Dear friends,

‘Joy to the world!

The Lord is come;

let earth receive her King;

let ev’ry heart prepare him room,

and heav’n and nature sing.’

It’s a lovely Christmas hymn (we sang it this year at the Carol Service).  To sing ‘the Lord is come’ is to remind ourselves that Jesus comes to us here and now, and not only on that first Christmas.  And to sing ‘let ev’ry heart prepare him room’ is a real challenge.

Like many clergy, I find it much easier to ‘prepare him room’ in the days after Christmas, rather than in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the Christmas services.  And I can sympathise with the recently-retired Rector of Warrington Parish Church who said what he was most looking forward to at Christmas was not falling asleep on Christmas Day afternoon.

But I suspect it isn’t just clergy who feel that ‘preparing him room’ might actually be easier once the pressures of shopping, feeding and entertaining have passed.  Then we might be more receptive: ready for a bit more giving rather than retail getting; more celebrating who Jesus is than decorating the house; more concerned to feed the hungry than our filled-to-bursting families and friends.

Before we pack away the baubles, the lights and the tinsel for another year, consider this: Christmas doesn’t end on Christmas Day, or after the twelve days of Christmas.  It doesn’t end with Epiphany or Lent or Easter.  Christmas is God’s abiding gift to us, a continual present and presence, a challenge to go on preparing room in our hearts for the things of God.

The work of Christmas has only just begun.  Spare a thought for the scene in the manger the day after Christmas morning.  Exhausted and utterly stunned parents are trying to make sense of a whole new reality.  They have a new baby, a new life who is even more of a miracle than the average new-born.  Amidst all the noise of the animals, the farmyard smells and the detritus of childbirth, they’re also a little afraid of what the future holds.  For any new parents, the work is only just beginning.  For us who recognise in this child Emmanuel, the God who is with us, likewise our work has not ended on Christmas Day: it too is just beginning.

One way we can be reminded of this is through the Christmas crib.  It was St. Francis in the 13^th century who set up the first nativity scene in northern Italy.  An early biographer of St. Francis wrote: “To excite the villagers to commemorate the nativity of the infant Jesus with devotion, Francis prepared a manger, and brought hay and an ox and an ass to the place appointed.  The man of God stood before the manger full of devotion.  Then he preached to the people of the nativity of the poor King; and because he could not utter his name for the tenderness of his love, he called him the Babe of Bethlehem”.

For Francis the crib was a physical space that embraces the eternal; an icon which draws you into its own life and leads beyond, to meditate on the infinite depths of God’s love and lead us into a deeper awareness of his wonder.

Our own crib stays up in church until the end of Epiphany, not as a decoration but as a help to meditate on the mystery of God coming to dwell with us and what it means for us.  It reminds us of the work to be done.  There’s a poem by Howard Thurman called ‘The Work of Christmas’:

‘When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart.’

When the dust finally settles on the mismanagement by St. Paul’s Cathedral of the tented protest on its doorstep, one abiding image will remain.  Prominent in the T.V. coverage has been a placard with the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’

It’s a deceptively simple question, much more useful and easier to handle (though even then often far from straightforward) in the realms of personal moral decisions than in the complexities of corporate decision-making.   An individual deciding whether or not to tell the truth is one thing: a pension fund deciding how best to invest ethically can be quite another.  In part it’s a matter not just of values but of the level of technical knowledge needed to make an appropriate ethical choice.  Turning out money-changers in the Temple when they’ve been cheating their customers is relatively clear cut: it’s a long way from that to deciding whether a Transaction (or ‘Robin Hood’) Tax should be levied on share, bond and currency transactions as a way of re-directing funds from speculative bankers to the ‘real’ economy.

It isn’t the job of the Church to get too closely involved in the detail of economic policy.  That is both its strength and its weakness: its weakness, because it will forever be told that it doesn’t have the technical competence required and should therefore stick to general platitudes; its strength because what the Church exists for is to point people towards Kingdom values – to justice and fairness as the things which God demands, to having a concern for those least able to help themselves, to seeing that idols such as the pursuit of money don’t take the place in life which properly belongs to God.

