disciples when Jesus enquired about the person who touched him. When Jesus restored lepers – he was not so much healing a skin condition, he was healing people who had lost sensitivity to touch and pain. We need to have our sensitivity restored. Leadership is about being touchable.
Fulfilment came from being able to spend hours, talking to people in several settings about their needs and perceptions. Then to realise again how much creativity and potential they have. The sad bit was to discover how lonely some of our closest colleagues feel and about their sense of powerlessness. Worse still to hear about the combatant manner some of us have dealt with frustrations in God's name! If only I had a month of Sunday lunch breaks! Leadership is about taking time for conversation.
During this time I was able to read 'The Dignity of Difference' by Jonathan Sacks. Oh how we understate the wealth of our Hebrew heritage! Tensions motivated by religious difference are of deep concern to him. He sees fundamentalism as a 'Tower of Babel' in our age. One of his key themes was for us to see the 'Image of God' in people who differ from us because God's creation is diverse by definition. We should see and share truths that are universal, rather than dwell on divisive 'particularities'. He offers, as a solution, a covenant of hope.
"Covenant is the use of language to create a bond of trust through the word given, the word received, the word honoured in mutual fidelity"…"Hope is the faith that, together we can make things better…it is an active virtue..." "Hope is the belief not that God has written the script of history, that he will intervene to save us from the error of our ways or protect us from the worst consequences of evil, but that he is mindful of our aspirations… that he has given us the means to save ourselves from ourselves and that we are not wrong to dream for a better world." "We are summoned by God – to do His work of love, of justice and compassion and peace."
May God give you confidence and sensitivity to touch the lives of people you worship or do business with, and be touched by their need to converse and embrace the Covenant of Hope offered by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yours sincerely
Victor Pilmoor
Treasurer