Ministry of the word for The Campfire Church on Facebook today: Comfort, Confidence and Corage

We are living in troubled times. I expect you’ve noticed.

Listening carefully to the voices worth hearing, and discarding the salacious mud-slingers and armies of irascible Orcs, I detect two primary strands of opinion. 

Strand One: We’re all doomed; the southern hemisphere is turning to desert in short order; two-thirds of our wildlife is already lost; water wars are coming; fires, drought, flood, storms and pestilence will lay waste our harvests and our homes; fear and scarcity mentality will rise — leading to authoritarianism, territorialism, othering, hoarding, rioting, lawlessness, violence. The human race is, to use a technical Irish term, fecked. I see nothing one can honestly argue with in all of that, especially since it’s already unfolding before our eyes.  

But, Strand Two: These are the birth pangs of a new age. Hold tight, because something beautiful is being birthed. The turbulence we are experiencing is because of the death throes of the old order. There is a titanic struggle going on between the defenders of the status quo and the inevitability of a new era that will arise from the grass roots. The quality and character of that new era will depend heavily on what we envision now. We will imagine the new world into being, and what get will emerge according to where we put our focus in this time of transition. This gives us as individuals power as well as responsibility, and I most dearly hope the seers who are saying these things have the right of it. As it’s a more optimistic proposition than Strand One, it’s the option I’m going with — because I want it to be true and maybe that’s a good start.

We are, of course, sent here to learn how to hold our light steady in times of turbulence; that’s the point of earthly life. As a young woman I once went to stay at the Christian centre on the beautiful island of Iona — wellspring of the best expressions of the faith in the British Isles. It was October, the last week before they closed their doors for the winter. 

We gathered in the monastery chapel for evening worship, themed around bearing the Christlight into a dark world. As an act of faith at the end, we were sent forth each carrying a lit candle. Outside it was blowing a hooley. Every flame without exception was extinguished before we even got over the threshold. Ha! A better visual aid than was originally intended.

So, whether we are watching the destruction of the Earth and can expect terrifying suffering to find us in the near future, or we are seeing the intense contractions of the world that mothered us giving birth to the new, either way it is our calling and responsibility to hold our light steady as we pass through these times, to shelter and protect the flame, not let it be blown out by the weather.

With this in mind, I (who love tracing the roots of language) offer you three watch words.

The first is COMFORT. 

In some places a child’s dummy (also called a pacifier or soother) is known as a comforter, and “comforter” is also what we called a snuggly quilt.

Being comfortable is what we think of as a condition of ease, troubled by nothing. If you search for images of a person being comforted, I bet you’ll turn up pictures of people being hugged and cuddled, their tears dried, and arms around their shoulders.

But if you search on “Bishop Odo comforting the troops”, you’ll find a different perspective, because it is a caption from the Bayeux Tapestry, which shows Bishop Odo urging the Norman troops into battle with the assistance of a stout club, only because he wasn’t allowed to carry a lance and as a bishop he must not shed blood.

The root of the word “comfort” is nothing to do cosiness. “Com” means “with”, and “fort” means “strength”. 

This is what our reading from Hebrews touches on when, referencing Isaiah 35, it urges us to lift up our tired hands, steady our trembling knees, and make a path forward for our feet. 

We belong to the hosts of God, and our calling is to be resolute and unwavering. We are to comfort one another. The Holy Spirit is also called the “comforter” in the New Testament, but the word used there is “consolatio”, the light-bringer, the one who illumines our darkness, the sun that rises upon our desolation. Nevertheless, he *is* the Comforter, spurring us on in the way of life and the practice of holiness.

Comfort. With strength.

The second watchword for our times that I offer you is CONFIDENCE. Again, the “con” means “with” and the “fidence” means “faith”. 

From the psalms — “Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me; my glory, and the lifter of my head”; and “When I am most afraid, I put my trust in thee.”

Confidence is not arrogance, not exceptionalism, not cockiness or privilege or hubris. Confidence — quiet, humble, unshakeable — is the knowledge that we belong to, and are loved by, God. Regardless of who we have been and what we have done, even though we have got so much wrong and made such a jaw-dropping mess of everything — he is with us, he is for us, he has redeemed us. We are his, and he is our certain hope. Confidence. With faith.

And my third watchword is CORAGE. The word courage is clearly associated with it, but “corage” doesn’t mean bravery. It’s a medieval word — Middle English — that has no precise parallel in modern English. The nearest you can get to it is “heart”, as when you take heart, or are heartened, or put fresh heart into someone. It connects to the word “core” — the centre that holds the whole body firm (like when we speak of needing to work on and develop “core strength”). “Corage” is character, who someone really is; the firm and present reality of being. It is about the hidden depths of a person’s being — and this is where “courage” proceeds from it etymologically, because valour requires a person to draw on their hidden depths in order to stand strong.

Corage. Heart. It is to do with integrity; about “truth in the inward parts”.

These words belong together — comfort, confidence, corage — and I am hoping you can see that, for a time of chaotic turbulence, they do not make things worse by coming roaring in with a pugilistic attitude, fuelling antagonism and worsening conflict. Comfort, confidence and corage — an unshakeably firm core; strong, faithful and true — belong to no battle but to the work of peace. They are for reassurance, for healing, for protection; key elements in extending the reach of Christ.