The Church is there to proclaim God’s values, to articulate them as best it can by word and action, to call people and nations to account according to how well they respond to those values, and to work with others in helping to see those values translated into public policy.  The danger for the Church is always that of compromising or trimming its message because it doesn’t want to offend one or other powerful group in society.  And when it sticks up for its values it can always be accused by its opponents of naivety, of not living in the ‘real’ world.

The protests outside St. Paul’s have caught a public mood – one of the unfairness of ordinary people paying for the irresponsibility of bankers.  That chimes strongly with biblical notions of justice, and the Church needs to say so.  Yet it is far from easy to see what the protesters are ‘for’ – how a more just arrangement could be conceived in practice.  But because that’s the hard part, it doesn’t mean the Church should go quiet on its values.  It should at the very least be trying to ensure the ‘direction of travel’ of public policy is towards greater fairness, a sense of what the common good requires of all of us, and a willingness to keep its head above the parapet when opposition from powerful forces comes its way.

We’re now beginning the season of Advent.  It’s not only a period of preparation for Christmas, but also a time to reflect on the theme of hope – hope for the difference Christ’s coming into the world makes.  The language of Advent is dominated also by a second coming of Christ in which the world will have been transformed into that Kingdom of peace and justice intended by God.  And the route to that Kingdom is one of judgment, justice and accountability, where human actions are disclosed and judged for what they are.  To the unjust, the words can be terrifying: to others they can be words of healing leading to grace and the transforming of human relations.

What would Jesus do?  Talk to everyone who will listen about the nature of God and life in his Kingdom which is even now breaking in upon us, and show by acts of mercy how even the poorest and most vulnerable can have a share in that Kingdom.  And go on doing it without fear or favour.

One of the integral parts of our worship is hymn singing and Roy (our organist and choirmaster) would like to give you all the opportunity to choose your own favourites. You will find a list at the back of church where you can place your choice(s).If you need any advice re hymn tunes please don’t hesitate to contact Roy. He is planning to publish each months hymns in the magazine starting December. Congregational choices will be marked with an asterisk.

Lymm Pudding Club are holding their next event in the Village Hall on Friday 2nd December at 7.30pm.

All are very welcome!

Tickets £10 (5 puddings)    Free tea/coffee/water

Bring your own alcoholic drinks

Tickets available from Sue (756520) Jo (759919)

or from Rushgreen Service Station

There are many reasons why I am an Anglican rather than a Roman Catholic.  They include the way authority in the Anglican Church is dispersed rather than focused on one powerful figure, and the way the Anglican Church makes room for the proper contribution of lay people and women in its ministry and mission.

But there is one area where, for my money, the Roman Catholic Church has traditionally had the edge over Anglicans, and that is the long tradition of Catholic social teaching.  It was the last Pope of the 19^th century, Leo XIII, who in his papal encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ set the foundation stone for the development of the Church’s engagement with society on issues of social justice.  That tradition continued through the Second Vatican Council of the 1960’s, and into the papacies of the supposedly conservative John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

By contrast, Anglican social teaching has often been more piecemeal, relying on reports on  social issues commissioned by General Synod, and written by committees.  Examples have included the ‘Faith in the City’ report, which questioned the direction of government policy towards Britain’s inner cities and examined the proper role of the Church in such places, and ‘The Church and the Bomb’, looking at the ethics of nuclear policy.  Anglicans are used to having their reports debated, dissected and degraded – not least by politicians and their allies in the media who get uncomfortable at the thought of ethics invading ‘their’ political territory.

Debate and criticism are far from unknown in relation to Roman Catholic teaching on social issues.  Pope Paul VI’s late change of heart over the 1968 encyclical on birth control, ‘Humanae Vitae’, left many Roman Catholics feeling angry and out of step with their Church.  David Lodge’s comic novels, such as ‘How Far Can You Go?’, bring out some of the human dilemmas for ordinary people.

