BRF's Advent book is by Dr Isabelle Hamley, Embracing Humanity- A journey towards becoming flesh, BRF, 2024. Julia Burton-Jones, Anna Chaplaincy's Training and Development Lead, has found it a marvellous companion as she prepares for Christmas, writes Debbie Thrower.
It has provoked some interesting thoughts about its implications for the work of Anna Chaplains and Anna Friends as they engage in this incarnational ministry among older people.
Do read her full Advent reflection on the BRF website
To give you a taster, Julia writes about the way the run up to Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier each year - what she calls 'Christmas Creep'. She explains by contrast, what a great joy it is, 'to be treated by Anna Chaplains in Rochester Diocese (where I am Anna Chaplaincy lead) to a 'Space to Breathe' on 27 November to mark ten years of Anna Chaplaincy in Kent.
Cudham and Downe Anna Chaplains John and Kim Curle prepared a day for Anna Chaplains and Anna Friends to spend together being looked after while enjoying Christmas crafts and a time of worship.'
'It was a wonderful oasis of peace and creativity, and Kim and John’s generosity was heart-warming. It was unusual for the team to be on the receiving end of such loving kindness when we tend to be the ones offering such events to older people.'
''Space to Breathe' got me thinking about Day 3 in Embracing Humanity, entitled ‘Related and dependent’, where Isabelle talks about our need for one another, going right back to the story of Eve being created from Adam in Genesis. We so easily hide the bit of being human which is about needing others behind a wall of self-sufficiency and autonomy, and in this I know I am guilty; I love giving Christmas gifts but am less good at receiving them from others...'
Julia goes on to highlight some of the other important insights into our 'bodiliness' which the book has shown her: 'The subtitle of the book is ‘a journey towards becoming flesh’ so the focus is on what it means that Jesus lived with us in a human body. The dualism in western culture between the body and the soul, where the soul is seen as more important, is challenged by Isabelle through reference to scriptures showing the importance of the whole person. Jesus the bread of life gave us his body: ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ (John 6:53).
Bodies are precious to God and not despised. We are invited to explore what it is about our bodies that we don’t like and to thank God for their amazing intricacy.'
Troubling indeed therefore, says Julia, are the: 'heart breaking' ways in which 'online culture is causing young people especially to hate their bodies when they measure them against online images.'
'The lengths to which some go to alter their bodies through cosmetic surgery, even putting their lives at risk, is a sad reflection on our society. New research by Professor Sonia Livingstone at the London School of Economics has shown the negative effect on young girls of social media beauty filters that alter their faces. The filters make them insecure about their natural features. What can we say as church to put across the message that God loves the way he made you, and you don’t need to change your body to meet unrealistic and changing beauty standards.'
Do read her full reflection and those of other writers in the current BRF Advent series which are also featured there.
Embracing Humanity- A journey towards becoming flesh may be brought from BRF Online. Theologian and author Isabelle Hamley is former chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury (who writes the book's Foreword) and is currently Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge. She has worked as a probation officer, lecturer, a parish priest and university chaplain.
Commentaires