Archbishop Jonathan Blake

The Most Reverend Jonathan Blake, Presiding Archbishop of the Open Episcopal Church B.A. (Hons), Dip. Pastoral Studies. Mobile: 07767 687711 www.bishopjonathanblake.com archbishopjonathanblake@gmail.com www.openepiscopalchurch.org The Church is a member of The International Council of Community churches and the World Council of Churches. Married and a proud Dad.

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Location: London, Kent, United Kingdom

Gassed Tehran, seized Kabul, helped Mother Teresa, funded TB hospital, priest 1981, went Auschwitz, wrote on Parliament, convicted, began 1st inter-faith NHS chapel, 12 yrs Anglican cleric/vicar - left, baptised 1000's in homes/Mt Snowdon/at circus, wedding underwater, wrote ‘For God’s Sake Don’t Go To Church’, nailed 95 Theses 2 Canterbury cathedral, arrested, co-founded the Society for Independent Ministry, consecrated a bishop, co-founded the Open Episcopal Church, did 1st gay wedding on morning TV, sued Associated Newspapers, co-consecrated 1st women bishops 4 England,Wales,Scotland, accommodated the homeless, posted Mass/took it 2 sex workers, elected Archbishop, arrested 4 climbing with sons,founded ‘When No One’s Watching',made ICV, did Jade Goody's wedding,invited 2 Downing St, wrote 'That Old Devil Called God Again', conviction 4 campaigning against child abuse quashed on appeal, convicted 4 successful blogging 2 stop paedophile. His Christmas Lights raising £79,000 4 Water in 4 Gambian villages. Published "The Tales of Henry the Lovable Hedgehog", the SAFE New Testament + Psalms + radical Book of Common Prayer, ordained priests for UK,US,Thailand,Spain,Ireland

Monday, December 07, 2020

AS A DOTING FATHER OF MY BELOVED CHILDREN, A HEARTFELT PLEA ON BEHALF OF ALL CHILDREN

This season is a time when children’s eyes shine bright, and their comments and hopes refresh the tired adult world with innocence. The brutal realities with which they are all too often faced, lose focus, and are replaced by the dreams and fantasies of their inventive minds, encouraged by the cultural accouterments that society provides.

Yet, I am fearful.

Constantly I am aware of lonesome children lagging beside or behind their parents who are consumed by their screens. In buggies, at tables, on public transport and in queues, there they are, silent companions to their adult chaperones, whose fingers are tapping, as frenetically as their eyes are darting.

Worse still, to overcome the guilt of their adult addictive behaviour, parents introduce the screen drug to their unsuspecting offspring in the early reaches of their lives.

Being together as a family, walking, or eating or stopping for a drink is when the silence falls and each member muddles along, even tiny tots in buggies, hardly able to walk, yet with screen in hand, being allured into a virtual world, as the real one is denuded of its potency.

Within this numbing manipulation, driven by the large tech mammoths, whose profits and power make them unelected, unaccountable major influencers, we are losing our connection and appreciation of life.

Butterflies, sunrises, garden foxes, winter frosts and the multiple glories of nature hold little appeal. Conversation, facial expression, atmosphere, respect and consequence have all become disassociated and replaced by anonymity, vile trolling, pouting and pretending, vaunting and vanity, bullying and attrition.

More sinister still is the direction of a person’s attention, targeted away from what is cast as their prosaic existence, to what purports to be superior, lodged often in some celebrity, or social media entrepreneur, whose Instagram, Facebook, You Tube or other platform,  greedily consumes and predates the lives of their followers and exchanges them for a transitory, artificial and delusive fabrication.

The trickery invites an incremental descent into farce, where the followed have to devise increasingly bizarre antics to maintain their market share, and the public are intoxicated into believing that this merry-go-round has a vital relevance to their lives.

Beside them of course, may well be their partners, unique human creations, with whom they are unfurling their lives and realising their dreams; as well as their children, inexpressibly wonderful expressions of love, miracles of hope, wide eyed and utterly dependent upon them, or they may be single, oases of individuality, working out their own lives’ trajectory, embarking on a journey, never undertaken before by any other.

However, these realities pale into insignificance, in the face of the screen onslaught, and become inconvenient and awkward interruptions, to be irritably brushed aside.

I want to try to help stop this rot.

I want to celebrate what is normal, mundane and everyday.

I want to expose the screen and virtual world as the imposter it really is, so worthless, vacuous and pointless.

I want most of all to celebrate children.

In my understanding, there is nothing on this earth, comparable in value and significance to children.

They are our diamonds, making us the wealthiest people in existence.

You may live in penury, but if you are fortunate enough to have a child, to have contact with a child in your wider family or through your work, or just as a neighbour, you are a trillionaire and more.

A mother and a father are entrusted with this treasure, that should make them ever breathless with wonder. Often that awe is experienced at their child’s birth and in the subsequent days of their tiniest beginnings. It is though, a wonder that should span their entire childhood and beyond.

Life and adulthood expose them to multiple influences and choices that, as Kahlil Gibran wrote so eloquently, take them on their own paths, yet they remain forever nestled in the parent’s heart.

In the overwhelming pressures of parenthood and the search of young adults for identity and economic stability, the magic and incomparable significance of childhood can be threatened. The screen then allures, with its instant gratification and illusion of perfection, in stark contrast to an odious nappy, a toddler's tantrum or a contrary adolescent.

Yet, in the vicissitudes of childhood, the complexity of establishing a home and the intimacies of family life, lie such rich seams of gold that they expose the world of social media as the worst form of impersonation and fraud.

