Rabbi Charley Baginsky

Good morning. If you live to be one hundred, will you still be the same person inside who you’ve always been? Will the same things still make you laugh? Will you remember the best moments of your life…and the worst? Will you still care about the world and will it still care about you, if you live to be one hundred? Let’s ask Sir David Attenborough, who today reaches one hundred. He’s helped create some of the most beloved and respected nature programmes ever made. But he’s a mere whippersnapper in comparison with some of the antediluvian patriarchs from the book of Genesis. There is Methuselah, of course, who is listed as living 969 years. He appears in the genealogy from Adam to Noah, who only lived for 950 years. After the flood, the patriarchs got younger. Moses, for example, only lived for a mere 120 years. There are symbolic and literary interpretations for why these men were described as being extraordinarily long-lived. These stories tell us that ageing should not be feared but revered. That the older a person was, the more respected they were, the more important they were, and crucially, the closer they were to God. Today, ageing is more feared than ever before. We have an obsession with artificially preserving youth to an unnatural degree, as if ageing were a shameful secret. The middle-aged are spoken of with a hint of derision. Our parents dismissed as privileged, clueless boomers. And the generation before them? Silent. Of course, old age doesn’t always lead to wisdom, but anti-ageing rhetoric, however subtle, does lead to a disquieting erosion of worth. To see the elderly as God sees them would be to regard ageing as a privilege, and to see those older than us as repositories of wisdom and experience, instead of a burden on public resources. It is the elderly who engage most in public service, making up an army of volunteers who do everything from maintaining communal outdoor space, helping run various social groups, and caring for grandchildren. They are the custodians of the Christian faith, valued elders who play a vital role in the life of the church. Psalm 92 speaks of cedars planted in the house of the Lord, how in old age they’re still green and produce fruit. In every community there are to be found inspiring archetypes of ageing. We place all our hopes in the young, for they represent the future, but our elders don’t just belong to the past, they are the present too. They still have the ability to take the world by surprise. Happy 100th birthday Sir David. If I live to be one hundred, may I too be green and full of fruit.

07 MAY 26

Early one morning last week, I was taking a walk from the church to the park in central London where I live. I walked down Waterloo Place, named after the battle more than 200 years ago when on a June Sunday, 60,000 casualties and thousands of horses were killed on a muddy field in present day Belgium. Past the memorial to the war in Crimea fought three decades later when hundreds of thousands of men died, many from infected wounds. Historic acknowledgement of terrible bloodshed collided with the present day as I noticed a new statue, as yet without too many crowds to see it, had appeared overnight. We now know it was put there by Banksy. Up on a plinth is a well fed man, dressed in a western style business suit. In his right hand, he holds high a huge flag. His other hand is in a fist. He is marching forward. But the flag he’s carrying has blown into his face and he can’t see where he’s going. As the viewer, we witness his next step taking him off the plinth, marching into thin air. One more step and he will fall. The man’s distinctive posture lionises individual autonomy, allied with what seems to be a determination to dominate in the name of whatever’s on the flag he’s holding. But the flag, presumably the reason he’s marching in the first place, is itself the very reason he can’t see the way ahead. I found myself addressing the man as he towered over me…. Sir – you’re holding your flag up proudly but you can’t see where you’re going. I don’t know what made you think you should be up there, but you don’t have to stay. Now, the only way is down. But when you’re scrambling to get up - in the mud of the wars similar to the ones that are commemorated all around you – there’s a chance you could recover yourself, and turn your flag, no doubt colourful and vibrant, into a symbol of a different kind of unity. You could use it to bind the wounds of war, to wipe the face of Christ on his way to be crucified. You could use it to make shade in the heat, bring warmth in the cold. In addressing the man in my mind, I thought of the prodigal son in Jesus’s parable, leaving his community to seek autonomy, marching off his own particular plinth, finding to his surprise, off his pedestal, that his father still welcomed him home. I found myself feeling compassion for hubristic and lonely humanity, as we consistently choose domination over cooperation, clenched fists not open hands. And for evoking these reflections, I thanked God for the inventiveness of artists, who in these bellicose and dysregulated times, powerfully and provocatively show us another way.