Yet by and large, Roman Catholic social teaching has succeeded in bringing together the twin concerns of evangelisation (spreading the gospel) with promoting concern for poverty and social justice.  Far too often in Church thinking and teaching in all denominations, social justice has been seen as an added ‘extra’ to the main business of saving souls.  At best it has often been regarded as marginal or optional to what the Church is ‘really’ about.  At worst, social justice has become little more than charity – putting the odd pound or two into a box for a good cause that demands no other effort from us, that alleviates but does not fundamentally change the conditions requiring our attention in the first place, and that can be easily dispensed with and forgotten when other financial priorities are more pressing. 

Benedict XVI’s encyclical of 2009 ‘Caritas in Veritate’ (which can be translated ‘love in truth’ or ‘love of truth’) deserves to be widely read and pondered by anyone serious about Christian faith and social justice.  Indeed, Benedict makes the point that there is no spiritual pathway that bypasses social action, for both are integral to the very idea of human development as revealed to us by Christ himself.  One of Benedict’s central concerns – writing against the backdrop of global financial meltdown – is to distinguish between what he calls a ‘civil market economy’, which is not orientated solely towards profit, and a capitalist economy where maximising profit is what matters above everything else.  The civil market economy is, he says, a way of reforming our economic life which allows for profit within an overall framework of promoting the common good.

It is a significant contribution to bringing together Christian faith and the realities of a global economy, and far removed from the voices of those who say the Church should ‘stay out of politics’ on the one hand, or offering a simplistic ‘wish list’ of how the world might be a better place, on the other. 

We are all indebted to the tradition of Catholic social teaching.        

Some days are more important to us than others.  On days when the rest of the world was digging potatoes or washing dishes, we were busy being born or marrying, watching a child come into the world or a loved one leave it.  As Christians, we were being baptised or confirmed or (for some of us) being ordained: in each case increasingly betting our lives on the person of Jesus Christ.

We do the same during every year, when our own everyday concerns are taken up into a larger and grander narrative.  We mark that narrative by having special days: Christmas, when God becomes one of us; Good Friday, when God reveals the extent of his love for us; Easter, when God’s creative power calls us into new life; Ascension Day, to remind us that no part of life is outside God’s sovereignty; and Pentecost, when Christ’s life-giving spirit is with us for all time.  Each one of these days, if we attend to them properly, marks out for us something of what it means to be me, and helps shape our own journey of life and faith, just as our other personal special days do.

A confirmation has that kind of personal quality about it.  It brings together an individual decision to take a new and important step with a recognition that many others have travelled this way before, and the road is made up of all kinds of people who may have little in common except that they all know that each is also walking alongside Jesus Christ.  Our personal story and journey come together with God’s wider purposes in and through his Son. 

The Confirmation Service this year comes in that short time between Ascension Day and Pentecost.  It’s when we’re thinking about the gift of the Holy Spirit, which so transformed the lives of the first Christians.  The service is full of references to the Holy Spirit.  The Bishop prays that the Holy Spirit may rest upon the candidates; he confirms them with the Holy Spirit, he invites us all to pray that the candidates may “daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more”.

God’s Spirit is not some super-charged boost of spiritual energy: it is simply the Spirit of Jesus Christ alive and active among us.  At times like confirmation and Pentecost we are not asking for a special ‘fill-up’, but recognising that the Christian life is about being open to the life-giving Spirit whose ways we cannot fathom but who will lead us where we need to go – into new life, a new world of possibilities, a new future which we will help construct day by day.  The gift of the Spirit brings life, and life implies movement and growth.  Confirmation is not the point at which we become ‘adult’ Christians (which of us would dare to claim we were that?). 

It is a step towards a greater spiritual maturity, and our task (however young or old we may be) is to continue to grow towards our salvation, and to be aware of the ever-present risk of regressing, of falling away in faith.  If you want to see someone struggling against the view that sees growth as an achievement, as something to be acquired, read St. Paul in his letters to the Corinthians.