Writing as a father, and as a man, who has been privileged and fortunate to have experienced so many things in my life, I can conclude that the most extraordinary, astonishing and fulfilling part of my life has been accompanying my children through their childhoods.

Each child has been unique, utterly their own person, discovering and unfolding their destiny. Cherishing them from their first breaths and uncurling and throughout the days of their maturation, has been indescribably sublime. Every moment remembered, replayed, relived, an Aladdin’s cave of joys, constantly re-visited, where delight and happiness prevail.

From the very beginning I wanted to invest my all in my children and to try to be the very best father for them. I have always counted each day spent with them a gift, and each practical task undertaken for them, a blessing. Greater effort brought deeper happiness; imaginative enterprises, plans and adventures made the days unpredictable and special; maximising the potential of life was the ultimate quest, realising that with attention and commitment the ordinary could be transformed into the marvellous.

Why settle for a buggy when you can baby sling babies close to your heart, or cycle with toddlers, even the 2 of you and a dog on the same cycle pulling two more in a child bike trailer behind?

Why settle for looking at a tree, when it can be climbed or for a dry slide, when a wet one with plastic sheeting can extend the run?

Why settle for a tedious school run when you can walk and play games together on the way or for a monotonous cloudy inside day, when you can build an obstacle course in the kitchen with ladders and upturned tables?

Why settle for looking at the rain when you can lie on the grass and let it splash all over you or trampoline in swimming costumes in the snow and then down a steaming hot chocolate?

Why watch other people’s fun, when you can create so much of your own, from elaborate April Fools tricks, to homespun adventures, treasure hunts, challenges, competitions, plays and your own made up crazy games?

I write this to urge parents not to allow your children’s childhoods to run through your fingertips like sand. Wrest yourselves away from those beguiling screens and realise that your own lives are waiting to be energised, excited and expanded by your attention and creativity.

You want to make your own existence far more dazzling and fabulous than anything you can find on a screen and when you do, don’t be sucked back by the jealous internet, to think you should publicise and monetise your fantastic lives. No. The most fantastic lives are kept mainly private.

Thinking you have to have followers and an audience denudes your world of its rare and remarkable grace and monetising it, cheapens intimacy into a commodity that extracts its magic.

Some people complain that parental love is not reciprocated and that investing everything in a child may reap no enduring benefit. As adults, having flown the nest, they may return rarely, care little and leave their parents, even when elderly and infirm, to fend for themselves with no or little help. Jesus even warned that some children would rise against their parents and have them put to death, but he also warned that it would be better to be bound with a heavy stone and cast into the sea, than to harm a child.

A parent should offer their child, as every person should offer every child, that rare expression of love that is unconditional. It looks for no return, no benefit and no reward. A love that flows from their heart as an expression of the calibre and commitment of them as a parent and as a person. The depth and quality of their love defines them and is their finest legacy upon the earth.

This season is a chance to re-evaluate and realise just how precious are your children and all children.

Watch them, not your screens. Talk to them, not some distant texter. Create adventures and make plans with them, rather than looking at the antics of others. Illuminate and transform your world, rather than be absorbed into the meaningless screen masquerade, that is a pale imitation of the real, so that your children, and all the children with whom you have contact, will plunge eagerly into life, rather than an electronic tomb of ghosts.

As parents, realise that, in the totality of a lifespan, you have so very few years with them, when you cradle their hearts in their tiny becoming years. Time filled with unsurpassed magic that bejewels the path taken. Unforgettable experiences shared and the indescribable happiness known in beholding the blossoming and emerging of a person, you have been privileged to play your part in creating.

Thankfully our home still harbours our youngest and pulses with the heartbeat of his life and thankfully too our older children, though at University, return regularly and the house hums with their extraordinary energy. The love we all have for each other is breath taking in its natural sincerity and is, I believe, the result of our family life, where screens, though well used, have never taken pride of place and where we have lived life to the full, as a family, cherishing our days together, and maximising the potential for good, hope and life.


ARCHBISHOP JONATHAN BLAKE - MY LIFE - PART ONE
ARCHBISHOP JONATHAN BLAKE - MY LIFE - PART TWO
I AM PROUD OF MY WRITING, FOR JESUS’S SAKE, THAT HAS HAD ME FOUND INNOCENT IN HEAVEN, BUT TWICE A CRIMINAL ON THE EARTH. THE FIRST IN 1990 WHEN I WROTE A BIBLICAL TEXT ON THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT IN PEACEFUL PROTEST ABOUT THE BOMBING OF YOUNG IRAQI RECRUITS DURING THE FIRST GULF WAR. THE SECOND, IN 2016 WHEN I WROTE ON MY BLOG, TO ALERT THE PUBLIC ABOUT A PAEDOPHILE, AND WAS SUCCESSFUL IN FORCING THE AUTHORITIES TO STOP HIM HAVING ACCESS TO CHILDREN. THERE WAS ALMOST A THIRD! IN 1997, WHEN I WAS ARRESTED FOR NAILING MY PROPOSALS FOR REFORM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ON THE DOOR OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. WORDS ARE POWERFUL MESSAGES THAT CHALLENGE  CORRUPTION, CONFRONT THE WICKED AND CREATE A BETTER WORLD. JESUS IS THE WORD OF GOD AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE CALLED  TO COMMUNICATE HIS WORDS,  IRRESPECTIVE OF THE COST.
"You brave, courageous and wonderful man. To stand up for the truth in the face of suppression and oppression is truly an act of a pure heart."




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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