So I was wondering where to start and the only place I could think of was the ramblings that are milling around in my mind at the moment.
I'm not sure where all the threads began, or where they are heading but I am just consumed with an overall sense of unease; not a bad thing I think, as it challenges and stretches me.
I've been reading a biography of Henry VIII's children, which atm is focussing on Mary I - an interesting character. In fact they all were; Mary, Elizabeth and Edward all seem to have been incrediably pious, in their individual ways, and also hopelessly misguided. Mary was an incrediably pious Catholic, who though influenced by a traumatic childhood (as all three were), displays an incrediable devotion to her faith. Edward, as he grew up embraced Protestantism (in contrast to Mary's Roman Catholicism); but what had begun only a few years previously as a movement of mercy and grace in his eyes became harsh and unforgiving, leading him to persecute his sister Mary and to attempt to force his beliefs onto hers.
Without even touching on Mary and Elizabeth's relationship this provokes so many thoughts and questions. Mary's devotion to the Roman church was due in great part to her mother and father's disasterous relationship, so how much of it was genuine? In fact it is a question to be asked of all three monarchs, did any of them have a real relationship with Jesus? This is not meant to be a critique of them, as I will not know (til I've left this world at least), but how much of their actions were cultural and how much were actually a fundamental part of any faith (theirs and ours). Mary was prepared to be martyred for her faith, yet she martyred many who saw the Bible differently. Was it simply a 16th century inability to see the world from other's points of view, or does serious deep faith always produce these kinds of reaction? (Which many proponents of faith would argue is an impossibility, as deep faith apparently produces tolerance in many cases.) Or is it more simply a lack of faith? This last answer I am loath to accept, for i can not believe the Mary who spent hours in prayer every day was not in some way touched by God. Yet, at the height of her persecution of the protestants in this country, in the years when the most people were burned at the stake, it was in those years that she seemed the most devout.
I'm just not ready to accept it as a cultural thing for the 16th century, maybe that's my modern (or postmodern) incapacity to see this world that we are so far removed from so perhaps its a lack or gap in my understanding of God - maybe with their eyes and their culture and background these former leaders of our nation saw a different side of God. Yes their view had its (to us, with our amazing hindsight) distortions but it may also have an element that I or we lack in our experience of faith. Perhaps the willingness to die for ones faith, is linked with a willingness to kill for it. (or at least emotions and a lifestyle so deeply entrenched in it that, when misguided, that is its' fruit).
# posted by Nomes @ 3:09 PM
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