| I write this the day after hearing Daniel Barenboim
conduct the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at the Proms in
a concert of music by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.
This consists of roughly equal number of Israeli and Arab
musicians aged between 13 and 26 orchestra, who for the
past five years have gathered on neutral ground, to make
music. The music is the important thing. Any
conversations, new understandings, relationships
established, and of course these things inevitably
happen, are a bonus.
Given Daniel Barenboim's passion for music and the great
talents of the orchestra, the concert was very good.
There was no special sound, no distinctive element, it
was a group of young people open to a distinguished and
knowledgeable conductor who interpreted these scores in
the light of all he knew about life and music and these
composers.
The Anglican Communion, the Church of England appears to
be threatened by divisions, fortunately nowhere on the
scale of the Israeli Arab conflicts. It does seem
to me that its divisions are about essentially second
order matters which alas are inflated by the dominant
values of the commercial and media world around us
which mistakenly seem to consider that anything to do
with sexuality is the most important of all.
At the last Lambeth Conference a resolution was passed
asking every province of the Anglican Communion to
contribute 0.7 % of its income to international aid. this
has hardly reached anyone's consciousness unlike the
resolution on human sexuality.
When there are divisions in an organisation the important
thing is to focus on the heart of the purpose of that
organisation. For the orchestra that is making music. For
the Church it is worshipping God so that we help persons
closer to Jesus, we help those in need, we seek justice
both for those presently alive and for future
generations. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God ' says
Jesus in the sermon on the mount in St Matthew's
gospel. Let us all strive to do the same.
Christopher Morgan-Jones
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