Perhaps above all we have to learn to see that God’s Spirit is not the preserve of the Church, but is at the heart of everything, crossing the boundaries of what is conventionally ‘religious’ or not.  Every experience of awe and mystery – climbing a hill, looking at a Rembrandt picture, sitting quietly in a peaceful building, singing along in a Robbie Williams concert – is taking us beyond ourselves to that source of creative life and power which is God’s very Spirit.  It is that breath of life which breathes through the entire universe, and which breathes hope into the downcast, justice into the oppressed, freedom into the fearful and love into the unloved.  It is what makes it possible to say ‘yes’ to life in spite of all the disappointments and difficulties everyone faces.  Receive the Holy Spirit – at confirmation, at Pentecost, whenever – and live.

Do you know what your next-door-neighbours think and believe about God, the Christian faith and the Church? Do your next-door-neighbours know what you think and believe about God, the Christian faith and the Church?  The chances are, unless you are particularly fortunate in your neighbours, or unless your own understanding of Christian faith has barely developed since childhood, there’s likely to be quite a gap between the two.

I am always astonished by what otherwise intelligent men and women offer up as their picture of Christian faith from outside the confines of the worshipping community.  Some of it is to do with upbringing.  Gerard Hughes in his book ‘God of Surprises’ tells of how his early image of God was a family relative – ‘Good Old Uncle George’.  Uncle George lived in a large mansion, had a beard & was threatening.  He had a basement where there were blazing furnaces into which were hurled all those who failed to visit Uncle George or behave in a way he approved.  And Gerard Hughes comments that he was expected to keep telling Uncle George how much he loved him and that he wanted to do only what pleased him, yet dared not admit that he actually loathed this monster.

Of course it’s a total caricature of the Christian God, but it doesn’t stop people believing it if they’ve never seriously asked themselves what it means to have a Christian faith.  Recently, a well-respected (in academic circles) moral philosopher, Sam Harris, has argued that “the Bible is about as authoritative on the subject of morality as it is on astronomy”, and that the Bible supports genocide and human sacrifice, and instructs us to kill people for imaginary crimes such as witchcraft.  We may shake our heads in disbelief that such a hopelessly distorted view of the Bible could be held by an apparently intelligent person, but the fact is there are plenty more like him, and plenty who don’t have his philosophical and scientific training.

We in the Church are sleepwalking into the future if we don’t pay attention to what is being said and written about Christian faith by many who have had no grounding in religious faith or culture as children and young people.  The challenges to us in this and the next generation are serious and growing, and they require from us a different approach.  No longer can we assume an easy familiarity even with the simplest and most basic parts of the Christian faith and the Bible.  Today we have a lot more work to do to engage with the culture in which so many are now growing up.  We cannot rely on schools to help out, since RE teachers are increasingly thin on the ground and likely to be non-specialists, and RE as a subject is in danger of being marginalised.

But in any case, it was never the job of our schools to teach people what it means to have a living faith.  That is, and remains, the responsibility of our churches.  In order to do that, however, we ourselves have to have a dynamic, vibrant faith, capable of giving an account of what Christians believe, and willing and able to speak to our own culture on its own terms.  That isn’t the task of just a few: it’s what every Christian disciple is called to do.  We are to be witnesses for our faith; to tell of what we see and know, each in our own way, as the Holy Spirit empowers us.

In order to do that we first have to want to grow in our own faith, and then to look for and find (and demand, if necessary) the right resources to enable us to do our job.  One of the small steps we took in this direction during Lent was when a group asked if they could read Keith Ward’s book, ‘The Word of God?  The Bible after modern scholarship’ as a study book.  We need to do much more of that kind of reflecting, and to do it in a way which allows people to bring all their doubts, uncertainties and questioning without feeling foolish or guilty.

How many people are there out there (worshippers and non-worshippers) willing to take on the twenty-first century on its own terms from the perspective of a progressive Christian faith?  Are you one of them?