05 MAY 26

05 MAY 26

I don’t know about you, but May is my favourite month: spring in its pomp and the blessing of light, warm days to come! And with ‘international dawn-chorus day’ tomorrow, too, it’s an invitation to hear nature’s songs of praise sung from the treetops afresh.If you struggle to rise early, you could follow the advice of journalist Henry Porter and drink a lot of water before you go to bed.Though some may not have been to bed at all! — a report out this week says that birdwatching is now the second most popular hobby among “Gen Z”. Almost three quarters of a million 16-29 year-olds bird-watch regularly, which has to be good news. A young woman called Jess Painter, of the RSPB youth council, said that by pausing “to be curious, to watch, listen and learn, you open yourself up to endless small moments of wonder.”With so much strife in the world, it’s surely one profound way of clearing our heads.Yet as Jess hints, getting out to watch the birds, or to listen to the dawn chorus, is not merely escape from what’s wrong, but embrace of what’s right: nature calls to our own better nature, too — to give the gift of our attention, so desperately fought over by the tech giants, to what’s natural, beautiful. And as a Christian I’d say to sense the Creator’s presence, too, within the awe-inspiring symphony of Creation.Such awe is so good for us — our ego knows it can’t possibly compete with a choir of blackbirds, robins, warblers, even a nightingale if we’re very lucky — so it quietens, and lets the soul stir to become part of ‘the family of things’ again, as the poet Mary Oliver puts it.And in such moments, shift happens. Recently, I interviewed the eminent ecologist Tom Crowther, who says that nature is filled with feedback loops — some of which are destructive, when the balance of an ecosystem has been upset (so often by humans); while other loops are restorative, regenerative — and we can be part of them.As a scientist, he said that it’s crucial his discipline learns spiritual practices of contemplation, meditation, prayer, as ways to help break the circuit, to step out of our personal feedback loops of despair, into ones of hopeful uplift instead.Take joy in nature, as we rediscover our own nature singing its song, too. Watch the birds of the air, as Jesus said for good reason.It may start simply with setting an alarm for tomorrow — or by drinking that large glass of water tonight. Whatever helps us best to catch this polyphonic wake up for the soul.

Good morning. 75 years ago this weekend saw the Festival of Britain open to much fanfare. In 1951, cities were being rebuilt from the rubble of war, there were food shortages and rationing, and there was uncertainty in everyday life. But instead of retreating into itself and just focusing on the practicalities of post-war life, Britain decided to do something remarkable and celebrate itself. The Festival saw the SouthBank of the Thames in Central London transformed into a cultural and entertainment hub, much as it had been centuries earlier, and it left a lasting imprint, shaping modern British design, architecture, and public art for decades to come. But perhaps its most powerful legacy was in creating a shared collective national experience, a moment in time where people felt like belonged to something far greater than themselves. We’ve had glimpses of that more recently, and the London 2012 Olympics carried a similar energy. I vividly remember how, for those few weeks, there was a real sense of shared joy and excitement across the country, no matter who we were. The opening ceremony showed a Britain that reflected its modern identity, whimsical, eccentric, confident and diverse, with a keen sense of our history and an eye for what the future may hold. Collective moments like this matter, because they bring the nation together and remind us of who we are and who we can be. Sadly, that sense of togetherness is perhaps more fragile today. Differences feel more pronounced, more obvious than ever. Some seem more inclined to destroy rather than build bridges, and we have seen the horrible consequences of that this week in Golders Green. In the Sikh scriptures, one of the revered saints of the faith, Bhagat Kabir, says “When the difference between myself and others is removed, then wherever I look, I see only You, the Divine”. At a time of polarised communities both here and abroad, some minorities feel under threat, particularly when it’s easier to withdraw into our own perspectives than it is to convene with those who may see the world differently. But if we look beyond those differences, I believe we are far stronger as a country than some – both inside and outside the UK - might give us credit for. 75 years ago, the Festival of Britain was special because of its spirit of hope and togetherness. Likewise with London 2012. They weren’t times of perfect agreement, in fact far from it, but they remained moments of shared experience nonetheless because they celebrated us – every single one of us – in our United Kingdom.

30 APRIL 26

Good morning I’m a bit biased, but the River Wear might be my favourite river in Britain. Winding through the city of Durham and connecting the Pennines to the sea, it has witnessed some of my happiest moments and easily absorbed any personal crises I might wish to throw at it. This week marks the completion of a major restoration project for the Wear; 1,700 saplings have been planted along its banks, in the hope that the new trees will safeguard both the health of the water and the creatures who live in and alongside it. The project is welcome news in an otherwise bleak picture for our rivers, many of which are in an active state of decline. This is not unique to Britain – around the world, rivers are not flourishing as they used to do. In his book Is A River Alive, Robert Macfarlane has proposed that this global decline in river health is not just a failure of legislation, but a failure of imagination. If we imagine a river as an isolated resource for our use and disposal, we will treat it that way. But if we imagine a river as a living being amongst other living beings, we will not only better protect and nurture our rivers. We will also better see the ways rivers protect and nurture us. Can we really think of a river as living? It certainly feels like a linguistic stretch. But it isn’t a new idea. Cultures all over the world treat rivers as having a life of their own, with a particular power to sustain and restore both human and nonhuman creatures. This includes my own tradition. The Bible is rich with images of rivers as the source of blessing and renewal for the people. For the first Christians, it was no coincidence that Jesus chose to be baptised in a river. This vital act of initiation belongs in water that moves and brings life. Early Church teaching encouraged Christ’s disciples to follow his example; where possible, their baptisms should likewise take place in running or living water. And while baptisms have since moved indoors, there are still Christians around the world who gather by rivers to welcome new members into the Church. They understand something that we have, perhaps, forgotten; rivers can and do spiritually and physically bless us – if only we can let them live.

28 APRIL 26