How do religions begin in the first place?  Not by clever theologians producing lists of doctrines for the faithful to believe, nor by moralists producing codes of ethical behaviour.   Religions begin with experiences which are then reflected on, interpreted and shared with others.  That’s how, for example, a great piece of music, work of art or beautiful landscape can stir in us thoughts and feelings which take us from the experience to considering the creative spirit lying behind it. 

In the case of the Christian faith, it’s the impact of one particular human life which causes people to reflect and ponder, and then to change the way people think about themselves, about one another and about the world in which they are set.  Christianity began when a few people began to reflect on their experience of being with Jesus, day in, day out.  They knew him as a fellow Jew, with a recognisable personality.  They saw that he taught in a way which invited people to draw their own conclusions, by asking them questions and not providing easy answers.

 As they spent more time with him, they began to see that he had an especially close relationship with God.  They saw him perform healings, but then there were plenty of healers around, and Jesus was not unique in that regard.  His followers continued to see him as a man, a human being like them.

 They saw him as a man of God, one who was undoubtedly doing God’s work.  Jesus saw himself in the same way.  He called himself not ‘Messiah’ but ‘Son of Man’ – an ambiguous title which suggested others might also have a share in whatever he was doing, in his relationship with the God he dared to call ‘Father’.  And as his followers reflected on the experience of being with Jesus, they found that their relationship to God was becoming more and more closely aligned with their relationship to him.  Without ever losing sight of the everyday humanity of Jesus, they were gradually drawn to make the connection between this man and the God they had been brought up to worship.  They had, thanks to this man, a new image for God.   And the more they pondered, the more they realised that whenever in the future they talked about God, they could not do so without also thinking and speaking of Jesus.

Much of their reflecting took place after this man’s appalling death, which should have destroyed all their ideas about God.  After all, Jesus on the cross remained a human being – one who, in their eyes, was dying for his beliefs and his loyalty to God.  What persuaded them to continue to make the equation between Jesus and God – and to make it with an even greater fervour and conviction – was a new set of experiences.  They experienced, after Jesus had died, that same human being who was now closer to them than ever before, more alive than ever before.  The earliest letters in what became our New Testament show the first Christians trying to work out the implications of what they had experienced, to interpret it and begin to share it with others.  And gradually, as Christian faith spread, it was this same engagement with one human being and the events surrounding him which came to determine the beginnings of the Christian Church that we know today.

 No-one becomes a Christian – then or now – without going through a similar process of reflection on the man Jesus and his relationship with God; without working through what that comes to mean for us and how we live; and hopefully without wanting others to share in what we have discovered.  These few weeks of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus are when we need to be at our most attentive in our reflecting.  They provide a crash-course for us, to help us deepen and renew our faith.  For the early Christians this was a lifetime’s work.  It is no less so for us.  Spending time over these next few weeks pondering these things will bring its own rich reward for our faith.

Nobody much today reads Etienne de La Boetie’s work ‘On Voluntary Servitude’.  Yet there was a time when this treatise – little more than a student essay dashed off by a sixteen-year-old in the 1550s amidst the French Wars of Religion- was the hottest book in Europe.  Even in modern times, its influence has been felt in the twentieth century, while echoes of it can be traced in recent developments in Egypt.

Its central theme is how easy it can be for a tyrant to dominate the people, who can seem to be mesmerised by something which, despite abuses, can be a kind of blind adoration.  But it only takes a few people, who have their eyes opened to the reality, to wake up and withdraw their co-operation, for a whole new movement of freedom to begin.

During the Second World War, ‘On Voluntary Servitude’ was used as a call to resistance against dictators.  It has also been held up as a model for Gandhi’s campaign of the withdrawal of co-operation against the British in India.

 The key element is that people begin to see things differently, to feel and desire and choose differently.  Out of that is born a change of consciousness which can literally turn the world upside-down.  In that sense it bears a close relationship to the Christian idea of repentance, of entering into a new way of seeing things where we see God, each other, and the world around us with fresh eyes.  It picks up on what is, and always has been, the most revolutionary aspect of the Gospel: that there is a power in the Gospel which can change us, and not only us, but that same power can radically change the values by which the world conducts itself.  It is the desire, the want, to be changed, which determines whether we are among those who de La Boetie saw as having their eyes opened to a new reality, or whether we continue in thrall to a modern version of slavery, whose values and standards we allow to dominate us.

 Lent can be about many things for the Christian: a time to try to give ourselves more space for private prayer, or for discovering more about our faith through study or discussion groups; it can be a time for reflecting on our lifestyle, trying to live a little more simply, or for renewing our understanding of our discipleship through attending to our stewardship of our money, time and abilities.  All of these are good and can profit us spiritually.

 But at heart Lent is fundamentally about the business of repentance: repentance seen not as a grovelling to a God who makes us fear him, but as a change in our awareness of how things really are in the light of what God has shown us in Jesus Christ.  And that change in our awareness is not something which only affects our private, inner life; it affects the way we look at the world and see God’s justice denied, God’s compassion frustrated, in so much that we see around us.  Repentance should lead us not simply to a spiritual change within ourselves, but to a questioning of the values by which our society and our world are ordered.  It should lead us to a recognition of the moral dimension in every aspect of our common life together.  For Christians are called not to look at the world with a despairing shrug of the shoulders, as if to say ‘what can you do?’  Christians are called to have the vision to see with God’s eyes and, having seen, to point to what that requires in our dealings one with another.  It is that withdrawing of co-operation from many of the values that surround us that proves the true test of whether we have yet found our own repentance.

Of course, the beginning of the acting out of repentance is picking up a cross and being willing to walk with it.  It is carrying the cross into the heart of the public arena which, for some, can mean persecution, derision, imprisonment or worse.  And we should remember to pray for those who, in their willingness to carry the cross and face the prospect of being broken, nevertheless continue their journey in faith. 

True repentance is what Lent is about.  Are we willing to use Lent as a time to challenge our own assumptions, prejudices and fears?

Imagine an Anglican Church riven with conflicts, in which the Low Church party was making increasingly strident demands of the ruling body, determined to extend its power and influence.  No, it’s not the Anglican Church of 2011 in its upheavals over homosexuality.  The year is 1611, and the Puritans are trying to win over King James I.

But James was a politically shrewd operator.  Already he had demonstrated his ability by portraying the Gunpowder Plotters of 1605 not as Catholics but as terrorists (read ‘Muslims’ for ‘Catholics’ in 2011 and you get the picture).  He’d also had considerable experience of the Puritan mindset in Scotland before he gained the English throne.

James dealt with the English Puritan demands through a special conference held at Hampton Court.  He accepted just one of the demands: that there should be a new translation of the Bible, available for public reading in churches.  Thus began work on the King James, or Authorised, Version of the Bible.

James saw the project as a way of uniting his warring religious factions.  He could not have known he was setting in train the publication of a book which would have the largest and widest readership in history.

The King James Version is 400 years old this year.  Many of its phrases have become part of everyday speech: turn the other cheek, salt of the earth, in the twinkling of an eye, and many, many more.  It is a cultural as well as a religious landmark not only in English life but worldwide: the King James Version was exported abroad along with the British Empire.

The translators worked from previous versions, such as that of Tyndale, and the earliest documents they had available to them at that time.  They produced a version unsurpassed for the rhythm and musicality of its language.  All Bible translations have two main aims: accuracy and accessibility.  The producers of the King James Version were no different, and the principles they followed have been taken up in later translations.  But by the 19^th and 20^th centuries it was clear that developments in biblical scholarship – literary, archeological, historical – brought a need for a greater accuracy of translation because of new knowledge, whilst the archaisms of 17^th century English no longer spoke so readily to later generations.

So the Revised Standard Version (RSV) was published in 1952, followed in later decades by a whole range of new translations.  Over the past two decades one of these – the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) – has gained acceptance as the most generally used in cathedrals and parish churches.  It combines a faithfulness to the original texts with a contemporary idiom.

The NRSV is the version we shall be using from now on in our Communion services.  The Communion readings are contained in a single lectern book, with all three readings – Old Testament, New Testament and Gospel – printed together for each Sunday of the three-year lectionary cycle.  That means no more worries about finding the right page for lesson readers.  The new book also has the introductory sentence for each reading.

Because the NRSV readings are now downloadable, we are also printing out the Communion readings in full in a new-style weekly sheet.  Those who like to follow the reading in church will find it much easier than trying hurriedly to find the right page in the pew Bible.  It also means the readings can be taken home for further reflection during the week.

The purpose of all this – in 1611 as in our own day – is to enable the Bible, the Word of God, to come alive in its readers and hearers: to comfort, to inspire, to challenge and to move to devotion.  The Word of God needs to be heard more than ever in today’s world.  The task for our generation is to do all we can to ensure that it is.

I wish you a happy New Year.  Or, as we might soon be saying, I wish you a high rating in your felicific calculus.  For our level of happiness is, according to the government, something which the Office for National Statistics is soon to measure in its survey of households.  Strictly speaking, it is supposed to be a measure of ‘well-being’, which in itself poses the question as to whether happiness and well-being are necessarily the same thing.

At the foundation of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 is the phrase ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.  Thomas Jefferson, its author, originally left out any reference to happiness in the first draft (which talked about the right to land).  But even in setting out what he regarded as man’s inalienable right to pursue happiness, he was wise enough to recognise there is no guarantee he will achieve it (As a later cultural icon, Mick Jagger, noted nearly two hundred years later, “I can’t get no satisfaction”).

Happiness is elusive.  We are well used to being sold dreams of happiness by advertising and lifestyle gurus.  In the run-up to Christmas one consumerist myth read ‘Give happiness.  Give them everything they want’.  Happiness, it turned out, was a laptop.  And happiness might be thought to be highly subjective: what engenders a sense of contentment in one person may do nothing for another, while some people find contentment in ways others can only find baffling.  The poet Philip Larkin wrote: “Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.”  We don’t all find our joy and delight in the same ways.

We know that money alone is not the key to happiness.  Many years before the birth of Christ, Aristotle told us that “wealth is merely useful and for the sake of something else”.  It’s not enough, in other words, to want to accumulate more and more of everything – money, material goods, food, drink – if you want to be happy.  Simply consuming things – or desiring to – doesn’t stop you feeling sad or angry.

The Benedictine monk Christopher Jamison has argued that monks are not unhappy because they do not experience life as gloomy, forlorn and miserable.  That is a good starting point.  The spiritual resources of the Christian tradition can help us to face up to and handle what it is that makes us unhappy, and at the same time will begin to point us to an understanding of what happiness is that will take us away from many of our common understandings of happiness.

St Benedict, who laid the foundations for much Western monasticism, described a monk as somebody who “delights in virtue”.  In this he was following Aristotle, who held that happiness was about living virtuously: “the activity of the soul expressing virtue” was the way he put it.  In other words, forget our modern association of happiness with feelings and emotions: happiness is about living in harmony with our own purposes and ends.  It is a form of rational behaviour, which can be learned until it becomes a habit.  We learn as children what is fair and just: we can grow up to be adults who act fairly and justly, and that brings happiness both to ourselves and to others.

So if we want to be happy we have to first know what is good – in the sense of understanding what is right behaviour and what are the principles of a good life – and then we have to do good – in the sense of living out a virtuous life.  None of that is easy.  There are plenty of siren voices tempting us down other paths towards happiness.  There are plenty of obstacles in the way of knowing and doing what is good.  But this is the road the Christian tradition takes us down if we want to know true happiness, contentment and well-being. 

Instead of drawing up a list of New Year’s resolutions, why not ponder this question: in 2011, what makes you happy?